Software over the rainbow

An openFrameworks workgroup has started this week at Hangar. Every thursday until March, the wise Arturo will be there helping you with any doubt that you have. From 19 to 21 pm. +info

The equally talented Chris Sugrue will be doing the same in Madrid’s Medialab. Every friday from 19 to 21pm. +info

Last, and this has been going on for some months now, the incombustible Alba Corral has created an increasingly active spanish speaking processing community, with forum, wiki and more cool projects on the way.

Edit: I almost forget that there is also an introductory workshop to computer sound synthesis taught (with chuck) by Eduard Aylon. In a couple of weeks also in hangar.

As I said last week, I’m also using robert penner’s easing equations in openFrameworks, so I’ve ported them to c++.

This has been relatively straightforward, but, as with the actionscript to java conversion, I’ve run into some nuances between languages and I’ve definitely learned the hard way (read “wasting some hours of my life”) why pre and post increment operators can be evil.

Grab them here

For usage, you can have a look at the openFrameworks app provided. If you want to have a quick glance at the types of movement, see the easing applet (p5 version).

Being this a programming exercise, it will have improvable things for sure. I’m thinking of some, but if you know anything, please let me know.

This is an attempt at emulating a simple but beautiful piece that toshio iwai showed at the last ars electronica. Basically a video is divided into different portions and each of them is delayed by a certain amount of frames.

Thanks to the magic of openframeworks, it is realtime video.

More explanations, some code and a video coming soon.

Last week I went to a two-day openframeworks workshop run by Zach Lieberman at hangar.

As said here before (and elsewhere), openframeworks is an open-source library to help other artists and students produce works through coding, written in C++. Yes, this might sound familiar. Its philosophy and intentions are very similar to processing’s.

However, openframeworks is not an IDE, but a set of coherent wrappers around useful libraries. As zach puts it, it is more of a glue that puts together different pieces:

• OpenGL for graphics displaying,
• FreeImage for image manipulation,
• Freetype for font displaying and manipulation,
• rtAudio for audio.
• Quicktime (mac or pc), directShow (pc) and (soon) Video4Linux (linux) for video grabbing and playing

Some of the key concepts behind openframeworks:

• Its focus is to simplify things. The main intention is that “you don’t have to look at much code when you’re beginning” (which is far from easy in c++).
• It’s conformed of reusable pieces, not stitched together. You can use any of its parts independently.
• It pretends to give you direct access to data e.g: pixels of the image, low level audio

I’ve been using it for the last couple of months. I had never done anything with c++ nor I had any idea of where to start and openframeworks has definitely made the learning curve way smoother. Having been around for ages, c++ has lots of picky details to worry about (pointers vs variables, preprocessor, different compilers, uncompatible IDEs….) so having some sort of blueprint which shares some of the programming concepts with processing makes you feel a little more like at home.

Although it’s been used extensively to give workshops and classes, it’s in super-alpha state (even the installation process was being tested on our workshop). Zach is working with Theo Watson on a really-soon-to-publish release. Most of the stuff will work on win, mac and linux.

So stay tuned.

Zach Lieberman will be presenting (talking and performing) his work tomorrow at the University Pompeu Fabra. He will be talking, among other things, about openframeworks, his “open-source library to help other artists produce works through coding.” in c++, which I’m totally in love with.

Details:
–
ink & c++ for dinner
a performance and talk by zach lieberman
Friday 15th, 6pm

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Auditori Edifici França

Estació de França
Passeig de Circumval·lació, 8
08003 Barcelona
Bus: 14, 39, 51
Metro: L4 (Barceloneta)

Map

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See you there!