New Software - Quartz Composer outline

One of the least well known, yet coolest programs available for the Mac is Quartz Composer. Part of the Mac OS X Developer Tools. All this power is harnessed using a mostly drag and drop interface, that follows the same linear motif as any other 'stage based' software.

PATCHES:
Quartz Composer provides patches that render to the screen, patches that work with values, and patches that pull in data from external sources. These patches can be formally defined as:

Consumer patches which render a result to the screen. Both the Gradient and Particle System patches in our example fall into this category. You can identify these kinds of patches by their magenta header.

Processor patches which process data at specific intervals or in response to changing input values. The Lenticular Halo patch in the example below provides an image to the Particle System to display. You can identify these kinds of patches by their green header.

Provider patches which supply data from an outside source. In our example, the Mouse patch provides the X and Y coordinates of the current mouse position to the composition. You can identify these patches by their light blue header.

At runtime, Quartz Composer executes the functionality in consumer patches first. Processor and provider patches are executed as consumer patches pull data from them. In our example above, each time Quartz Composer tells the Particle System patch to render to screen, the patch will obtain the X and Y mouse coordinates from it's connections to the Mouse patch. It will then get an image to display from the Lentincular Halo patch from its connection to it. For each frame, the process is repeated.

What can be achieved with practice!

ParticleTools Demo: Explosions and Time Freezing from Steve Mokris on Vimeo.

Reasoning for use of Quartz:
Kontakt are a label and active participants in the minimal techno scene that has inspired my desire to use quartz. They have highlighted that the results i desire can be achieved through this piece of software.

M-nus Contakt Berlin 2 (Oct 11, 2008) - Identified:Franziska from citrik on Vimeo.