Occasionally, a certain project will catch your eye. When you start watching and listening, you find yourself drifting away for a few minutes. The acoustic and the optic will blend together to one beautiful harmony.

Such a project is Intermittently Intertwined by Bob White. Take a moment out of your day, and watch this in HD with some good speakers.

[youtubeshort]http://youtu.be/acqIfU-UsaI[/youtubeshort]

We were even more amazed when we found out that the video above is actually created in realtime. It's not often someone is equally talented at music, motion design as well as coding. So we had to find out more about the project.

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Bob explains:

The basic rig is:
Ableton > Network Midi > ofApp > Syphon > Resolume > Avermedia GameHD

In Maya I make a series of quick geometric loft animations and export these as alembic files (.abc). Alembic files are point cache animation files that are typically used to transfer dynamic simulations from say Houdini to Maya. Because I wanted the geometric element to "grow", alembic is a good vehicle as I'm animating vertices.

The brilliant ofxalembic addon loads alembic files as meshes in OpenFrameworks. Because my geometry is fairly low poly count, I can run a lot of them at the same time triggered by Midi notes. Surprisingly even with a lot of polys, playback of abc files is very fast.

My ofApp is very much a work in progress and the code is sketchy at best. The app has ~25 slots for abc files per scene. Additionally, I setup 6 scenes that can be switched with OSC messages. Each abc file can be triggered by an incoming Midi note and there are controls to randomize the playing of single abc files (single actions) or triggering sections of an abc file in sequence (sequence of actions).

I recorded a song I wrote in Ableton and setup a number of Network Midi tracks to send data to my ofApp. I then paint notes that drive the animation. The network midi sends trigger data directly to ofApp. Additionally I send minimal OSC messages to change scenes in my app.



I love the Resolume M4L devices and I would use them, but because I've finalised the song mix in the session view I used the showsync.info M4L devices to convert midi notes to OSC. The OSC changes scenes, clears the screen, and moves the camera. Alternatively, if I were working in the session view, perhaps looping or performing live, I would use the Resolume M4L on clip launch to send OSC.

The ofApp has Syphon enabled so I can display it in Resolume. I have some effects on it like Mirror and Edge Detection to sweeten it up. Like I said, next i would love to explore Ableton control more of the params in Resolume. I would also love to make put this whole app in a FFGL plugin that way I wouldn't have to rely on Syphon. So much to learn :)

Alone the animation is kinda static if it were not for the mirror effect. It's refreshing to be able to easily change the character of the animation using Resolume in real time. Having the ability to "paint" the animation, see the layered effects in real time, I think allows for a more immediate process. For me it's important to be able to work fast so not to get caught up in minutia.

Check out more of Bob's work at http://www.bobwhitemedia.com

Do you like stringing apps together like they are sneakers? Do you like the wonderful Syphon framework, but don’t have a Mac?

Then rejoice. Thanks to the efforts of Lynn and Robert Jarvis, there is now an easy way of doing exactly that.

It's called Spout.

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For Resolume users, the system works by installing two FFGL plugins and a utility app. You can then play the output of any Spout enabled application like a camera in Resolume. This means you can use all the effects in Resolume on your generative visuals made in Processing or VVVV. You can also map your projection easily, without having to write your own projection mapping tool while you're at it.

The other way also works. You can apply the Spout effect anywhere in Resolume to send the output to another Spout Receiver.

The real beauty of the framework is that its well documented and easy to use. Setting up takes less than a minute. Using it is a matter of filling out the correct sender and receiver names. This really makes Spout worth its weight in gold ( “But it’s software, so it really doesn’t really weigh anything. That analogy doesn’t make any sense.” “Shut up inner voice! I do what I want! ”)

Supported apps include Processing, VVVV, Jitter and VIZZable. Example code is available for openFrameworks and Cinder. Support in Isadora and Touch Designer is rumoured to be on the way.

Head over to http://spout.zeal.co/ to read more, ask questions on their forum and of course download. But not before you’ve pressed that Donate button, because quality work like this deserves your support.

Now let's make some awesome things happen.

It's been a while since we had some news from the FFGL kitchen, but we're pleased to say there's been some good cooking going on!

First off, we would like to introduce you to Marc Wren. Marc is a developer who's apparently been having openFrameworks sandwiches with some FFGL on top for lunch, and we were very excited when he wrote us about his latest project called sfFreeFrame:

It's a collection of FreeFrame plugins and I'm hoping these plugins will be useful both to people looking for additional elements to use in their performances and for people trying to get into visual programing (the project is open source).

So aside from getting to play with your food, you can also get the ingredients to do some creative coding yourself. This is the kind of thing that warms our geeky hearts and there's nothing more we could add to that, except check out the demo videos and then head over to the sourceforge page to download, where you can also find installation instructions. After installation, these tasty new toys will be available from the sources tab.



My current favourite is sfSpiderPoints. Which one is yours?

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And then to top it all off, gpvillamil points us to a new source of FFGL goodness. The folks from 1210 Visuals pop up out of nowhere, and drop four FFGL bombs on your plate. For starters, there's two full fledged effects, including a very *very* handy separate clip properties plugin. And if you really can't get enough there's already two effects in beta, including a very tasty RGB delay plugin.



Head on over to the 1210Visuals website, download, follow the install instructions and be amazed. Of course don't forget to donate. Also be sure to use the handy feature to be notified by email when new plugs come out.

Bon apetit! Now taking votes for your favourite dish!

Because we love you all so much we want to give you all a nice Christmas present again. This year it's a FFGL Fireworks plugin made by our programmer Daniel Berio. Not only do you get a nice display of fireworks from this plugin but we decided to program it using our FreeFrame openFrameworks wrapper and release the source code as well. We hope this will inspire some of you to learn FFGL programming during those long dark December nights.

Merry Christmas and a Happy 20!!

The Resolume Team
Edwin & Bart & Dani & Tim & Joris

Download Windows
http://www.resolume.com/download/FFGL_Fireworks_Windows.zip

Download Mac OS X
http://www.resolume.com/download/FFGL_Fireworks_Mac_OS_X.zip

Source code
http://code.google.com/p/ofxffglplugin/source/browse/#svn/trunk/apps/addonsExamples/ffglPartycles/src