We should use this thread to attach some simple sample compositions (documentation is forthcoming, but might take some time due to a massive influx of junk to do).
This should show how to setup the GL Tools Alpha blend, and window output background color so that you can have clear background windows, as well as translucent/clear visuals.
This is a desktop level background, with a feedback system that follows your mouse. The only thing that isn't obvious from the file and the subsequent app... I made sure that the window was borderless (ok, maybe that's obvious), and I made the default window open property 1280x720 (even though I don't think that seems to be necessary to get the window to immediately pop fullscreen with this).
Note the quite different appearance of the qtz, from the subsequent app. You have to think about alpha being able to be clear now!
That is quite a gnarly test qtz you posted Chris!
Now I need to dig out some keyboard/window resize stuff :)
But seriously, this is QuickTime's problem (or, to a more tractable degree, the Movie Exporter PlugIn's problem). The framework is such a huge steaming pile of crap that it can't deal with the super complicated, modern notion of "threads" (that was sarcasm, threads are simple, and were invented in the 1970's or earlier).
This plugin also doesn't work in QCVisualizer, an Apple-created app (which uses a similar environment to QuartzBuilder), so I'm not going to bother trying to hack around it.
You have me really curious to try testing that... I wonder how you are enabling/disabling, and where you are writing the file to?(EDIT: I see you included a zip, I'm going to lookee lookee) I don't think that if you opened the file with the movie writer in "enable" and didn't "disable" the write patch that it would successfully write a file. I guess you have some kind of key click logic going on...
FWIW, I have tried writing to file in an app with the Kineme file/text writer stuff, within a Quartz Builder app and it works cool... so its definitely not that you can't cross the app barrier, so to speak.
I hate that thing... for some reason, whenever you use it, at least for me, it lags like crazy the first time you write a file somewhere (eg., save your work first). Also, I can't use anything other than fairly small areas with mediocre quality video (that end up with HUMONGOUS file size). I don't even bother trying efficient encryption like H264, because I've crashed QC or stalled with certain combos.
The only time I use that thing is when I want to record something that uses live camera feed quickly. I always hate it because it makes it look like I'm not getting as good a fps as I really am.
I don't think that anyone could write a plugin that would be more efficient within QC... I think it's just par for the course, because rendering, and writing to file along with data encryption is expensive. I would love to be proved wrong.
What happens if someone uses an app that utilizes the Kineme3D plugin? What happens on their end?
I made a little animated music demo app, and I'm just wondering what someone would see, because I'm realizing so much of my stuff has used Kineme3D. (my crutch! lol...)
gtoledo3 wrote: I don't think that anyone could write a plugin that would be more efficient within QC... I think it's just par for the course, because rendering, and writing to file along with data encryption is expensive. I would love to be proved wrong.
I think you mean "encoding", not "encryption" (you encode a video, you encrypt a sensitive document -- you can also encrypt an encoded video, but you get the idea).
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss encoding. While it's currently difficult to encode video in real-time, a sensible threaded encoder could possibly handle the load. QuickTime currently isn't really built to deal with that kind of load, but it's not beyond possible. Further, hardware-assisted encoding (ala GPU power + multicore cpus) is slowly catching on, and when it does, this would be a perfect place to do it. (As QC renders in Vram, what better place to start the encoding process than on the gpu?) hardware colorspace conversion, quantization, and reordering [is this even done in modern codecs anymore? jpeg does it, but that's 20 years old] are possible today in simple CI/GLSL snippets. (motion vector stuff is possible today too, but that's a bit trickier to pull off).
it will work for 7 days, then it will expire (just as if you installed it fresh in QC) -- the 7 day thing is system wide, mind you, so a second kineme3d-using app 7 days later wouldn't work at all.
We're working on making Kineme3D Licensing possible, but we're waiting to hear some usage details from a couple bigger clients before we commit to this. If you're interested, drop us an e-mail and we'll keep you posted when deployable kineme3d hits the scene.
(Similar things will happen with art-net. however, we've got a deployable art-net build available, so that's possible without much additional work; similarly, email us if you're interested).
It's cool that you can conceive of a scenario where that will be possible... I definitely figured that the next OS would lend itself to more of that stuff since one of the main thrusts seems to be tapping into more GPU power. Do you think that this is possible at current time, given QC/Quicktime's setup, or are you more just commenting on future trends... or just what_is_possible from a technical perspective?
It would be pretty awesome to have a plugin that could do real time, full screen, H264, PLUS anti-aliasing on a capture to video, and not hurt fps :)
--> gtoledo3 enclosed an more elaborate 1second build of the movieexporter, when enabling the movieexporter seperately inside the build app will return the same problem when trying to export. Pathnames didn't seem to be the problem, it works from QC.
The movieexporter is not the best there is, but it works for me though. We use it for recording and sampling live loops, and when the encoding is set to DV it's acceptable quality. Animation is even better, but the file size increases dramatically.
A bit of a workaround I'm using right now is buffering live images into a structure and then output it to the exporter via an more or less 'controllable' structure player. Then the frame lag is a bit less, movies get bigger and longer in time (and it's not realtime anymore), but for looping afterwards it's fine.
It would be great if it it's possible to make a structure writer that would allow images as well. But that sounds impossible.
Maybe something like quartzcrystal that would allow an recorded buffer/structure to be exported to a mov per frame/image in the structure. Just thinking out loud...
After thinking about that a bit... it would actually be quite cool to be able to have our apps run out after 7 days if we wanted them to! I realized that is an interesting side effect of the K3D stuff that could be awesome if users could apply it (and not necessarily linked to kineme3D).
In my own case scenario, one of the main things I'm interested in doing are some things that are basically interactive music video apps, using qtz's to provide some extra functionality via tracking x/y position on mouse, and maybe some key click stuff.
I like the idea of being able to sell someone something like a music video that they could watch for awhile, and decide if they really want to pay for it or not. If they want to raid the "resources" folder, it wouldn't matter much, because the music/or mov. clips alone don't make up the whole product, so to speak.
So it would actually be cool to be able to send something out and have it run for a week and then expire, whether kineme3D is in there or not... or maybe if one could set the length of the "trial"? I think that idea may have been mentioned before, but I'm not sure.
A wonderful example to work with [petri] , although I'm still fully fathoming how this application works and I haven't been able to get Quartz Builder to output something that just sticks at the desktop layer. Is there any difference between rendering for full screen on one display or another prior to outputting?
My screen is higher than 1280x720, but if I use that setting in a borderless comp it doesn't bounce up to full screen, whereas using my fullest screen setting does make the composition go full screen, which I guess is no surprise [ am I right in assuming that your full screen is 1280x720 gtoledo ? ]
Just wanted to know if my first publically posted Quartz Builder does go full screen for others who aren't on same size screen - seemed to work with your wonderful composition, gtoledo. I have your mould all over the show now :-)
If you're setting the "fullscreen" output to true, it'll set the window size to your current screen size (I think it even uses the screen the window is currently on, so you can fullscreen on a second display, as long as the window is there when the fullscreen toggle happens).
To make this easier on everyone, please post compositions as well as apps -- that way we can say what to change to get expected output (regarding desktop-level transparent fullscreen goodness, for example).
Apologies , please find the original composition attached, will bear that in mind in future. Thanks for the clarification concerning the full screen settings.
I haven't looked at either of the files you posted yet Cybero,
... but as far as the thing I posted I think I set the default size to 1280x720 on that app, using the advanced settings. I really should have taken note of the exact combo. It was a force of habit. I did it to ensure that the window opened at something reasonably large. The macbook 13" is 1280x800 I guess.
The main thing, as far as window levels go, is to go ahead and sit down and build an app at all of the "window levels", which are available on the "window outputs" macro. What I posted has desktop level selected, so it sits behind the icons. Each of the other levels will display slightly different interaction... basically all "one up" higher than the next.
I notice that each window level interacts with mouse/spaces/expose differently, also depending on whether or not you have made a window bar.
I would also play with the "ignore mouse events" stuff (which will make track balls non functional) which allows you to click onto icons when your app is at desktop window level, for instance... but should still allow the actual "mouse" patch in QC to still relay x/y value info when attached to a renderer or any patch that accepts a value input.
cheers leegrosbauer & gtoledo - burning some midnight oil -
[after three days of technical support hell from my web hosting provider - bless 'em - took me some time to get back ontrack - having had to re-upload near on 9GBs of materials.
So much appreciate the time you've both taken to confirm the effectiveness of the Quartz Builder application's settings I'd used.
Incidentally, I have found that giving screen sizes that aren't supported in situe by my display card gives really odd rectangular envelopes that still act as borderless, opaque or whatever else they were set to do, but they won't go full screen - they'll just float.
No custom sizing above screen display engineered on seems to be the case. Not griping like - just feeling around in the dark [Sonic Youth].
I have two examples for perusal, one is a re-engineered Developers Tool example from Tiger days [one of the many the wonderful thing about tigger] - Star Shine and the other is a JavaScript dependent sprite drawing animation into which I have placed a GL Point - SpryMouse.
Both of them work well enough, although the Star Shine derived application runs quite slowly - [gracefully ?] the more one replicates the slower it runs - no surprise, except I have had to reduce the number of replicants down to about a fifth of what it would originally have been.
Original compositions included.
Star Shine includes audio input patches - not safe audio input :-)
Would the processing of audio data at two levels of the composition be tiring it out I wonder?
Hmm, it is running slower in Quartz Builder (starshine), but then again, it is rendering at twice my window size :)
It seems like a slow composition in general, not just in Quartz Builder... I don't get a performance difference between the two. I did a build or two at various sizes.
I would recommend turning off native core image rendering on your billboard settings. The difference in image quality is negligible, but it makes big difference on speed with this one. Also, replicate in space is just a hog in general.
Yeah , it could be made faster than it is, got some odd results with splines not really behaving at the final turn like they really ought to when the composition went to Builder.
Thanks for the feedback.
Have had some odd screen size outputs resulting on compositions when resetting them down to a lower borderless size than the screen I'm currently working with.
To have some kind of hope of tracking the aberrant behavior, I would take note of all settings and perhaps even write down what you do in the advanced settings, because that impacts the final app as well...
I did notice that your protocol input/outputs were no longer published/grayed out on the feedback composition. I don't know if that would have any effect on your window thing? Not sure...
The link here is external due to the size of these files.
Essentially I wanted to try and see if varying the opacity of the background, and other opaque settings made any real difference that could be either exploited or avoided.
Isn't it amazing how cool particle systems can be, even the stock one?
It makes me feel a bit guilty not using the kineme particle sometimes :) But the stock particle has that certain pattern/control interface that is really cool for this "fountain" of images thing. Nice choice of input image as well.
The crux of making the background clear (which you prob already know, but I will throw out there for anyone reading), is to make sure the window color output on the template is adjusted to alpha, as well as making sure that your clear has alpha (so some extent or another). The default window color background with the template is white I believe.
Got the lantern application to run truly transparent to my amazement and bafflement at the particular configuration required to achieve lasting success. Still got to experiment with colour shifting, etc. Looking forward to that.
Just been busy finalising the content and such like on a web page for my quartz builder examples, some of them pretty simple, but demonstrative of using QB for making a particular utility or graphic effect.
Please find attached AudioPlaid - actually still in draft, incorporates and requires the Audio and GL Tools plugin.
Live Audio in that fuzzy oscilloscope sci fi fashion - you can get it to be a much cleaner frequency than this - just see the spiralscope example I uploaded on the Audio Tools example page.
hugh i tried this i have NI LED i don't know why it says it can not find it.
Not quite sure which is not working.
Noise Industry plugins works well when placed in /Library/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins.
It will be needed by the LEDDeskVideo.qtz, it should not, in theory, need that plugin when it is a QB application.
Nonetheless, just in case I've inadvertently stumbled upon the need to double check upon non Kineme plugins being bundled in automatically with QB, I have bundled the NI patch in the QB app - see attached file.
Must look out for that in my future applications :-), especially as I'm about to publish up a few examples on my site.
Thanks for the ahuh heads up.
Perhaps you'd be so kind as to give this QB app another try?
same thing the camera turns on and desktop is white, the NI LED which i have not in my /graphics folder but for other video plugins folders works in qc anyways it is also in you application package resources but i don't get anything but a white page.
you must have a newer version of NI or it seems i don't have th image crop but i do have the LED lights ? ??? see pic for error.
i wouldn't post this LED on your site unless you can confirm it works for someone else. your website has some good info on it you don't want to clutter it up with stuff that may or may not work.
the qc file is like ok it doesn't work for me but the app should.
i got the NI fx factory its cool you just drop in a qc file and it bundles it as a plugin.
Picture 2 tells it all I think, presumably raised when opening the .qtz, you will find that ensuring you don't have more than one version of any plugin is always a good thing to look for in this case, it would seem to be to do with the Structure Tools plugin.
The difficulties with running the .qtz could be provoked by NI default installation point being used by me and hence my .qtz and my application. Is it the editable or the executable , the .qtz or the .app or both that don't work?
I have run NI from my user Library folder before now, but have stuck with the default installs for all plugins, Kineme's default being within the user's Library, ~/Library/etc.
Look through all of your image units folders and make sure that what you think is coming from an NI plugin "plugin" isn't actually coming from an "image unit" plugin, in one of the Image Unit folders, in Graphics.
Right now... with Quartz Builder, there are two caveats, as far as loading plugins/patches... I don't believe there is any support for "image unit" plugin loading, like that odd ball NI thing, or the Free Frame plugins, because the Free Frame plugin Xcode is written so that the frf folders need to be at that specific path.
I run into that with the NI, and have to be careful... it's a stupid thing, but I love the invert color channels patch.
somebody ought to give you both a prize, a little green rosetta for both dust and gtoledo for their patient feedback. If I've got this right, I should have bundled the NI Image Units plugin and not the NI patches plugin, or is it the case that you mean that the NI stuff just don't shake it at all in QB [ and consequently gives dust and others nothing but a blank empty screen]?
So, the second version of the application worked and the first didn't, which means that I bundled the right stuff in the second application, yeah ? [unsure here :-) ]
cheers for the positive feedback, have you snagged the audio app yet?
In summary, we actually need more people to open this.
I definitely don't mean to infer that any image unit type plugin should be bundled in a Quartz Builder project. What I'm saying, is that it won't work at all (or shouldn't as far as I know), as it's not typically placed in the patches or plugins folders inside of Graphics... it has it's own location (Image Units), which isn't handled by Quartz Builder at all.
Quartz Builder shouldn't ever be effected by local plugins/patches that a user has installed... a compiled app should only use what's in it's resources folder. However, how it handles Image Units like this is an ambiguity. I thought it didn't work at ALL, because of incidents that I've had. However, maybe it does work if the user has the image unit pre-installed.
Quartz Builder should detect the plugin/patch as needed if the composition hinges on it, but it might not detect an image unit (which, to beat a dead horse, may be marked as a plugin but placed in the Image Units folder).
So, I don't know if it works on mine because it's linking to what's already in my Image Units folder, though this MAY be the case. I'm not checking it on a clean install right now, I'm checking it on one with the Image Unit. I will give this a run on a clean partition when I get a good chance. It may not hinge on the Image Unit at all, and the reason it isn't running on Dust's system could be unrelated. It's a hard tell until you get more people having run it.
they both don't work for me even after putting your NI plugin in my folder. thanks for reminding me about NI i think i should make some macro plugins for rendering quartz comps out of motion. that way i can push the performance of quartz up a bit and do things like render with feedback in motion instead of QC.
Right up to speed with what you are saying , just to double, like treble check, this attached application uses the same .qtz that uses the same NI LED lights Image Filter patch and has the Noise Industries Patches.plugin bundled up with the application as a bundled resource.
I'm sure I did exactly the same with the last version uploaded, but having read through your post I thought a retest would be a good idea, it has a different title and slightly different icon too just to help distinguish it, otherwise exactly the same.
it still doesn't work for me though ??? its a white page still try taking out the NI stuff and using the macro i just sent you. use apple image crop instead of NI and through in the macro. cause i don't have the image crop macro. im going to try an make an app with K3D then run it on another system see if the plugin still works.
Ok, on a clean install - by clean, I mean everything stock - ( and especially, without the "Noise Industries Units.plugin" installed in a folder labelled "Image Units" inside of /Library - which is what I believe is necessary for this qtz to work - ... it doesn't work, and returns a blank white.
What is bundled in the app is something called "Noise Industries Patches.plugin". Was this put in manually, or did Quartz Builder put it in there? I have that patch as well, and don't associate it with the LED thing... I really think that it comes from the Image Unit, hence making it a no-go.
i just want to put it out their that i like qc builder its great but what happens when you want to share an app with someone and they don't have a license for lets say k3d. i just tried to run one on my server which is a beta system but gl tools works but k3d doesn't. is there a way to get a version of k3d that will work encapsulated in qc builder.
Kineme3D does work with Quartz Builder. Not trying to mince words though :)
Kineme3D has a licensing agreement, which requires you to have bought it, and have it installed on your system for it to work past the 7 day limit. Quartz Builder applications follow that.
If you want to see about getting some licensing for an app you want to sell, I would advise talking to Chris or Steve about the possibility of deployable Kineme3D and a payment agreement... I'm sure they would be jumping all over it if there was a large contingency of people wanting Kineme3D deployable. I would bet there haven't been too many people asking.
On Cybero's thing...
This folder should be installed in "Library", as is, and Cybero's app should work. If you already have a Image Units folder, just put the plugin in there. I typically put this at the /Library level, and not the User level or System/Library.
the patches plugin was added as a plugin resource in Quartz Builder, it was not automatically bundled in, as happens with Kineme plugins.
so absolutely no way of making noise industry dependent items work ?
by the way, dust, one would need to bundle the plugin with the application and it seems to me that the macro you kindly provided wouldn't do much within a QB application without having the plugin bundled as a resource.
It is pretty difficult to tell what is and isn't an Image Unit related patch, but I just followed my intuition and bundled in the Noise Industries Patches .plugin
This version , sans icon is using the same .qtz and has the Image Units plugin bundled and does work locally, mind you, so did all the other versions I produced :-), as dust asked how can we originate with some surety of hitting the target.
I've just uploaded a version with Image Units plugin bundled so if dust could hold off from installing the Image Unit thing and see if it runs as bundled would appreciate, but whatever, thanks for the feedback.
cybero wrote: so absolutely no way of making noise industry dependent items work ?
It depends -- if it's a Quartz Composer Plugin, yes, it'll work just find. If it's Not (i.e. an image unit), it won't. It's possibly possible to get image units working in a future version -- to be totally honest, it was a use-case we hadn't considered at all when drafting QB 1.0 (behind the scenes, we do a ton of design/feature assessment/feature reduction before pumping out code, so we have a generally useful product that still has room to grow as users' needs become apparent -- this is one such case).
3d wise , I guess like a lot of 3rd party & Kineme time limited unless licensed stuff, or pre-requisite 3rd party plugins, I ought to be providing a system specification list for prospective users, although this should not be necessary for Apple only and Kineme plugin patches used in the QB .qtz file.
its weird cyberos plugin says noise industry patches and mine and georges says noise industry units either folder i put them in still doesn't work as a qc file or app for me. and i have fx builder pro from noise industry which has all the qc files that go with the noise industry filters so if you want to share something and we can't figure out how to get the noise industry image units thing sorted just ask and i will send you the qc files that make the noise industry stuff. just replace all the noise industry stuff in your source with all the equivalent qc macros plus figure out how noise industry is making their plugins with QC. thats actually what im doing right now checking out their techniques.
edit never mind.
im looking at some macros and it looks like noise industries is using NI stuff in their own macros so yeah there's no way i can think of to make it work????
cybero wrote: Definitely would be interested in hearing about such licensing arrangements.
The 7-day window is system wide -- if you have a QB app that uses kineme3d, and k3d's never been installed/used on your system prior to that, you'll have 7 days. After that, no instances of k3d will work until you purchase it.
This model of course sucks for distribution, so we've got a deployable kineme3d build in the works (1.2). Please contact us for licensing information if you'd like access to this build, and instructions on how to activate it in your products.
defiantly once i get something i want to release with k3d i will hit you up about licensing, i'm sure your fair the price was fair to begin with. next month i might be down to donate all the same even without anything to release.
cybero wrote: Both of them work well enough, although the Star Shine derived application runs quite slowly - [gracefully ?]
note that I've not checked the compo out at all. However, something I've noticed is that the Quartz Builder runner runs on a separate thread triggered by the display's refresh rate (as opposed to a normal QCView's use of timers or something on the main thread). The reason for this is easier/simpler/faster GL context integration, and silky smooth rendering -if- your composition is fast enough: if you can always hit 60fps, you'll very rarely drop frames (in QB 1.1 (unreleased) it's even less likely as we've reduced the rendering overhead), leading to very pretty animations.
The downside is that if you miss a frame (i.e. the composition takes longer than 1/60 of a second to render), it'll display for more than 1 frame, so a 59fps composition will play at 30fps, because it'll miss about half of the 60Hz refreshes. This cuts frame rates pretty severely: best case is 30fps (1/2 speed), next is 20fps (2/3 speed), etc. It'll still have a bit of jitter, of course, but you get the idea.
So while the numeric framerate is worse than in QC, the animation quality is a bit ore uniform (frames happen for consistent durations, while with QCView they can vary from <1 frame duration to several frames, with no attempt at smoothing it out).
Version one of the LED Desk Video application probably did not have the appropriate plugin.
Version two had the NI Patches plugin.
Version three, the largest one has the Image Units installed.
The NI Patches is a QC plugin and that should mean that if bundled, the application will work.
The Image Unit plugin version won't however, work bundled - see cwright's post.
NI Patches should go into Quartz Composer Plugins folder in /Library/Graphics/.
NI Units should go in to your /Library/Graphics/Image Units folder.
Given the fact that you have the full FX Builder version, and I am merely using the free plugins, I would have thought that you shouldn't have any problem with the files, nor do I think that you should be messing up an installation that is working AOK otherwise for you. must be a problem with my application.
Thanks for the feedback, I think I'll be mailing NI about this for some better clarification of what is actually being called upon by which QC NI filter patch, and which, if any Image Unit filters we have access to in QC. After all, if all the NI QC stuff is covered by the NI Patches.plugin from the QC Plugins folder, and if QB stuff works with that NI Patches plugin bundled as needed, then I'll be happy to bundle that through, although I wonder at how much redistribution can be done of their plugins at all, come to think of it
If you want to see what belongs to what on the "Image Unit" vs the "Plugin"... (and I knew there was a reason why I knew the dots had something to do with the Image Units... because I'd already seen this...)...
For the plugin, go to the plugin contents and look at the Contents, then the Info.plist. Go to "QCPluginClasses" and hit the drop down arrow (there will be 29 Items"). So... that's all of the sub-patches that are called up with the "plugin" that goes in plugins.
For the "Image Unit" plugin, that goes in Image Units... go to the contents and look in Resources. You will see the plist that shows 63 items... you will also see a bunch of CI kernels. I would guess that some of the "subpatches" use the same kernel, or some mix with the included jp2 images, accounting for more items in the filter list than kernels.... I haven't looked to see what is/isn't there yet.
of course, how dumb of me, show package contents and yes, the Image Units cikernels includes the NILEDLights as well as the aforementioned Dots generator, the Patches plugin contained next to nothing I'd used and looks very much oriented towards the delivery of QC based NI clips and filters.
Thanks for that.
Sad that the application just won't work unless you have the FXFactory Free plugins installed. All a matter of discovery. Thanks for your interest to date. I'll be putting my quartz builder page, with real links [:-)], etc up soon, so one way or another, I'll no doubt be getting some feedback.
By the way, I have been to your site at qctwit gtoledo and all your apps are working that were in the download box.
Regarding Noise Industry plugins - just received this email
Quote:
Hi Peter,
On Jul 27, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Peter Boocock wrote:
Thanks for your speedy reply and informative reply, Gabe.
Just wondered if you were aware of Quartz Builder QuartzBuilder which allows one to publish compositions as projector executables , with all necessary 3rd party plugins bundled en toute.
I was wondering if QB would work AOK with NI plugins getting bundled into the QB file that QB outputs.
We use Kineme stuff all the time (those guys have talent!). Unfortunately the fact that QuartzBuilder allows users to bundle third-party plug-ins inside the executable doesn't eliminate the need for a distribution agreement for any software that gets bundled. I think Kineme's own Quartz Composer plug-ins (e.g. GLTools) come with a fairly permissive license, but those rights do not extend to Noise Industries products.
Otherwise I'm just going to have a system spec requirements for such files as shall need free FXFactory plugins.
Thanks for doing that, and for your patience. For the record, we didn't start with a "closed" system. Originally you could download the Noise Industries Units as a separate product from our website (for free), and they came with a fairly permissive license. It was our way of saying thanks to the Core Image team for creating such a cool tecnology. To our suprise our units became very popular with users of Pixelmator and other Core Image-aware applications, and we ended up having to spend a lot of time helping these users with products we didn't actually make. After a while we decided we could no longer afford the time to support these "alternative" installations.
Regards,
Gabe
Noise Industries, LLC
On 27 Jul 2009, at 15:51, Technical Support wrote:
Hi Peter,
Some of our patches that you see inside Quartz Composer are loaded from the Noise Industries Patches.plugin, while others are loaded from the Noise Industries Units.plugin (the latter are Core Image units, and they work in all Core Image-aware applications).
If users have the free FxFactory "engine" installed, they will have the required components to be able to run your composition without issues. This is true for the current version of our software, but we may change the way our software works in the future. In answer to your second email, we do not allow our products to be distributed without prior written consent. I am afraid we cannot allow you to distribute our software unless a written agreement has been signed by our company allowing you to do so.
I am sorry if this will hinder your ability to distribute your application. At the moment we are not interested in licensing our Quartz Composer plug-ins or Core Image units. Having different versions of our low-level components be installed by end-users would potentially create a tech-support nightmare. Those Quartz Composer plug-ins have been evolving as part of FxFactory, and it's quite possible that you won't be able to access these components in the future in the same manner than you do today. The last thing I want is for you to invest time in developing compositions that rely on our components, only to discover one day that they no longer run as expected.
[snipped]
Finally sent this mail on the 28th
Hi Gabe,
Thanks again for your reply, I've posted that up to the Kineme forum for everyone's edification and advice.
Just one question, can one get a distributive agreement for the free plugins, or would it simply be AOK to re-employ, with appropriate credit, the cikernel code upon which they are based?
Thanks in anticipation and saving up for the FXFactory Pro as I type :-)
Cheers,
Peter Boocock
cybero designs
cybero productions
and the reply - pretty unsurprisingly is
Quote:
I'm sorry, we currently don't have any plans to license our Quartz Composer plug-ins or Core Image units to other companies or individuals.
Similarly I cannot authorize you to copy or reuse our code, which includes the Core Image kernels bundled inside the Noise Industries Units.plugin, in your own products. This follows from the End-User Agreement that appears when you install FxFactory. Please understand that if we allowed you to copy and reuse our code without an explicit, written agreement, we would create an incentive for any competing companies to come in and copy our work at will.
On a personal level, if you decide to try and create a new Core Image unit that replicates the functionality of ours, here's a bit of advice: even if you had someone else's kernel at your disposal, it is not always sufficient to get a Core Image unit to run, or to run correctly on all hardware and at all resolutions. Your best bet may be to try and figure out the algorithm yourself, or to find someone with GPU-programming expertise to help you.
Does your project look "ok" as a qtz file, but not ok as a Quartz Builder project? It's hard to give advice without example files... if the files are confidential, you could always email to Chris.
A 3D model not being fully shown could be anything from the structure of the model, to clipping planes of QC, to layer arrangement, or depth testing... hard to say without specifics.
AR Toolkit will work with Quartz Builder and/or Kineme3D, but remember that the user will need to be able to adjust brightness to effectively use it in different environments, so definitely keep that in mind, and work something out to control that via keystroke, mouse position, or whatever :)
This is I solved it almost 90%,
As I was using Kineme 3D Blend Render
In 3D Object blend render default settings
Blending is "Replace"
Depth Testing "read and Write"
face Culling is "none"
When I use the above settings I could only see the partial or artifacts of the 3D model with texture.
But When I change Depth Testing to "none", I could see the full model and it is working fine.
Only one challenge left....... when I use the default settings, the whole model looks good and edges when overlaps they are fine too but with Depth testing to "none", the edges are pixalated and fuzzy only where polygons are overlapping.
I have to clean up and will send the file, but almost 90% it is working, Single Marker Tetecter patch is working fine and I am loving it... see;
sounds like you need clear patch, to clear the depth buffer. Setting Depth Testing to none is a Bad Idea (because in certain orientations, the object can self-overlap, and you'll see the back over the front).
open the patch creator (cmd-enter), type "clear". That patch is normally used to clear the color buffer (the colors you see), but it also clears the Depth Buffer -- you don't see the depth buffer, but it's used to keep things in the correct spatial order (i.e. far away stuff doesn't draw over closer stuff).
By default, QC will clear both the color and depth buffer each frame, but outside of QC, those buffers aren't cleared without using the clear patch.
You can disable QC's automatic clearing by pressing cmd-K (I think?) when the viewer is selected.
Oh, and thanks for your kind emails Muqeem, I just put two and two together (sorry!).
I thought it was really cool how you took the Globe AR thing and then made it so that it explodes if it hits boundaries. Nice!!! I thought the concept of "you're controlling the world, and if you aren't careful, it can be destroyed" was very eloquent.
Thank you all for such encouraging comments and suggestions. I would also like to mentioned Mr. Colin Wren, who got me into QC and Kineme. Honestly, I feel like I will be working and generating ideas for the rest of my life on these amazing tools.
muqeem
Somewhere on Vimeo (arggggh, can't find it, I thought I "favorited" it) is an AMAZINGLY well done video of someone singing a song and using markers to "flip" different masks. This was done a little bit before there was an AR Toolkit project for QC available via Y30.
in reference to a qb is it possible in snow leopard to build for a desktop ? i was able to do this in leopard but not qb is it a 64bit or 32bit thing. i just thought i would ask to see if anyone has found a work around or experienced this problem, i find one of the coolest things about qb is the ability to build a motion desktop, which seems to be lost in snow leopard.
Maybe you should post the file (actually, since Chris listed the thing of "please post files for bugs", I've seen a ton of very ambiguous bug references without files... more than usual! I can only imagine the Charlie Brown squiggle that must be over his head right now)...
... haven't been having problems on this side, fwiw.
yeah my bad. here is a file that i am using to test. it seems that the ignore events doesn't work either way you set the events are ignored. at least i tried with the mouse patch. before when i built a desktop it would automatically go to the desktop, now you have to switch from your qb app to finder in order for the app to go to the desktop but when you do that all the events stop working. like in leopard i thought it was really cool to run a qb file on the desktop hide the mouse and use you own cursor that has cool particle trails but now the qb file will follow the mouse xy only when the application is in the foreground but even then none of the multi-touch features work etc... so how do you file a bug with chris. im just posting the example here i will wait to see if anybody else has this problem or i will email him later. thanks george.
Dust -- have you tried across QB 1.0 and 1.1? There were some pretty subtle, but still significant changes in how events are handled in 1.1, so that may be part of the cause. Also, a lot of message handling stuff (window motion, resizes, etc) got revamped a lot too, so more changes might be happening there.
The changes were mostly for performance. 1.1's runtime overhead is a small fraction of what 1.0's was (1.0's overhead was slightly worse than the stock QCTV-style CVDisplayLink-driven QCRenderer app, while 1.1's is much much lower due to some extremely aggressive optimizations -> less time bookkeeping, more time rendering the composition each frame.)
If you post a file to the forums (as you did here), I'm able to play, as well as other people (to help confirm/reject problems, or add details). If you want to submit confidential files, email them (info@kineme.net -- that'll go to smokris, myself, and bmellen (another mostly silent kineme "admin"-type person)) to us, and we'll check it out when we have a moment.
I didn't exhaustively test QB's event stuff (esp cursor hiding and desktop-level apps) on SL, but the simple tests I did went without problems. It's also possible that SL changed semantics of how some functions work (for example, a desktop-level app might not be allowed to hide the cursor anymore or something, for anti-malware purposes). That's 100% unfounded speculation, but just trying to convey how sometimes things can change between releases.
Did you have multi-touch stuff going on with Leopard, or is it an SL thing? The only multi-touch thing I've ever programmed was non-QC... I'm curious about what the QC multi-touch "state of the union" is.
I don't know if I've got the whole gist of what you are seeking to achieve, however, I attach for perusal , adjustment or dismissal a slightly reworked version of your QC file for QB.
I have also attached the raggedy QB application resulting.
Some real fun could be had with real rag paper textures.
It still has a few rough edges and is admittedly an extremely rushed job, but I believe I am correct in thinking that it hits the main objective required for working at the desktop.
I took the step of embedding the texture file, 'baked', otherwise all I got was a black blob on the desktop full screen :-).
this file was just some sl qc thing to test with. what i am trying to do is run an qb application on the desktop. ok thats simple i just have to switch from qb application to the finder then the app sets to the desktop next. once the application is on the desktop it no longer responds to events. im just asking because i made a bunch of desktops that do cool things to your mouse etc.. but now the events are not being responded to. its not a big deal i was just going to go live with a few of them and wanted the same functionality i was getting in leopard.
I didn't get into yours yet, but I opened up some of my old ones (build in Leopard), and I'm getting what you're describing (not the Finder issue, but the issue with mouse events not being forwarded).
Did some brief tests -- specifically, with mouse tracking.
Mouse tracking works, but only when the app is focused -- when it loses focus, the mouse position is no longer updated.
I think this is actually a change to AppKit? I'll have to do some debugging-enabled tests to know for sure.
You can test this by attaching a mouse patch to a sphere in QC. When the viewer is focused, the sphere tracks the mouse properly. if you cmd-tab to Finder, the sphere stops tracking.
We use [NSEvent mouseLocation] to get the mouse position -- in Leopard, this is always updated and current. Apparently on Snow Leopard this isn't the case... I'll have to see if there's a workaround.
I'm just now seeing this but in a slightly different "all in QC" variant...
I was doing the same thing effectively, but all I have to do is setup mouse x/y -> sphere, and let it track, and then "grab" the QC editor to put focus on it. When I hover over the viewer, no more Sphere... like you say, it stops updating positions.
I also whipped this extremely simple test sphere app up in SL... I guess at the very least, I can click back on the desktop, and mouse position updates then. I'm surprised that clicking on the desktop will focus it actually.
thanks guys. the work around for me is to use osc. which is what i was going to be using anyways but it would be cool to do some event forwarding like it worked in leopard. i can see some real potential for people that like to change the appearance of their desktops and mouse / cursor etc.. at least thats what i was going to do. if i knew how.. i would just do this in cocoa and it wouldn't be a problem but my cocoa skills are not so sharp. im having troube loading patches from a bundle. not apple sdk patches but mainly kineme thats why the qc builder is essential + the desktop feature.
im getting cocoa little by little i find my self just doing more c based stuff in cocoa but on a bright note i finally finished a working iphone app in cocoa that forwards UItouch events to osc. i was going to go with tuio but i decided on using bbosc because I can send tap count, touch count x1, x2, x3, move events as well as start events which i think is essential to making your own gestures. tui seems to send your move xypos but it doesn't send the initial position, which i use to figure out which direction etc.. i suppose i could always sample and hold the first value ?
all i need to figure out now is how to switch the bounds to qc bounds -1to1 on the x... im getting the screen bounds of the iphone which i can work around for the time being. i was going to try and submit my simple multi touch app to itunes and then release some cool desktops etc.. that people can use to control with their iphone. i know there are like 2 other apps the msa remote and oscemote that will send multi touch but like i said they are not sending all the events i need. so just keep me informed
so, I'm not sure exactly why this is happening -- just wrote a simple test app that shows the mouse X/Y coords in a window, and it properly updates even when the app isn't focused.
I'll have to figure out why that's different in QB -- perhaps it's a QC bug where it decides it doesn't need to update (though I'm not sure how it would be able to make such a decision...)
also if you notice while in focus QB will get your x and y but it will not get your mutli-touch info's, like magnify scroll etc.. I think this is for any build shield, screen or desktop. you might want to investigate that as well. I though you might want to know that as well. I know the mouse is something essential for lots of QC builds so i think that should be working. I know there was a bug with the IB not forwarding events and chris wood sent me a simple forward all events script. Im sure your aware of that maybe you need something like that to forward events not sure figured you covered that seeing you have an ignore events button. Im not sure maybe you could make a super mouse patch with the light table example that exposes the number of taps the number of touches as well as lets say x1,x2,x3 both start and move as well delta x and y etc... I looked into it for a bit today cause thats how i built my iphone app with UItouch but for some reason the QC plugin template wasn't liking the new touch event methods or touch API. I think that is just cause i don't know what im doing when building a plugin. Does all your code go in the execute function meaning like all your methods and stuff ? I assume the de-aloc stuff goes in the execution end and the init stuff goes in the start execution ? the rest goes in the execution. Does it have to all one function or can i put methods in the execution etc...
Forwarding from IB is only relevant because reality doesn't reflect the NIB's settings (the event forwarding state, specifically). QB doesn't use QCView (what IB creates), so that's all moot.
scroll events are forwarded -- tested on both Leopard and Snow Leopard. Multitouch events (magnify, rotate, etc) are probably not (they're new to NSEvent, and there's no code in there to handle them yet).
Getting X/Y deltas requires hacking the trackpad firmware/driver -- probably not going to bother with that.
source-wise, sounds like you should curl up with some of our simpler plugins, and look at how they're structured (the method names will be different due to us using the skankySDK, but functionally they parallel the official api pretty well). you can have function calls/method calls inside the execute method -- it's just like any other function/method.
this is a weird one. quartz builder will only bundle plugins in the /library/graphics
folder not ~/library/graphics thought people might want to know that know that. here is a test im trying to make but for some reason it isn't forwarding tuio events. it works great in QC but once i build the app it is useless because it will not forward events. im going to try with osc in a second. here is the qb comp and the 64bit snow leopard tuio plug i built. [edit] well i tried OSC and apparently QB doesn't want to take osc either :(
QuartzBuilder will copy plugins where ever they live (it'll even pull them out of /System/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches if that's where you've installed them - it's a really bad idea to do so, but QB doesn't care). I just tested this, and can confirm that it's fine.
There's no point in using 64bit plugins for QuartzBuilder -- the runner is 32bit only, so it won't use the 64bit portion.
As for tuio events, those aren't QB's problem -- the plugin's responsible to receiving events and dealing with them accordingly. the QuartzBuilder runner's job is to forward Mouse Events, Keyboard Events, and that's all. HID events are the HID patch's job, MIDI events are the MIDI patches' job, audio stuff is the audio patches job, you get the picture.
yeah thats what i thought. don't know why its being finicky on my system. I have been trying to heed the advice of everyone and throw the plugs in ~/home.
i think 64 bit is not enabled by default anyways. im just having a bit of a hard transition to SL. thanks for the advice. Id rather focus on some of the good things to come around the corner. thanks chris.
I will send you a private message if I have any problems. I think the problems I am experiencing should better be left in a private forum. I realize this is still a commercial venture for you so Im sorry if i have imposed on that venture with any negative input. I guess its just me experiencing these things. i do however look forward to a possible licensee venture in the future with some of your plugs.
[edit]
well i have to apologize its all been a user error. i had my patches in /root
and my plugin in /home don't know what i was thinking i have never done that before but once i put them all inside one directory /home like suggested things work flawless. it see my resources and it adhere's to my touch events. so i apologize again. the mouse thing having to be in focus is of little importance as im starting to provision some multi-touch fabric so the mouse isn't really something i want to be using. just having a weird switch over to SL as im sure others are. glad your there to confirm im messing up cause everything is golden now. would have gotten frustrated and rebooted to le0 if you didn't tell me everything works fine on your end. so yeah in the future i will send you a private message if i get any bugs like the mouse focus desktop thing or what ever. plus the fabric is kind of sensitive right now. did you see it a sigraph ?
@initi: QuartzBuilder does not have a limit on the number of layers.
However, the free trial version of QuartzBuilder limits you to 55 patches total (as it says on the product page), which might be the limit you're encountering.
We should use this thread to attach some simple sample compositions (documentation is forthcoming, but might take some time due to a massive influx of junk to do).
here's our internal test compo:
This should show how to setup the GL Tools Alpha blend, and window output background color so that you can have clear background windows, as well as translucent/clear visuals.
This is a desktop level background, with a feedback system that follows your mouse. The only thing that isn't obvious from the file and the subsequent app... I made sure that the window was borderless (ok, maybe that's obvious), and I made the default window open property 1280x720 (even though I don't think that seems to be necessary to get the window to immediately pop fullscreen with this).
Note the quite different appearance of the qtz, from the subsequent app. You have to think about alpha being able to be clear now!
That is quite a gnarly test qtz you posted Chris!
Now I need to dig out some keyboard/window resize stuff :)
Thank you, George. Useful and very beautiful!
Cool... it was one of the first things I was asking Chris about! I made that hairball and mario ball thing in a similar way.
Nice work! Love this app.
I've been trying to get it to work with the movie exporter plug. But it runs into this error:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'QTMovieInitializedOnWrongThread', reason: 'QTMovie class must be initialized on the main thread.'
App+qc sample enclosed.
Any idea how I can get this to work?
yell at apple?
But seriously, this is QuickTime's problem (or, to a more tractable degree, the Movie Exporter PlugIn's problem). The framework is such a huge steaming pile of crap that it can't deal with the super complicated, modern notion of "threads" (that was sarcasm, threads are simple, and were invented in the 1970's or earlier).
This plugin also doesn't work in QCVisualizer, an Apple-created app (which uses a similar environment to QuartzBuilder), so I'm not going to bother trying to hack around it.
Ah such a pity..
When is the Kineme movie exporter plugin coming?
;-)
You have me really curious to try testing that... I wonder how you are enabling/disabling, and where you are writing the file to?(EDIT: I see you included a zip, I'm going to lookee lookee) I don't think that if you opened the file with the movie writer in "enable" and didn't "disable" the write patch that it would successfully write a file. I guess you have some kind of key click logic going on...
FWIW, I have tried writing to file in an app with the Kineme file/text writer stuff, within a Quartz Builder app and it works cool... so its definitely not that you can't cross the app barrier, so to speak.
I hate that thing... for some reason, whenever you use it, at least for me, it lags like crazy the first time you write a file somewhere (eg., save your work first). Also, I can't use anything other than fairly small areas with mediocre quality video (that end up with HUMONGOUS file size). I don't even bother trying efficient encryption like H264, because I've crashed QC or stalled with certain combos.
The only time I use that thing is when I want to record something that uses live camera feed quickly. I always hate it because it makes it look like I'm not getting as good a fps as I really am.
I don't think that anyone could write a plugin that would be more efficient within QC... I think it's just par for the course, because rendering, and writing to file along with data encryption is expensive. I would love to be proved wrong.
Question:
What happens if someone uses an app that utilizes the Kineme3D plugin? What happens on their end?
I made a little animated music demo app, and I'm just wondering what someone would see, because I'm realizing so much of my stuff has used Kineme3D. (my crutch! lol...)
I think you mean "encoding", not "encryption" (you encode a video, you encrypt a sensitive document -- you can also encrypt an encoded video, but you get the idea).
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss encoding. While it's currently difficult to encode video in real-time, a sensible threaded encoder could possibly handle the load. QuickTime currently isn't really built to deal with that kind of load, but it's not beyond possible. Further, hardware-assisted encoding (ala GPU power + multicore cpus) is slowly catching on, and when it does, this would be a perfect place to do it. (As QC renders in Vram, what better place to start the encoding process than on the gpu?) hardware colorspace conversion, quantization, and reordering [is this even done in modern codecs anymore? jpeg does it, but that's 20 years old] are possible today in simple CI/GLSL snippets. (motion vector stuff is possible today too, but that's a bit trickier to pull off).
it will work for 7 days, then it will expire (just as if you installed it fresh in QC) -- the 7 day thing is system wide, mind you, so a second kineme3d-using app 7 days later wouldn't work at all.
We're working on making Kineme3D Licensing possible, but we're waiting to hear some usage details from a couple bigger clients before we commit to this. If you're interested, drop us an e-mail and we'll keep you posted when deployable kineme3d hits the scene.
(Similar things will happen with art-net. however, we've got a deployable art-net build available, so that's possible without much additional work; similarly, email us if you're interested).
Yeah, I definitely mean encoding.
It's cool that you can conceive of a scenario where that will be possible... I definitely figured that the next OS would lend itself to more of that stuff since one of the main thrusts seems to be tapping into more GPU power. Do you think that this is possible at current time, given QC/Quicktime's setup, or are you more just commenting on future trends... or just what_is_possible from a technical perspective?
It would be pretty awesome to have a plugin that could do real time, full screen, H264, PLUS anti-aliasing on a capture to video, and not hurt fps :)
--> gtoledo3 enclosed an more elaborate 1second build of the movieexporter, when enabling the movieexporter seperately inside the build app will return the same problem when trying to export. Pathnames didn't seem to be the problem, it works from QC.
The movieexporter is not the best there is, but it works for me though. We use it for recording and sampling live loops, and when the encoding is set to DV it's acceptable quality. Animation is even better, but the file size increases dramatically.
A bit of a workaround I'm using right now is buffering live images into a structure and then output it to the exporter via an more or less 'controllable' structure player. Then the frame lag is a bit less, movies get bigger and longer in time (and it's not realtime anymore), but for looping afterwards it's fine.
It would be great if it it's possible to make a structure writer that would allow images as well. But that sounds impossible.
Maybe something like quartzcrystal that would allow an recorded buffer/structure to be exported to a mov per frame/image in the structure. Just thinking out loud...
Thanks for considering that...
After thinking about that a bit... it would actually be quite cool to be able to have our apps run out after 7 days if we wanted them to! I realized that is an interesting side effect of the K3D stuff that could be awesome if users could apply it (and not necessarily linked to kineme3D).
In my own case scenario, one of the main things I'm interested in doing are some things that are basically interactive music video apps, using qtz's to provide some extra functionality via tracking x/y position on mouse, and maybe some key click stuff.
I like the idea of being able to sell someone something like a music video that they could watch for awhile, and decide if they really want to pay for it or not. If they want to raid the "resources" folder, it wouldn't matter much, because the music/or mov. clips alone don't make up the whole product, so to speak.
So it would actually be cool to be able to send something out and have it run for a week and then expire, whether kineme3D is in there or not... or maybe if one could set the length of the "trial"? I think that idea may have been mentioned before, but I'm not sure.
A wonderful example to work with [petri] , although I'm still fully fathoming how this application works and I haven't been able to get Quartz Builder to output something that just sticks at the desktop layer. Is there any difference between rendering for full screen on one display or another prior to outputting?
My screen is higher than 1280x720, but if I use that setting in a borderless comp it doesn't bounce up to full screen, whereas using my fullest screen setting does make the composition go full screen, which I guess is no surprise [ am I right in assuming that your full screen is 1280x720 gtoledo ? ]
Just wanted to know if my first publically posted Quartz Builder does go full screen for others who aren't on same size screen - seemed to work with your wonderful composition, gtoledo. I have your mould all over the show now :-)
If you're setting the "fullscreen" output to true, it'll set the window size to your current screen size (I think it even uses the screen the window is currently on, so you can fullscreen on a second display, as long as the window is there when the fullscreen toggle happens).
To make this easier on everyone, please post compositions as well as apps -- that way we can say what to change to get expected output (regarding desktop-level transparent fullscreen goodness, for example).
Apologies , please find the original composition attached, will bear that in mind in future. Thanks for the clarification concerning the full screen settings.
I haven't looked at either of the files you posted yet Cybero,
... but as far as the thing I posted I think I set the default size to 1280x720 on that app, using the advanced settings. I really should have taken note of the exact combo. It was a force of habit. I did it to ensure that the window opened at something reasonably large. The macbook 13" is 1280x800 I guess.
The main thing, as far as window levels go, is to go ahead and sit down and build an app at all of the "window levels", which are available on the "window outputs" macro. What I posted has desktop level selected, so it sits behind the icons. Each of the other levels will display slightly different interaction... basically all "one up" higher than the next.
I notice that each window level interacts with mouse/spaces/expose differently, also depending on whether or not you have made a window bar.
I would also play with the "ignore mouse events" stuff (which will make track balls non functional) which allows you to click onto icons when your app is at desktop window level, for instance... but should still allow the actual "mouse" patch in QC to still relay x/y value info when attached to a renderer or any patch that accepts a value input.
That opens up fullscreen for me right off the bat ;)
DarkBright v1.0 does go full screen at 1920x1200.
cheers leegrosbauer & gtoledo - burning some midnight oil - [after three days of technical support hell from my web hosting provider - bless 'em - took me some time to get back ontrack - having had to re-upload near on 9GBs of materials.
So much appreciate the time you've both taken to confirm the effectiveness of the Quartz Builder application's settings I'd used.
Incidentally, I have found that giving screen sizes that aren't supported in situe by my display card gives really odd rectangular envelopes that still act as borderless, opaque or whatever else they were set to do, but they won't go full screen - they'll just float.
No custom sizing above screen display engineered on seems to be the case. Not griping like - just feeling around in the dark [Sonic Youth].
I have two examples for perusal, one is a re-engineered Developers Tool example from Tiger days [one of the many the wonderful thing about tigger] - Star Shine and the other is a JavaScript dependent sprite drawing animation into which I have placed a GL Point - SpryMouse.
Both of them work well enough, although the Star Shine derived application runs quite slowly - [gracefully ?] the more one replicates the slower it runs - no surprise, except I have had to reduce the number of replicants down to about a fifth of what it would originally have been.
Original compositions included.
Star Shine includes audio input patches - not safe audio input :-)
Would the processing of audio data at two levels of the composition be tiring it out I wonder?
Ah well, all a learning curve , eh.
Hmm, it is running slower in Quartz Builder (starshine), but then again, it is rendering at twice my window size :)
It seems like a slow composition in general, not just in Quartz Builder... I don't get a performance difference between the two. I did a build or two at various sizes.
I would recommend turning off native core image rendering on your billboard settings. The difference in image quality is negligible, but it makes big difference on speed with this one. Also, replicate in space is just a hog in general.
Haven't looked at the screen drawing.
Yeah , it could be made faster than it is, got some odd results with splines not really behaving at the final turn like they really ought to when the composition went to Builder.
Thanks for the feedback.
Have had some odd screen size outputs resulting on compositions when resetting them down to a lower borderless size than the screen I'm currently working with.
Wonder what causes that?
I haven't had resize issues so far.
To have some kind of hope of tracking the aberrant behavior, I would take note of all settings and perhaps even write down what you do in the advanced settings, because that impacts the final app as well...
I did notice that your protocol input/outputs were no longer published/grayed out on the feedback composition. I don't know if that would have any effect on your window thing? Not sure...
In case we haven't actually noticed any Quartz Builder work currently gets a date of the 15th May 2009 15:50.
Invariably so it would seem.
There was I half suspecting that it was entirely due to my needing to send through my registration on the kit I'd first setup on that date. LOL
The link here is external due to the size of these files.
Essentially I wanted to try and see if varying the opacity of the background, and other opaque settings made any real difference that could be either exploited or avoided.
Pre build compositions
here
Builder outputs
here
One example file attached with original composition.
Sakura | 花
Cool approach!
Isn't it amazing how cool particle systems can be, even the stock one?
It makes me feel a bit guilty not using the kineme particle sometimes :) But the stock particle has that certain pattern/control interface that is really cool for this "fountain" of images thing. Nice choice of input image as well.
The crux of making the background clear (which you prob already know, but I will throw out there for anyone reading), is to make sure the window color output on the template is adjusted to alpha, as well as making sure that your clear has alpha (so some extent or another). The default window color background with the template is white I believe.
Got the lantern application to run truly transparent to my amazement and bafflement at the particular configuration required to achieve lasting success. Still got to experiment with colour shifting, etc. Looking forward to that.
Just been busy finalising the content and such like on a web page for my quartz builder examples, some of them pretty simple, but demonstrative of using QB for making a particular utility or graphic effect.
Please find attached AudioPlaid - actually still in draft, incorporates and requires the Audio and GL Tools plugin.
Live Audio in that fuzzy oscilloscope sci fi fashion - you can get it to be a much cleaner frequency than this - just see the spiralscope example I uploaded on the Audio Tools example page.
LED-DeskVideo QuartzBuidler application
hugh i tried this i have NI LED i don't know why it says it can not find it.
Not quite sure which is not working.
Noise Industry plugins works well when placed in /Library/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins.
It will be needed by the LEDDeskVideo.qtz, it should not, in theory, need that plugin when it is a QB application.
Nonetheless, just in case I've inadvertently stumbled upon the need to double check upon non Kineme plugins being bundled in automatically with QB, I have bundled the NI patch in the QB app - see attached file.
Must look out for that in my future applications :-), especially as I'm about to publish up a few examples on my site.
Thanks for the a huh heads up.
Perhaps you'd be so kind as to give this QB app another try?
same thing the camera turns on and desktop is white, the NI LED which i have not in my /graphics folder but for other video plugins folders works in qc anyways it is also in you application package resources but i don't get anything but a white page.
you must have a newer version of NI or it seems i don't have th image crop but i do have the LED lights ? ??? see pic for error.
i wouldn't post this LED on your site unless you can confirm it works for someone else. your website has some good info on it you don't want to clutter it up with stuff that may or may not work.
the qc file is like ok it doesn't work for me but the app should.
i got the NI fx factory its cool you just drop in a qc file and it bundles it as a plugin.
Picture 2 tells it all I think, presumably raised when opening the .qtz, you will find that ensuring you don't have more than one version of any plugin is always a good thing to look for in this case, it would seem to be to do with the Structure Tools plugin.
The difficulties with running the .qtz could be provoked by NI default installation point being used by me and hence my .qtz and my application. Is it the editable or the executable , the .qtz or the .app or both that don't work?
I have run NI from my user Library folder before now, but have stuck with the default installs for all plugins, Kineme's default being within the user's Library, ~/Library/etc.
Sorry to hear this isn't working for you.
Look through all of your image units folders and make sure that what you think is coming from an NI plugin "plugin" isn't actually coming from an "image unit" plugin, in one of the Image Unit folders, in Graphics.
Right now... with Quartz Builder, there are two caveats, as far as loading plugins/patches... I don't believe there is any support for "image unit" plugin loading, like that odd ball NI thing, or the Free Frame plugins, because the Free Frame plugin Xcode is written so that the frf folders need to be at that specific path.
I run into that with the NI, and have to be careful... it's a stupid thing, but I love the invert color channels patch.
I'll give a look at the app in a bit...
Hmm, both of the original posts, and the second version work for me. Interesting.
I'm laughing my butt off... I've spent some hardcore time with the LED and the "dots" NI patches. Love them.
I'm digging on your app icon quite a bit. Also, may I add that I like the clean simplicity of this piece.
somebody ought to give you both a prize, a little green rosetta for both dust and gtoledo for their patient feedback. If I've got this right, I should have bundled the NI Image Units plugin and not the NI patches plugin, or is it the case that you mean that the NI stuff just don't shake it at all in QB [ and consequently gives dust and others nothing but a blank empty screen]?
So, the second version of the application worked and the first didn't, which means that I bundled the right stuff in the second application, yeah ? [unsure here :-) ]
cheers for the positive feedback, have you snagged the audio app yet?
In summary, we actually need more people to open this.
I definitely don't mean to infer that any image unit type plugin should be bundled in a Quartz Builder project. What I'm saying, is that it won't work at all (or shouldn't as far as I know), as it's not typically placed in the patches or plugins folders inside of Graphics... it has it's own location (Image Units), which isn't handled by Quartz Builder at all.
Quartz Builder shouldn't ever be effected by local plugins/patches that a user has installed... a compiled app should only use what's in it's resources folder. However, how it handles Image Units like this is an ambiguity. I thought it didn't work at ALL, because of incidents that I've had. However, maybe it does work if the user has the image unit pre-installed.
Quartz Builder should detect the plugin/patch as needed if the composition hinges on it, but it might not detect an image unit (which, to beat a dead horse, may be marked as a plugin but placed in the Image Units folder).
So, I don't know if it works on mine because it's linking to what's already in my Image Units folder, though this MAY be the case. I'm not checking it on a clean install right now, I'm checking it on one with the Image Unit. I will give this a run on a clean partition when I get a good chance. It may not hinge on the Image Unit at all, and the reason it isn't running on Dust's system could be unrelated. It's a hard tell until you get more people having run it.
they both don't work for me even after putting your NI plugin in my folder. thanks for reminding me about NI i think i should make some macro plugins for rendering quartz comps out of motion. that way i can push the performance of quartz up a bit and do things like render with feedback in motion instead of QC.
Right up to speed with what you are saying , just to double, like treble check, this attached application uses the same .qtz that uses the same NI LED lights Image Filter patch and has the Noise Industries Patches.plugin bundled up with the application as a bundled resource.
I'm sure I did exactly the same with the last version uploaded, but having read through your post I thought a retest would be a good idea, it has a different title and slightly different icon too just to help distinguish it, otherwise exactly the same.
Just to clarify, I have not been bundling the Image Units folder Noise Industries Units.plugin :-)
here is the NI LED MACRO i put together for you so you don't have to bundle it with your app.
QB bundles the NI in your app see pic.
it still doesn't work for me though ??? its a white page still try taking out the NI stuff and using the macro i just sent you. use apple image crop instead of NI and through in the macro. cause i don't have the image crop macro. im going to try an make an app with K3D then run it on another system see if the plugin still works.
Ok, on a clean install - by clean, I mean everything stock - ( and especially, without the "Noise Industries Units.plugin" installed in a folder labelled "Image Units" inside of /Library - which is what I believe is necessary for this qtz to work - ... it doesn't work, and returns a blank white.
What is bundled in the app is something called "Noise Industries Patches.plugin". Was this put in manually, or did Quartz Builder put it in there? I have that patch as well, and don't associate it with the LED thing... I really think that it comes from the Image Unit, hence making it a no-go.
i just want to put it out their that i like qc builder its great but what happens when you want to share an app with someone and they don't have a license for lets say k3d. i just tried to run one on my server which is a beta system but gl tools works but k3d doesn't. is there a way to get a version of k3d that will work encapsulated in qc builder.
Kineme3D does work with Quartz Builder. Not trying to mince words though :)
Kineme3D has a licensing agreement, which requires you to have bought it, and have it installed on your system for it to work past the 7 day limit. Quartz Builder applications follow that.
If you want to see about getting some licensing for an app you want to sell, I would advise talking to Chris or Steve about the possibility of deployable Kineme3D and a payment agreement... I'm sure they would be jumping all over it if there was a large contingency of people wanting Kineme3D deployable. I would bet there haven't been too many people asking.
On Cybero's thing...
This folder should be installed in "Library", as is, and Cybero's app should work. If you already have a Image Units folder, just put the plugin in there. I typically put this at the /Library level, and not the User level or System/Library.
the patches plugin was added as a plugin resource in Quartz Builder, it was not automatically bundled in, as happens with Kineme plugins.
so absolutely no way of making noise industry dependent items work ?
by the way, dust, one would need to bundle the plugin with the application and it seems to me that the macro you kindly provided wouldn't do much within a QB application without having the plugin bundled as a resource.
It is pretty difficult to tell what is and isn't an Image Unit related patch, but I just followed my intuition and bundled in the Noise Industries Patches .plugin
This version , sans icon is using the same .qtz and has the Image Units plugin bundled and does work locally, mind you, so did all the other versions I produced :-), as dust asked how can we originate with some surety of hitting the target.
I've just uploaded a version with Image Units plugin bundled so if dust could hold off from installing the Image Unit thing and see if it runs as bundled would appreciate, but whatever, thanks for the feedback.
Definitely would be interested in hearing about such licensing arrangements.
This is, apart from the create date , the same version plugin I have installed.
Just to confirm.
It depends -- if it's a Quartz Composer Plugin, yes, it'll work just find. If it's Not (i.e. an image unit), it won't. It's possibly possible to get image units working in a future version -- to be totally honest, it was a use-case we hadn't considered at all when drafting QB 1.0 (behind the scenes, we do a ton of design/feature assessment/feature reduction before pumping out code, so we have a generally useful product that still has room to grow as users' needs become apparent -- this is one such case).
3d wise , I guess like a lot of 3rd party & Kineme time limited unless licensed stuff, or pre-requisite 3rd party plugins, I ought to be providing a system specification list for prospective users, although this should not be necessary for Apple only and Kineme plugin patches used in the QB .qtz file.
its weird cyberos plugin says noise industry patches and mine and georges says noise industry units either folder i put them in still doesn't work as a qc file or app for me. and i have fx builder pro from noise industry which has all the qc files that go with the noise industry filters so if you want to share something and we can't figure out how to get the noise industry image units thing sorted just ask and i will send you the qc files that make the noise industry stuff. just replace all the noise industry stuff in your source with all the equivalent qc macros plus figure out how noise industry is making their plugins with QC. thats actually what im doing right now checking out their techniques.
im looking at some macros and it looks like noise industries is using NI stuff in their own macros so yeah there's no way i can think of to make it work????
The 7-day window is system wide -- if you have a QB app that uses kineme3d, and k3d's never been installed/used on your system prior to that, you'll have 7 days. After that, no instances of k3d will work until you purchase it.
This model of course sucks for distribution, so we've got a deployable kineme3d build in the works (1.2). Please contact us for licensing information if you'd like access to this build, and instructions on how to activate it in your products.
defiantly once i get something i want to release with k3d i will hit you up about licensing, i'm sure your fair the price was fair to begin with. next month i might be down to donate all the same even without anything to release.
note that I've not checked the compo out at all. However, something I've noticed is that the Quartz Builder runner runs on a separate thread triggered by the display's refresh rate (as opposed to a normal QCView's use of timers or something on the main thread). The reason for this is easier/simpler/faster GL context integration, and silky smooth rendering -if- your composition is fast enough: if you can always hit 60fps, you'll very rarely drop frames (in QB 1.1 (unreleased) it's even less likely as we've reduced the rendering overhead), leading to very pretty animations.
The downside is that if you miss a frame (i.e. the composition takes longer than 1/60 of a second to render), it'll display for more than 1 frame, so a 59fps composition will play at 30fps, because it'll miss about half of the 60Hz refreshes. This cuts frame rates pretty severely: best case is 30fps (1/2 speed), next is 20fps (2/3 speed), etc. It'll still have a bit of jitter, of course, but you get the idea.
So while the numeric framerate is worse than in QC, the animation quality is a bit ore uniform (frames happen for consistent durations, while with QCView they can vary from <1 frame duration to several frames, with no attempt at smoothing it out).
Just to clarify :-
Version one of the LED Desk Video application probably did not have the appropriate plugin. Version two had the NI Patches plugin. Version three, the largest one has the Image Units installed.
The NI Patches is a QC plugin and that should mean that if bundled, the application will work.
The Image Unit plugin version won't however, work bundled - see cwright's post.
NI Patches should go into Quartz Composer Plugins folder in /Library/Graphics/.
NI Units should go in to your /Library/Graphics/Image Units folder.
Given the fact that you have the full FX Builder version, and I am merely using the free plugins, I would have thought that you shouldn't have any problem with the files, nor do I think that you should be messing up an installation that is working AOK otherwise for you. must be a problem with my application.
Thanks for the feedback, I think I'll be mailing NI about this for some better clarification of what is actually being called upon by which QC NI filter patch, and which, if any Image Unit filters we have access to in QC. After all, if all the NI QC stuff is covered by the NI Patches.plugin from the QC Plugins folder, and if QB stuff works with that NI Patches plugin bundled as needed, then I'll be happy to bundle that through, although I wonder at how much redistribution can be done of their plugins at all, come to think of it
If you want to see what belongs to what on the "Image Unit" vs the "Plugin"... (and I knew there was a reason why I knew the dots had something to do with the Image Units... because I'd already seen this...)...
For the plugin, go to the plugin contents and look at the Contents, then the Info.plist. Go to "QCPluginClasses" and hit the drop down arrow (there will be 29 Items"). So... that's all of the sub-patches that are called up with the "plugin" that goes in plugins.
For the "Image Unit" plugin, that goes in Image Units... go to the contents and look in Resources. You will see the plist that shows 63 items... you will also see a bunch of CI kernels. I would guess that some of the "subpatches" use the same kernel, or some mix with the included jp2 images, accounting for more items in the filter list than kernels.... I haven't looked to see what is/isn't there yet.
of course, how dumb of me, show package contents and yes, the Image Units cikernels includes the NILEDLights as well as the aforementioned Dots generator, the Patches plugin contained next to nothing I'd used and looks very much oriented towards the delivery of QC based NI clips and filters.
Thanks for that.
Sad that the application just won't work unless you have the FXFactory Free plugins installed. All a matter of discovery. Thanks for your interest to date. I'll be putting my quartz builder page, with real links [:-)], etc up soon, so one way or another, I'll no doubt be getting some feedback.
By the way, I have been to your site at qctwit gtoledo and all your apps are working that were in the download box.
Regarding Noise Industry plugins - just received this email
Finally sent this mail on the 28th
Hi Gabe,
Thanks again for your reply, I've posted that up to the Kineme forum for everyone's edification and advice.
Just one question, can one get a distributive agreement for the free plugins, or would it simply be AOK to re-employ, with appropriate credit, the cikernel code upon which they are based?
Thanks in anticipation and saving up for the FXFactory Pro as I type :-)
Cheers,
Peter Boocock
cybero designs
cybero productions
and the reply - pretty unsurprisingly is
Quartz Builder examples link @ my site - enjoy
[more to follow]
And now a simple Quartz Builder video tutorial and (downloadable example files)
Hi,
I am using single marker detector plugin and Kineme3D. trying to test stand alone apps with QuartsBuilder1.1
I am having hard time, as my 3D model is not fully show. I could see parts of the model, any help is appreciated, regards Muqeem
Does your project look "ok" as a qtz file, but not ok as a Quartz Builder project? It's hard to give advice without example files... if the files are confidential, you could always email to Chris.
A 3D model not being fully shown could be anything from the structure of the model, to clipping planes of QC, to layer arrangement, or depth testing... hard to say without specifics.
AR Toolkit will work with Quartz Builder and/or Kineme3D, but remember that the user will need to be able to adjust brightness to effectively use it in different environments, so definitely keep that in mind, and work something out to control that via keystroke, mouse position, or whatever :)
This is I solved it almost 90%, As I was using Kineme 3D Blend Render In 3D Object blend render default settings
Blending is "Replace" Depth Testing "read and Write" face Culling is "none"
When I use the above settings I could only see the partial or artifacts of the 3D model with texture.
But When I change Depth Testing to "none", I could see the full model and it is working fine.
Only one challenge left....... when I use the default settings, the whole model looks good and edges when overlaps they are fine too but with Depth testing to "none", the edges are pixalated and fuzzy only where polygons are overlapping.
I have to clean up and will send the file, but almost 90% it is working, Single Marker Tetecter patch is working fine and I am loving it... see;
http://www.muqeemkhan.com/safeThePlanet/index.html
http://www.muqeemkhan.com/AR/Test_1.html
Thank you Kineme and QC, Muqeem
sounds like you need clear patch, to clear the depth buffer. Setting Depth Testing to none is a Bad Idea (because in certain orientations, the object can self-overlap, and you'll see the back over the front).
Nice ART demo even if you are still fine tuning the item.
Cool glasses.
Thanks for the complements, please see the following too;
http://www.muqeemkhan.com/AR/Muqeem_digital_mask.html
How do I have a clear patch that you mentioned, please.
regards Muqeem
open the patch creator (cmd-enter), type "clear". That patch is normally used to clear the color buffer (the colors you see), but it also clears the Depth Buffer -- you don't see the depth buffer, but it's used to keep things in the correct spatial order (i.e. far away stuff doesn't draw over closer stuff).
By default, QC will clear both the color and depth buffer each frame, but outside of QC, those buffers aren't cleared without using the clear patch.
You can disable QC's automatic clearing by pressing cmd-K (I think?) when the viewer is selected.
(cool video, by the way ;)
Oh, and thanks for your kind emails Muqeem, I just put two and two together (sorry!).
I thought it was really cool how you took the Globe AR thing and then made it so that it explodes if it hits boundaries. Nice!!! I thought the concept of "you're controlling the world, and if you aren't careful, it can be destroyed" was very eloquent.
I really like the concept of the digital mask, using your own face and triggering various effects on it. Great idea!
Thank you all for such encouraging comments and suggestions. I would also like to mentioned Mr. Colin Wren, who got me into QC and Kineme. Honestly, I feel like I will be working and generating ideas for the rest of my life on these amazing tools. muqeem
Somewhere on Vimeo (arggggh, can't find it, I thought I "favorited" it) is an AMAZINGLY well done video of someone singing a song and using markers to "flip" different masks. This was done a little bit before there was an AR Toolkit project for QC available via Y30.
in reference to a qb is it possible in snow leopard to build for a desktop ? i was able to do this in leopard but not qb is it a 64bit or 32bit thing. i just thought i would ask to see if anyone has found a work around or experienced this problem, i find one of the coolest things about qb is the ability to build a motion desktop, which seems to be lost in snow leopard.
Maybe you should post the file (actually, since Chris listed the thing of "please post files for bugs", I've seen a ton of very ambiguous bug references without files... more than usual! I can only imagine the Charlie Brown squiggle that must be over his head right now)...
... haven't been having problems on this side, fwiw.
yeah my bad. here is a file that i am using to test. it seems that the ignore events doesn't work either way you set the events are ignored. at least i tried with the mouse patch. before when i built a desktop it would automatically go to the desktop, now you have to switch from your qb app to finder in order for the app to go to the desktop but when you do that all the events stop working. like in leopard i thought it was really cool to run a qb file on the desktop hide the mouse and use you own cursor that has cool particle trails but now the qb file will follow the mouse xy only when the application is in the foreground but even then none of the multi-touch features work etc... so how do you file a bug with chris. im just posting the example here i will wait to see if anybody else has this problem or i will email him later. thanks george.
Dust -- have you tried across QB 1.0 and 1.1? There were some pretty subtle, but still significant changes in how events are handled in 1.1, so that may be part of the cause. Also, a lot of message handling stuff (window motion, resizes, etc) got revamped a lot too, so more changes might be happening there.
The changes were mostly for performance. 1.1's runtime overhead is a small fraction of what 1.0's was (1.0's overhead was slightly worse than the stock QCTV-style CVDisplayLink-driven QCRenderer app, while 1.1's is much much lower due to some extremely aggressive optimizations -> less time bookkeeping, more time rendering the composition each frame.)
If you post a file to the forums (as you did here), I'm able to play, as well as other people (to help confirm/reject problems, or add details). If you want to submit confidential files, email them (info@kineme.net -- that'll go to smokris, myself, and bmellen (another mostly silent kineme "admin"-type person)) to us, and we'll check it out when we have a moment.
I didn't exhaustively test QB's event stuff (esp cursor hiding and desktop-level apps) on SL, but the simple tests I did went without problems. It's also possible that SL changed semantics of how some functions work (for example, a desktop-level app might not be allowed to hide the cursor anymore or something, for anti-malware purposes). That's 100% unfounded speculation, but just trying to convey how sometimes things can change between releases.
I'll definitely give it a spin too Dust!
Did you have multi-touch stuff going on with Leopard, or is it an SL thing? The only multi-touch thing I've ever programmed was non-QC... I'm curious about what the QC multi-touch "state of the union" is.
I don't know if I've got the whole gist of what you are seeking to achieve, however, I attach for perusal , adjustment or dismissal a slightly reworked version of your QC file for QB.
I have also attached the raggedy QB application resulting.
Some real fun could be had with real rag paper textures.
It still has a few rough edges and is admittedly an extremely rushed job, but I believe I am correct in thinking that it hits the main objective required for working at the desktop.
I took the step of embedding the texture file, 'baked', otherwise all I got was a black blob on the desktop full screen :-).
this file was just some sl qc thing to test with. what i am trying to do is run an qb application on the desktop. ok thats simple i just have to switch from qb application to the finder then the app sets to the desktop next. once the application is on the desktop it no longer responds to events. im just asking because i made a bunch of desktops that do cool things to your mouse etc.. but now the events are not being responded to. its not a big deal i was just going to go live with a few of them and wanted the same functionality i was getting in leopard.
I didn't get into yours yet, but I opened up some of my old ones (build in Leopard), and I'm getting what you're describing (not the Finder issue, but the issue with mouse events not being forwarded).
Did some brief tests -- specifically, with mouse tracking.
Mouse tracking works, but only when the app is focused -- when it loses focus, the mouse position is no longer updated.
I think this is actually a change to AppKit? I'll have to do some debugging-enabled tests to know for sure.
You can test this by attaching a mouse patch to a sphere in QC. When the viewer is focused, the sphere tracks the mouse properly. if you cmd-tab to Finder, the sphere stops tracking.
We use [NSEvent mouseLocation] to get the mouse position -- in Leopard, this is always updated and current. Apparently on Snow Leopard this isn't the case... I'll have to see if there's a workaround.
I'm just now seeing this but in a slightly different "all in QC" variant...
I was doing the same thing effectively, but all I have to do is setup mouse x/y -> sphere, and let it track, and then "grab" the QC editor to put focus on it. When I hover over the viewer, no more Sphere... like you say, it stops updating positions.
Weak.
I also whipped this extremely simple test sphere app up in SL... I guess at the very least, I can click back on the desktop, and mouse position updates then. I'm surprised that clicking on the desktop will focus it actually.
thanks guys. the work around for me is to use osc. which is what i was going to be using anyways but it would be cool to do some event forwarding like it worked in leopard. i can see some real potential for people that like to change the appearance of their desktops and mouse / cursor etc.. at least thats what i was going to do. if i knew how.. i would just do this in cocoa and it wouldn't be a problem but my cocoa skills are not so sharp. im having troube loading patches from a bundle. not apple sdk patches but mainly kineme thats why the qc builder is essential + the desktop feature.
im getting cocoa little by little i find my self just doing more c based stuff in cocoa but on a bright note i finally finished a working iphone app in cocoa that forwards UItouch events to osc. i was going to go with tuio but i decided on using bbosc because I can send tap count, touch count x1, x2, x3, move events as well as start events which i think is essential to making your own gestures. tui seems to send your move xypos but it doesn't send the initial position, which i use to figure out which direction etc.. i suppose i could always sample and hold the first value ?
all i need to figure out now is how to switch the bounds to qc bounds -1to1 on the x... im getting the screen bounds of the iphone which i can work around for the time being. i was going to try and submit my simple multi touch app to itunes and then release some cool desktops etc.. that people can use to control with their iphone. i know there are like 2 other apps the msa remote and oscemote that will send multi touch but like i said they are not sending all the events i need. so just keep me informed
so, I'm not sure exactly why this is happening -- just wrote a simple test app that shows the mouse X/Y coords in a window, and it properly updates even when the app isn't focused.
I'll have to figure out why that's different in QB -- perhaps it's a QC bug where it decides it doesn't need to update (though I'm not sure how it would be able to make such a decision...)
also if you notice while in focus QB will get your x and y but it will not get your mutli-touch info's, like magnify scroll etc.. I think this is for any build shield, screen or desktop. you might want to investigate that as well. I though you might want to know that as well. I know the mouse is something essential for lots of QC builds so i think that should be working. I know there was a bug with the IB not forwarding events and chris wood sent me a simple forward all events script. Im sure your aware of that maybe you need something like that to forward events not sure figured you covered that seeing you have an ignore events button. Im not sure maybe you could make a super mouse patch with the light table example that exposes the number of taps the number of touches as well as lets say x1,x2,x3 both start and move as well delta x and y etc... I looked into it for a bit today cause thats how i built my iphone app with UItouch but for some reason the QC plugin template wasn't liking the new touch event methods or touch API. I think that is just cause i don't know what im doing when building a plugin. Does all your code go in the execute function meaning like all your methods and stuff ? I assume the de-aloc stuff goes in the execution end and the init stuff goes in the start execution ? the rest goes in the execution. Does it have to all one function or can i put methods in the execution etc...
(this will be really slender - sorry)
Forwarding from IB is only relevant because reality doesn't reflect the NIB's settings (the event forwarding state, specifically). QB doesn't use QCView (what IB creates), so that's all moot.
scroll events are forwarded -- tested on both Leopard and Snow Leopard. Multitouch events (magnify, rotate, etc) are probably not (they're new to NSEvent, and there's no code in there to handle them yet).
Getting X/Y deltas requires hacking the trackpad firmware/driver -- probably not going to bother with that.
source-wise, sounds like you should curl up with some of our simpler plugins, and look at how they're structured (the method names will be different due to us using the skankySDK, but functionally they parallel the official api pretty well). you can have function calls/method calls inside the execute method -- it's just like any other function/method.
this is a weird one. quartz builder will only bundle plugins in the /library/graphics folder not ~/library/graphics thought people might want to know that know that. here is a test im trying to make but for some reason it isn't forwarding tuio events. it works great in QC but once i build the app it is useless because it will not forward events. im going to try with osc in a second. here is the qb comp and the 64bit snow leopard tuio plug i built. [edit] well i tried OSC and apparently QB doesn't want to take osc either :(
QuartzBuilder will copy plugins where ever they live (it'll even pull them out of /System/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches if that's where you've installed them - it's a really bad idea to do so, but QB doesn't care). I just tested this, and can confirm that it's fine.
There's no point in using 64bit plugins for QuartzBuilder -- the runner is 32bit only, so it won't use the 64bit portion.
As for tuio events, those aren't QB's problem -- the plugin's responsible to receiving events and dealing with them accordingly. the QuartzBuilder runner's job is to forward Mouse Events, Keyboard Events, and that's all. HID events are the HID patch's job, MIDI events are the MIDI patches' job, audio stuff is the audio patches job, you get the picture.
yeah thats what i thought. don't know why its being finicky on my system. I have been trying to heed the advice of everyone and throw the plugs in ~/home.
i think 64 bit is not enabled by default anyways. im just having a bit of a hard transition to SL. thanks for the advice. Id rather focus on some of the good things to come around the corner. thanks chris.
I will send you a private message if I have any problems. I think the problems I am experiencing should better be left in a private forum. I realize this is still a commercial venture for you so Im sorry if i have imposed on that venture with any negative input. I guess its just me experiencing these things. i do however look forward to a possible licensee venture in the future with some of your plugs.
[edit]
well i have to apologize its all been a user error. i had my patches in /root and my plugin in /home don't know what i was thinking i have never done that before but once i put them all inside one directory /home like suggested things work flawless. it see my resources and it adhere's to my touch events. so i apologize again. the mouse thing having to be in focus is of little importance as im starting to provision some multi-touch fabric so the mouse isn't really something i want to be using. just having a weird switch over to SL as im sure others are. glad your there to confirm im messing up cause everything is golden now. would have gotten frustrated and rebooted to le0 if you didn't tell me everything works fine on your end. so yeah in the future i will send you a private message if i get any bugs like the mouse focus desktop thing or what ever. plus the fabric is kind of sensitive right now. did you see it a sigraph ?
[edit]
When I ran this GT, it did not have any textures as such, but I'm guessing that's to do with this being a very basic example, yeah?
Yeah, it's just a test of the function in the most basic possible setup.
Hello, I just refreshed the official TUIO Client for Quartz Composer with a Universal 32/64bit build. Please let me know if that works for you.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/reactivision/files/TUIO%201.0/TUIO-Clie...
best, Martin.K
how many layers are supported, pls? if i have more than 16 in one composition I am unable to export an application. is there any limit? thank you!
@initi: QuartzBuilder does not have a limit on the number of layers.
However, the free trial version of QuartzBuilder limits you to 55 patches total (as it says on the product page), which might be the limit you're encountering.