Well its another #midimonday here's the making of my new music video The Lemon Racer
![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmdqAdrKJ7Kav2N8tiEdkZMy74jSWVWU4dJXhX29FoQN3i/3dsmax2.jpg)
I've been dabbling with animation in 3ds max lately and the render engine vray. I wanted to make a car look like it was driving through a neon tunnel. So I downloaded a free model of a car from CG trader and added customized materials to it along wit the blue light rays that were modeled from polygons.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmXXN2uRdYNiUe4mhqJ4JZhhuNpgrZe3Ew83PupYeoF9t6/3dsmax1.jpg)
This whole setup was quite simple with just the tires of the car animating and the blue light rays animating for a 100 frames sideways. One thing I messed up on though before rendering was setting the tire animation on a curved easing animation path which causes them to stutter in the loop. You'll see this in the finished video hence the name the Lemon Racer lol.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmSKNd1kb5LR2rehoLBAumFvHrTcUzWmhp8S4MnnRhjR8B/car0027.png)
Here's what one of the frames of the animation looks like. Surprisingly it renders quite fast. I think this was because I only used an HDR image to light the scene and it didn't have to calculate a bunch of shadows and only a few reflections of the blue light. 

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmd6RMjbbyTBPTgKTrZEorFKpNRDizQ91ChdqoWAziztev/aftereffects.jpg)
Now that the animated frames are ready I brought them into after effects to play them in a loop and add a bunch of effects and color overlays and backgrounds to make the scene more neon. This is also where I added the finished mix for the song and exported the final video for uploading to various platforms like 3speak.tv

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmSt5c5rxa7W9r4ZjX8N5xQP7D7zo1ta3N8jHNqiJ1n1T1/mpc.jpg)
Most of the song was composed on my train ride into work via MPC and my handy little mpk mini midi controller. I had done the drums in here as well but decided to take a different route later on with the drums in cakewalk during the final mix.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmase6uNdNkFTHC7pkH67fr9akZXhZwwmgztiRVmVhfmYk/cakewalk.jpg)
I exported all the tracks from MPC as wav files then imported them into cakewalk. I thought the drums from MPC sounded too trappish and decided to add better drums via EZ drummer in cakewalk. 

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmQPtbnv4857jpBqkUAAaZFYMs6qbyR3AnepgyNtacChAp/drums1.jpg)
This EZ drummer library is called action drums. These are high quality samples that record multiple hits of different drums to correspond with the velocity you trigger them at with your midi controller. You can also customize each drum with different samples across all of the different drum sets Toontrack has to offer. 

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmbBocNq7cUpJgXxH4EPVZMxDKaaTsg5GCbeUhDJHG7kx5/drums2.jpg)
You can also mix the levels of each drum in this plugin or add effects if you want. I was going for a late 80s action style sound with this and modified an existing preset called wooden hut by swapping out some of the drums.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmXqGjc73P2xza8YrhRmBXF4BXfwi7YD18DzExyuBC1Ef9/drums3.jpg)
In cakewalk I like to use my Roland Handsonic to be the midi controller for drums as it has better pressure sensitivity than my mpk mini. Here is one of the loops I tapped out on the handsonic. As per usual you can set how the notes snap during playing and you can adjust the velocity of each hit manually. I usually layer these sequences by starting with the kick and snare then slowly building up to other elements like cymbols and wood blocks etc. If you work in 1 measure its easy to loop it later and add fills after the fact. 

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmVDgzumK4vcTknCgehqtpuuBbv85xJgKqD8AE4nuu6jWG/opxsynth.jpg)
The majority of the synth sounds for this song are from the Air plugin called Opx-4. This is an FM style synth that lets you layer in lots of different waveforms and add effects to really create different standard or crazy sounds. I mostly modified existing presets for this song rather than trying to start a sound from scratch.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmT95rTmqt6qiwqLRQy7nzuSMtKAzRVPYN8UBBFwFMrjnq/hypha.jpg)
I also used the hypha plugin I got free from Native Instruments last month. Now this plugin is gone forever if you missed the download window. It works great for ambient washes and string-like backgrounds. 

https://youtu.be/Nsdi8UPMUlM
And here's the finished product. I wrote a little story about the lemon racer to go along with the soundtrack here as well
https://peakd.com/hive-193816/@sketch.and.jam/qegehbmb

That's all for this #midimonday hopefully this week I'll be able to come up with something new to post for next week. Thanks for looking/listening :-)