Arena/Avenue & Wire Integration

This article will explain how you can make Arena/Avenue and Wire play nice together.

Category

To make a patch show up in Arena/Avenue it has to be saved and it needs to have a category. The category can be set in the Patch panel to Source, Effect or Mixer. This way Arena/Avenue knows how to interpret the patch.

Node order

You can use the Input nodes to create interactive elements in Arena/Avenue like sliders and menu's. Make sure to rename your nodes by double clicking them (either on the node or in the dashboard). 

The interactive elements will correspond to the vertical order in the dashboard. The image below demonstrates two different node orders and their effect on the Arena interface.

Sliders

To make a slider appear in the Resolume interface you need to create either a Float or Integer input node. A min and a max value for these nodes can be set in the node panel.  It is possible to have a float in Wire without a min or a max, this can be set in the patch panel as well.

PRO TIP 1: You might find yourself in a situation where the input value is just a sweet spot. Maybe a value between 0.4 and 0.8. Instead of setting the min and max value of your float input to 0.4 and 0.8, leave it at 0 to 1 and add a Map node to that. The Map node will remap your 0 to 1 value to a 0.4 to 0.8 range. This keeps your interface nice and clean.

PRO TIP 2: If your sweetspot value is a negative value, you can either use the Negate node or the Map node to keep your interface clean and running from 0 to 1.

PRO TIP 3: If you want to reverse your input but still want to give the user a 0 to 1 experience, add the 1-X node. This will turn your 0 to 1 input into a 1 to 0 input with some clever math magic.

Suffixes

The unit of a slider can be set in the node panel. This can be usefull to indicate to the end-user that the slider is in pixels. Or maybe you need a percentage or degree slider.



Toggles

To create a toggle simply create a Bool In node. Remember that the state the boolean is in is saved as well. 

Trigger based toggles can be made by combining the Trigger In node with the Toggle node.


Menus and Selectors

The Int In node can be used to create buttons or drop-down menu's in the Arena/Avenue interface.

After you've created the Int In node, you can add your options under the options counts attribute in the node panel. These can be words, letters, numbers or cocktail recipes. 

The node will output an integer based on the selected option. By default the first option will output 0. This can be changed by changing the value of the selected option in the node panel.

In this same panel you will find the option to switch between signal, event or attribute flow as well as an option to select the options view. The options view is set to buttons by default but can be changed to dropdown if you need it.

Color selectors

To create a color selection in Resolume you can use the Color input node. This node will create the standard color selection menu in Resolume. There the user can use the color picker, RGB colors, HSB colors and palettes. 

Triggers

To create a trigger, simply create a trigger input node. That’s all, there is nothing more to it. Pew! Pew!



FFT

You can use the Spectrum input node to use the FFT information from Resolume in Wire. When using FFT you might want to explore the Falloff, Frequency to Pitch and Frequency to BPM nodes.

Midi and OSC

When you have your patch loaded in a host like Arena or Avenue, the Midi and OSC inputs and outputs you have in the patch will use the host and it's settings for communicating.

The disconnection rule

When you are using attribute flow in your patch it is possible that changing a certain value in Wire would break the connection. This is fine in Wire, but know that Arena/Avenue are not allowed to break connections as this would be perceived as buggy by the end-user of your patch.


For example: Changing the type of the Gradient node from Angular to Vertical would hide and disconnect the angle inlet. This is possible to do in Wire, but Arena/Avenue would ignore this command for stability sake.

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