Anything useful in this opensource

SteveElbows's picture

The following reminded me of some stuff Ive seen people do with quartz composer plugins, but better in some ways and quite nice & fun, so I was wondering if any coders can harness any of the code or concepts in qc?

http://methodart.blogspot.com/2009/06/engine-room-audition.html

psonice's picture
Re: Anything useful in this opensource

That looks like some fairly standard processing effects using optical flow (i've done similar stuff myself using QC, camera + core image but without optical flow).

There's an optical flow plugin bundled with xcode that just needs building if you want to try it, so I doubt there's anything too awesomely fresh in that project. Having said that, I've not looked into it beyond watching the video, and maybe his algorithm is much faster, or he does something extra cool, or...

cybero's picture
Re: Anything useful in this opensource

It's essentially a bespoked FreeFrame Plugin a Free Frame Project is to be found in Developer's Tools QC Plugins examples, so I guess the jskFX Visual Studio source code files could be introduced into that project.

See Porting to Mac from Windows 32 API

&

Porting Tips

Plenty of other leads on the Web.

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Anything useful in this opensource

Much can totally be done with optical flow and CI distortions... the funhouse, the water, of course it will need correct tweaking to have it not look shoddy or run too slow. It's about picking the appropriate displacement textures in many cases. The CI distortions can be a cruel mistress.

That one smokey effect... you should look at the v002 optical flow, as opposed to the apple optical flow powering CI values.

That ball thing was totally cool, and I can't wait to try some ideas like that. It's inspiring to see the stuff people do with other programs. I like using Processing a great deal, but I don't like the way it works as much...

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Anything useful in this opensource

You were asking for a 3D physics engine for QC, George. This linked up to a 2D one. I'd be excited by something like this inside QC. Not sure how it would all mesh in patch paradigm. One more library for cwright and smokris to examine if they haven't already looked at it anyhow.

Cool demo movie

Chipmunk Home Page

Google Code Chipmunk

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Anything useful in this opensource

Yeah... I guess what I'm thinking, and probably not getting across is this-

If you can do what I was describing very basically, then you have 2d physics as well as 3d... not the same as having a whole library, wether it's 2d or 3d. What I was describing is extremely basic stuff... that can already be done with a few different approaches, it's just that I find all of them tedious.

One can program all kinds of cool stuff in javascript, like making stuff happen when an object hits a certain boundary. It just gets hairy when you want to keep track of a bunch of "hot spots". I've been way down this alley, and started getting into this frame of thought a looong time ago. I think I have some cool macros for some stuff like this, but the right opportunity hasn't popped up. It would be ideal to have something that keeps track of the entire current GL state, render positions, lighting, etc., and that could report info back, and then do physics stuff... but that also doesn't seem like the best way of doing stuff.

So, I would see ideas like a patch that makes things disappear if they overlap (like an alpha fade or something). Or a patch that would make things repel, if they start to overlap, and you could program the repel force. The things is, it would have to be able to over-ride other patches, like an interpolation that is in action, for example. I don't think that's really possible currently. So we are left with the option to port stuff, and have semi-integration.

And, as far as 2d animation goes... you can do a heck of a lot by setting up sprites , and using audio and/or value historian as a shortcut... even with 3D stuff.

For example... I can create a "mouth/jaw" structure, and set it up so that my dialogue triggers the character talking... or do it with timeline or recording the audio peak info to value historian. I can use timelines to make stuff move specific places on queue. It's not hard to do a cartoon, if you have time. There are really a ton of ways to use QC to do pretty much all of the animata stuff, just using different approaches. I wonder if the stuff in animata requires a great deal of setup for the physics actions... I'll have to check it out, so that I'm not speaking ignorantly about actually programming with it.

I lean towards something that smoothly integrates, and isn't kind of lumped on, without being able to use many of the standard QC tools. It would be kind of lame to have all of this awesome physics stuff, but no "z" option.

Hey, if animata for QC pops up, I'll use the heck out of it :)

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Anything useful in this opensource

I hear what you are saying. The nuts and bolts are there to do a lot this stuff from first principles, it's just who has the time? Yet if the plugin patches get too advanced they risk not meshing with the whole GL QC paradigm and so why bother to some extent.

Maybe we should persuade you to crack open the macro box – sounds like the basis for some timesaving QC patches lurks with-in!

I heard Quickdraw/(3D) was dropped because Adobe launched legal action/threats on postscript © infringement. Up shot Quartz 2D (which I assume is Next's DisplayPDF re badged) - maybe that could be allowed into QC (I'm a designer not a programmer so I can say things like that!). I know all these drawing and connecting tools are in Flash type software but I like QC for the runtime speed and just the Lego-like infinite possibilities feeling c/w flash sites which tend to a certain sameness (across a few genres admittedly).