first let me say QC is awesome and as a long time Pixelshox user I've
been waiting for this for a long time.
I'm trying to build a fullscreen audio spectrum analyzer as a simple
task to learn quartz composer but I'm running into
several issues compared to the way I would do it in Pixelshox.
the debug node that was in pixelshox is gone? is there another way
of monitoring the values of several
nodes at once? you can hover over a input to get it displayed in
realtime but not several nodes
at once, any solution?
also to my dismay, many of the controller nodes like delay, memory,
differential are gone now? I guess you can emulate them with
javascript and plugging the output into the input of the javascript
node but I'm wary of a performance hit with running millions of
different javascript nodes. Maybe I'm missing something, I would
like to store past values with a delay is there any way with the
current patches that are in QC?
I have found some time saving stuff in the editor window that is not
obvious so I'll pass it on:
you can drag and drop images and quicktimes into the editor window to
create nodes, very cool
double clicking on the little circle of a patches input value lets
you edit the value without going through the inspector
if you double click on a input value that takes a filepath field you
can drag a folder or image etc straight into the field, excellent!
it would be even cooler if you could drag a folder into the editor
window and have that appear as an "folder images" patch. Also could
"folder images" be extended to allow quicktimes as well as images?
(or maybe this should be a seperate node?)
the third party site for sharing qc patches is a great idea and I'd
be happy to submit some of mine when they're done. also a forum,
faqs, tutorials etc would be very handy.
ok so now my wishlist (don't worry I will log these through
bugreport.apple.com as well but I just want to put them on here to
get some discussion).
double clicking on a patches input value name (as opposed to the
circle) should open the inspector window with that value highlighted
for editing
the handling of quicktimes and images is inconsistent and confusing.
quicktimes are loaded with a path in an input value field while the
"image importer" patch has no input field, it's a "setting" instead?
the "image downloader" takes a URL and not a path so you can't drag
and drop an image into the input field. it's just a bit odd, I would
have thought these would be handled the same?
ability to send midi controller and midi note values as well as
recieve (like pixelshox had).
public API for third party QC patches
I know QC is supposed to be a showcase for "core" technology but I
really miss the "non core" filters that are in Pixelshox:
evolution, mosaic, radial blur, progressive blur, pixelate. some of
them have a core image equivalent but not evolution I think and there
should be a non core version for people with older graphics cards.
the core image versions are much slower than the versions that were
in pixelshox on a card where core image falls back to software. eg
using a simple "color invert" operation drops the frame rate from 60
to 10 fps when playing one quicktime movie on a machine with a Radeon
7000. that's kind of silly.
also the obj importer and object modifiers (ripple, liquify, explode,
fragments) were some of my favourites from Pixelshox and I miss them!
here is my list of "missing nodes" that Pixelshox has and QC doesn't
and yes I'll be filing this as a bug report as well....
video renderers
cubic environment mapping
object cel shading renderer
object renderer
vortex
