previously on vvvv: vvvvhat happened in October 2018

dezember!

one week to go for the opening of We live in an Ocean of Air which you normally wouldn't have to care about but in this special case, how this connects to you through this blogpost is, that this is the first fully vl + Xenko project we've helped to realized. if you're in london between December 7th and January 20th, go see it, it is good, promised! if not, let's hope that everything goes well, because then the thing should go on tour and maybe come a bit closer to you.. here is a little teaser:

but that is not all:

• we also found time to prepare this update for vl's 2d drawing library Skia.
• and if you're into history, checkout our newly built roadmap.

next up: we're going to evaluate where we are with vl-standalone and xenko after this above mentioned project and we should have an update for you by the end of this year. and everybody yayy.

Jobs

looking for a job at where it all once started? here are two opportunities athttp://meso.design

• Senior vvvv developer for media software
• Senior vvvv patcher for creative coding and design

Contributions

one new: Opticalflow3d by timpernagel
one updated: VAudio by tonfilm

several works in progress announced:

a tease:
kinect-pipet-direct-mode depth-pipet

and something in chinese:
watch

Gallery

and remember you can always find much more fancy new stuff appearing on vimeo and sadly even here.

that was it for november. anything to add? please do so in the comments!

Hello,

welcome the first update to our beloved 2D graphics library.
Since this summer's release quite a few things have happened.
The main focus was on covering every single aspect of the Skia's Paint (defines how everything looks like when rendered) and cleaning it up.
We would say it is now complete.

We've also introduced some special gems like Masks, Precompositions, Ellipsis and some more examples.

Never heard of Skia before? Check Skia on Wikipedia.

Read on.

Masking

You already were able to clip layers by rectangles or paths (ClipRect, ClipPath), now you can use any layer as a mask (as you know it from Photoshop), be it an image or very complicated layer pipeline. Welcome the Mask. It comes in two flavors: one uses a layer as a mask, another one just an image. The node has useful helpers which allow you to see how the mask looks like and where it is applied.

Precomposing

While researching for the masks we've stumbled upon Skia's superpower: we call it precomposing. Layers can be precomposed (leaving canvas unchanged) and then applied (grouped) with other layers. It's like having an extra render pass that works like a layer.

So now you've got two options: you can blur every single particle alone (by setting SetMaskFilter > Blur) or prepare all of them (precompose) and then blur the whole scene at once (by setting SetImageFilter > Blur).

In the screeshot above:
Left - every single circle is blurred alone, the background comes into play.
Right - the whole precomposition is blurred.

Ellipsis

Then we have these boring Ellipsis nod... nodes. They clip your text (left, right or center) by the number of letters or the width in units. Like this:

Paint completeness & cleanup

We've cleaned up the Paint a lot and now you can set or get any of its properties. Don't forget to turn on the "Advanced" filter of the NodeBrowser (like in the screenshot or just press TAB-key) to get the full power. SetFakeBoldText anyone?

In the Paint category:

• Processnodes (having an icon with two dots) are for setting properties (they start with Set)
• nodes with an empty box are for getting properties
• Processnodes without Set (like Stroke, Fill or FontAndParagraph) are convenient nodes setting several properties at once.

Examples and Demos

Don't forget to check the /examples folder of the package (your-vvvv-folder/lib/packs/VL.Skia.xxxx/).
There are also some updates to the /examples/demos, like the Slideshow.vl which let's you click through your-very-big-images asynchronously preloading them in the background.

Some more features:

• ImageEncoder
• ImageWriter
• SubpixelText property is on by default
• Pipet (Experimental)

How to Install

1. Install the latest vvvv_50beta38.1 (older versions are not supported)
2. In vvvv, middleclick > Show VL
3. In VL, go to: Dependencies > Manage Nugets > Commandline and type:

Versions

• This latest version works best with beta38.1.
• Using beta38 or older? make sure to install an older skia version. Type 'nuget install VL.Skia -version 0.93.26-g6c67991fa4' to get a compatible version. You'll miss some of the advertised features though.

Surprise!

Another release just out of the gray only 2.5 months after the previous. How come?

The last beta37 release proofed to be quite stable, hardly any too concerning bug reports, but we have a breaking change to introduce and think this is a good moment. Hear us out:

If you're a vvvv-only user, you're safe. This release only has minor changes compared to beta37, so there shouldn't be any reason for you not to upgrade. Horray!

If you're also using VL, we're afraid, but swallow this:

Since there are hardly any other changes, we recommend you also switch as soon as possible and never look back...

So why the breaking change?

It's about how values get stored in IO boxes and pins. They now use the same serialization technique we already introduced as a node set for beta37. This means that we can store any data inside patches for which a serializer is registered - be it a spread of values, a dictionary or even a custom record:

And as a second example a dictionary from string to value

It might not look as much yet but it is a first step to get proper IO boxes back.

So apart from that another worth mentioning improvement is a new short cut called Ctrl+K which creates pins for the selected pads and puts them on the Create and Split operations of the containing patch

All other changes can be found the as usual in the Changelog.

Yours,
devvvvs.

helo patchers,

we call upon you in your role as artists! this is a bit short notice but should be an interesting opportunity for the both of us. check this:

now consider vvvv/vl/xenko as the tech project in the above equation and if you then find it to resolve to the variable x that is you, by all means please apply here.

the catch: deadline November 28th

so short notice, and quite a bit of a process to prepare your application (sorry for that but we also only found out about this recently) but the prospect is a bright one: come join us in playing with the future of visualprogramming and bring in your artistic vvvvisions.

but also check out all the other projects and spread this call!

good luck everyone!