Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out what I did.

ahilvers's picture

Hello all,

I am a new member and am posting for the first time to introduce myself. I am a junior a Ohio University studying Digital Media. I had my first class in Quartz Composer today. My teacher let us kinda play around in it and this is what I made the first class. Let me know what you think. Hint: Click and scroll for earths future.

Andrew

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FirstClassSW.qtz800.67 KB

photonal's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

10 out of 10 for making me laugh when I clicked the mouse! ;-)

cybero's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

You could probably do with changing some of your layer ordering and if you have the Alpha plugin installed on your system, some different blending modes, that would help you get rid of the background flicker when death raying Earth.

Also might cure the disappearing rather than revealing when firing Death Star.

Change the Clear patch to be a 0% nothing colour. Will also give you a less flicker happy background.

See attached picture of death raying in progress after altering some blend modes and layer ordering. It looks exactly the same as when using the 0% colour clear, but the other way takes care of retaining that colour background and having the Particle System not flicker when fired.

Nice example, hope you have more fun.

Given that not all mice are made equal a scroll reset might also be a good idea too - hooked up to a keyboard patch.

I would screen grab the flicker state but it is too elusive for even a timed and staged screen grab.

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FirstWave.png
FirstWave.png442.72 KB

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

Ha! Totally awesome. The only suggestion I would throw out there is to try a Billboard set to auto height to emulate the cube you have (not hurting things here really, but it would be more efficient).

I don't know who is teaching you (smokris by chance?), but I like that they have you using conversion for color (mouse down to sprite color input). I don't think (?) that's covered so well in Apple docs, to my memory.

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

Idk.... looks more like poop splatter than death ray if you choose alpha blend. I'm not personally seeing any flickering, but I'm probably not picking up on what you're talking about. Agree to disagree on that one ;)

cybero's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

You can set the blend modes as you find most effective, I actually find that add works quite nicely, and that setting the colour obviously makes a whole load of difference to the end result.

Interesting you don't get the same kind of flicker issue I'm experiencing. See video below, shows what I'm talking about.

& even this screen recording barely comes close to showing what is happening with the screen flicker. In fact the screen capture is way too kind :-), what looks like almost well blended foreground, background and flashing has vertical lines , whilst the death ray is fired , but this doesn't show up in the video unfortunately

Perhaps its a hardware problem with my card,but I don't think so.

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

Woah! Totally doesn't happen on my system! In Leopard or Snow Leopard. (btw, meant the "poop splatter" comment in good humor - on my monitor it ends up looking really brown)

goto10's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

Ha! Made my old Star Wars loving heart glow with glee! Nice one.

pixelnoizz's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

yeah small darth vader is missing.

ahilvers's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

Yes smokris is my teacher and we didnt actually start learning anything on the first day. We mainly went over the syllabus and he told us to start messing around in order to get used to menus and such and this is just what I came up with. And with never touching Quartz before I dont know many of the things you guys are talking about haha.

Drew

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

The Quartz Composer menu(s) setup is somewhat unique, so it really makes sense to have people just poke around and absorb it as a starting point.

You are very fortunate to have smokris as a teacher, and should really put your all into this class, because you have a unique opportunity. I can't say enough good things about him, and when having worked with Steve in person, it is a real eye opener into just how dynamic and quick he is. Genius is a word used so often that it lacks impact, but smokris is a true genius in his ability to take gigantic mental leaps and think in a non-linear fashion.

cwright's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

weird, what hardware/OS version are you running on? I can't reproduce anything like what you're experiencing on my machines.

also, if you systematically disable pieces, does the flicker go away when something in particular is disabled? anything in the console?

cybero's picture
Re: Hello all, had my first quartz class today, check out ...

Model Name: iMac Model Identifier: iMac9,1 Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz OS X 10.6.4 nVidia 9400

I got rid of the flicker by changing some of the layer order [especially Cube to layer 2] and altering the Clear patch's colour and probably most important of all, employing a simpler blur image instead of the Lenticular Halo as the laser burst's resulting damage.

Running the Particle System in the FirstClassSW.qtz results in the following in the GF Log error

[10:31:18.144]   <RenderView: 0x1194eef10>: Render failed at time 103.420086s
[10:31:18.154]   <QCQuadric "sphere" = 0x173A0960 "Quadric_sphere_1"> OpenGL error 0x0503 (stack overflow)
[10:31:18.154]   <QCQuadric "sphere" = 0x173A0960 "Quadric_sphere_1"> Execution failed at time 103.422
[10:31:18.154]   <QCPatch = 0x1521D040 "(null)"> Execution failed at time 103.422
[10:31:18.154]   <RenderView: 0x1194eef10>: Render failed at time 103.422065s

A similar result can be found when running the stock Particle System.qtz, but not when running the other two stock examples, Particle Blob.qtz and Particle Explosion.qtz

[10:33:03.268]   <RenderView: 0x134b56500>: Render failed at time 7.865328s
[10:33:03.291]   <QCParticleSystem = 0x18D74AE0 "ParticleSystem_1"> OpenGL error 0x0503 (stack overflow)
[10:33:03.292]   <QCParticleSystem = 0x18D74AE0 "ParticleSystem_1"> Execution failed at time 7.889
[10:33:03.292]   <QCPatch = 0x34BBA9C0 "(null)"> Execution failed at time 7.889
[10:33:03.292]   <RenderView: 0x134b56500>: Render failed at time 7.888896s