Hybrid Visuals

Shaping the Random || Quartz Composer and other generative experiments

Downloads

  1. VDMX mouse macro

    I’ve been doing a lot of live drawing and other visuals that require X and Y inputs lately. VDMX has the wonderful feature that you can publish a structure input from your Quartz Composer path with ‘xy’ in front of the name. It will then show up as an interface element with x and y sliders and a 2d point picker. To make it even better, you can sync these to the mouse in a preview window, allowing you to draw inside the interface without having your mouse on the second output!

    2d point picker example

    The downside is that the xy-input shows up as a structure in the 0…1 range, and QC needs different coordinates. So to save myself some time, I’ve made a macro that handles all the structure splitting and math interpolation. The whole thing is dynamic, and will give correct coordinates no matter what aspect ratio you’re working on, making it ideal for triplehead setups.

    Download here and then place inside in ~yourhomefolder/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Quartz Composer/Clips on Leopard or ~/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches on Snow Leopard.

    Hope it’s useful to someone!

     
  2. Random text effect

    A QCtextsource for VDMX that wipes the text on and off the screen with random letters and symbols.

    Inspired by COD:Modern Warfare 2 and Alx Toneburst.

    Controls for duration, font size and font selection.


    goto10_randomtext_vdmx.qtz.zip

    As Hiltmeyer noted correctly in a comment elsewhere on this site, the spacing on the letters can be off a little bit. This has to do with the way QC breaks up the string into individual letters. I’m still looking into this, but in the meanwhile it works fine for ‘fixed-width’ fonts such as Courier, Andale Mono, Monaco and my personal tech favourite OCRA.

     
  3. ‘M8 Trace’ Quartz Composer effect

    Following up on a thread on the Vidvox user forums, this effect recreates the ‘trace’ look from Modul8. It’s Image Filter compliant, so it should work in all programs that support Quartz Composer Image Filters.

    It uses a Core Image kernel originally written by Memo Akten to apply a luma key.

    M8 Trace effect

    M8 Trace effect

    Controls for trail length, luma key threshold and luma key softness.

    goto10_m8trace.qtz.zip

     
  4. Countdown timer for After Effects

    A bit of an odd one out, but this was requested by one of my students a while back. It’s an effect preset that can be applied on any text layer in After Effects. It will change it into a countdown timer, that ticks off milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days and years dynamically as your composition progresses. You can select which time measurements to display, as well as the start time. Using keyframing you could even make the clock tick faster or slower!

    Anyway, I hope this is of use to someone…

    Download here

    How to use: Unzip and place in the After Effects -> Presets folder. Then start AE, create a text layer, and drag the preset onto it from the Effects and Presets window.

     
  5. RGB Channel offset qcFX for VDMX

    A simple Core Image kernel based effect, that allows for offsetting the R, G and B channels of an image on the x and y axis.

    Probably quite similar to Memo’s version from way back in the day, but I can’t seem to download that one ;-)

    Detailed Info:
    Controls:
    Pretty self explanatory: X and Y offset for each channel.

    Download:
    goto10_RGBChannelShift.qtz.zip

     
  6. 3D ribbon QC Patch

    A neverending ribbon twists its way through 3D space.

    3D Ribbon

    Based on the VertexNoise.qtz patch from the GLSL examples in the Dev Tools

    Mad props go to Mr Monkeypresso for the idea. And of course to Philip Rideout of 3d Labs, Inc who wrote the GLSL code.

    Contains GLSL code which is Copyright (c) 2005-2006: 3Dlabs, Inc.

    Detailed Info:
    Controls:
    Speed: make the ribbon go slower or faster
    Hue: change the colour on the fly

    Download:
    goto10_ribbon.qtz.zip

     
  7. 3D text source for VDMX

    This is a qcTextSource (place in qcTextSources folder) that applies the old After Effects trick of using lotsa copies of a layer on the z-axis to make it appear 3D.

    Detailed Info:
    Controls for:
    Text input
    Text color
    Font
    Font size
    Depth (high values might slow down your machine)
    X/Y controller for X/Y axis rotation

    Download:
    goto10_3dtext.qtz.zip

     
  8. Cheesy eighties tunnel qcFX for VDMX

    Takes the clip or image playing in a layer in VDMX and makes a neverending tunnel out of it. Also has an optional text input.

    Tested on VDMX 0.7.1.6, and Leopard only. Now also with functioning text controls in b0.7 and up. Thanks to Clouds11 for paying attention and providing the update!

    If you like this effect, please check out Alx Toneburst’s insanely smooth GLSL version, found on Memo’s VDMX site.

    Detailed Info:
    BackwardsForwards: Changes direction of the flythrough
    Speed: Changes the speed of the flythrough
    Text input: Type your message
    Text color: D’uh
    Text on/off: Also pretty self explanatory.

    Download:
    goto10_tunnel.qtz.zip

     
  9. Targeting crosshairs qcFX for VDMX

    A crosshairs appears over the video, and searches the screen. Pressing the button ‘locks’ the crosshairs in place. Works great with a live camera input from the crowd. Offers both mouse control and random mode.

    Detailed Info:
    Control_Switch: Switches movement control between random and VDMX input.
    Lock: ‘Locks’ the crosshairs in their current position. Colour will change from green to red. Text will start flashing.
    Size: Controls the size of the crosshairs.
    Speed: Controls the speed of the random movement (note: does nothing when in VDMX control)
    X/Y position: Allows for user input or syncing to VDMX data sources like mouse input (note: does nothing when in Random control)

    Download:
    goto10_target.qtz.zip

     
  10. Linear Value Translation qcClip

    This is a Quartz Composer Clip macro, that allows for a linear translation of a variable number. Basically you can use it to translate a number within a certain range (say [0,1]) to a new range (say [-1,1]). Fill in the old and new ranges, and attach the input. The patch will take care of the math for you.

    Place the .qtz file in ~yourhomefolder/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Quartz Composer/Clips. It should then be available from the patch creator window.

    Inputs:
    value – the value to be translated
    oldMin – the old minimum of the value (ie 0)
    oldMax – the old maximum of the value (ie 1)
    newMin – the new minimum of the value (ie -1)
    newMax – the new maximum of the value (ie 1)

    linear value translation.qtz