Quartz Composer
From nswccWiki
Tick-Tocs, until it stops
Quartz Composer(QC) can generally effectively replace and in some instances dramatically go beyond what Flash might provide. The QC tool set and sample compositions can be found in the XCode Tools folder after installation from the standard (Snow) Leopard install disc.
Using a relatively simple developer version of the demonstration Quartz Composer Clock applet, you can construct a Quicktime Movie from Quartz Composer that generates a clock display in a QT file less than 50 Kb.
What makes this interesting? Certainly, it's a Quicktime movie, but with embedded Quartz Composer functionality.
Each time you load it, you might expect that it would present the same dynamic clock image- say for 30 s, but you'd be wrong.
Using the QC plug-in loaded into Quicktime, the Clock "movie" can be used as a realtime clock and continuously run starting from NOW. It can be saved to run as a standard QT movie for say 15 s, or say 1 minute but when run as a loop using QC functionality can be made to display a realtime clock until it is closed.
The file can be embedded in a web page. Since this is derived from Quartz Composer, writing (or composing) it is a very different user experience from Flash- and I might add far less complicated, once you understand the programming (or composing) model.
Crystallising Quartz underground
Apple has built a graphical programming environment that transcends most modern paradigms. It has the potential to be "the next best thing". Quartz Composer is so good you could build a new "computing" platform paradigm based on it. No longer will you be limited to using a keyboard and mouse and screen or opening up applications to use. Information will arrive and be processed by detectors/processors.
If you thought Photoshop is good; if you thought Garageband is even better; if you thought Sketch-up is worth more than "free"; if you thought Scratch will turn you into a programmer then Quartz Composer is for you. Quartz Composer lets you build your own stunning stream processor, without writing one line of code!
The latest incarnation allows you to visually construct event based applications of truly astounding capabilities and play their results back through Quicktime Player. This visual language treats streaming video as if it was an object to be manipulated-in realtime! For example, you can feed an accelerometer reading (X,Y,Z) from a recent Mac laptop into a stream that alters the settings of a particular video effect and apply it to an iSight feed in real time. It uses the same kind of visualisation approach as virtual audio patching well known in electronic music composition and performance circles. Quartz Composer could be used for staging Son et Lumiere performances or indeed building information rich learning environments.
You can feed internet streams into the mix. For example, how would you like to display the activity of your friends in a 3-D space on your screen- eg. closer means more important messages, or play audio-visual summaries to alert you to new information available for you from particular people: sound familiar, it should be - it is an information appliance version of archaic "ring-tones". What about being able to literally grab different messages, or video mail from your 3-D space without opening an application. What about having the system monitor "interesting" sources of information, package them, and periodically produce summaries for you, including summarise music and video clip.
Another potential use is in developing simulations of physical phenomena. The latest version includes a "force patch". Patches are visual representations of behaviour to be applied to objects. They are information filters. The system model is remarkably faithful to the Input-Process(Filter)-Output model but at a conceptual level rather than concrete level. Most people have no idea what a Laplace Transformation is but they do know what the "Sharpen Edges" filter does (or can find out by applying it to an image) in Photoshop.
Where do you get it? Quartz Composer is free, and comes with every Mac OS X 10.4+ Installation Disc. It is quietly and actively under development, and is part of the XCode Developers tools on the disc. For more information Google "Quartz Composer".
Some Sources of Quartz Composer patches
- Kineme is a good source. it is actively being developed, and gives you some ideas of what QC is being used for.
- Quartz Composer user Guide from Apple. Download the PDF version (click the icon on top right of page). It will be easier to read off-line.
- Wikipedia Entry
- Some interesting QC tutorials
