« Game design as the new liberal arts | Main | Thoughts on Dashboard and ambient information »
April 30, 2005
Quartz Composer: visual programming environment in Tiger
If you’ve installed Tiger, be sure to install the “Developer Tools” that also come on the DVD. There’s an incredible piece of software on there, maybe one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, called “Quartz Composer.” It’s in the /Developer Tools/Applications/Graphics Tools folder. (Make sure you go look at the root of your hard drive, not in your usual Home folder.)
It’s meant, I think, as an example of new graphics technologies in Tiger. It combines a visual programming metaphor—a lot like sound synthesis programs—with a real-time visual renderer that you have to see to believe. You can get a sense of how incredible this thing is just by browsing the list of ways you can get information into it and the ways you can render that information visually: the “Controller” input category includes things like “keyboard” and “MIDI Controllers”, Audio Sources, and even Spotlight search results. The result of that input can be piped into 3D renderers, Javascript snippets, particle systems and other Open GL graphics stuff, some simple scripting commands like string manipulation functions, or you can just apply any of about 50 filters like color effects, blurs, or video compositing blends. I mean, my god, this thing could be a real-time media mixer performance tool, a toy for indulging info-porn data vis fantasies, or an audio processor.
I’m not sure how much documentation there is around it, but check out the Quartz Composer Programming Guide at apple.com.
(By the way, the “Core Image Funhouse” also in the Applications>Graphics Tools folder is a neat example application, too. On my Powerbook, most of the Photoshop-like effects it can demo (like Gaussian blurs) are wicked fast.
Posted by Andrew at April 30, 2005 10:33 PM