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Who Telekom, FFV, wirmachenbunt
When Sat, Oct 17th 2020 - 10:00 until Sun, Nov 1st 2020 - 10:00
Where Magenta Moon, LEIPZIGER PLATZ 15, Berlin, Germany
What?
Check out the 360° Experience in Berlin Mitte. The event/exhibition is for families and kids. Book your ticket at https://www.magentamoon.de/
Covid-19
Questions regarding the covid-19 measures, see the website.
vvvv
The installation comes with 16 projectors, 9 radartouches to make a curved surface interactive, and surround sound. The project runs on DX11 beta but some essential parts are programmed with the latest and greatest in research, VL and gamma.
The long wait is over!
vvvv gamma 2020.3 public previews now include VL.Stride, the new 3d rendering library, based on the opensource Stride 3d engine. You be the judge, but spoiler: this is rather huge!
Massive thanks go out to all early accessors who helped us uncover and fix countless buggers that you no longer have to run into. So this is also on your behalf. You're welcome!
Status
All of the basics are now in place. Find your favorite among these:
- Primitives: Plane, Box, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Capsule, Donut and Teapot
- Instancing: Via spread of transforms, other entities or buffers
- Lights: Ambient, Directional, Point, Spot, Projector, Skybox
- Shadows: On by default, configurable in quality/resource-consumption
- Materials: Highly configurable PBR workflow through a large set of nodes, incl. easy normalmapping, displacements,...
- Textures: From file, video, Spout, Skia, HTML or renderer
- TextureFX: Basic selection available, more to come
- Texture Feedback: Yes please!
- Texture Readback: Absolutely, think pipet,...
- ShaderFX: Experimental nodes to patch shaders visually
- PostFX: Highly configurable via set of nodes, think: depth-of-field, bloom, ambient-occlusion, ...
- Dynamic Meshes: Generate meshes using vertex- and indexbuffers on CPU
- Shaders: Pixel, Vertex, Geometry, Compute. Write your own using full syntax highlighting in VisualStudio with hot-reload
- Assets from file: Load textures and models directly from file
- Assets from Stride Game Studio: Prepare assets and complete scenes in game studio
- Windowing: Easy handling of multiple windows (and cameras)
- Misc: Render Skia and HTML content directly onto the screen (ie. no texture-pass needed)
To give you an idea, here is a random collection of screenshots of what earlyaccessors have created with this already.
Still missing
To give you a heads-up, here are things you might expect already but are yet to come:
- Loading models does not bring all their materials and animations in yet. To get a models materials showing automatically, you need to load them as an AssetModel via an extra Stride project. Animations are not yet supported.
- Simple Text Rendering: for now best done via Skia or HTMLRenderers
- Physics nodes are available in the Experimental section, meaning you can use them but still we want to give them one more round of refinement
- VR support is still to come. Stride supports it, we just haven't exposed it yet properly
- Things you'd do with the most popular contributions InstanceNoodles, DX11.Particles and FieldTrip are still missing a corresponding functionality
And then some more, but the above should be the most obvious ones you'll stumble upon.
How to get started?
Open the Helpbrowser (F1) and check out the explanations, howtos and examples. Remember the preview status, ie. those are not yet in their best shape. But they should help you find your way.
And if you really got nothing better to do in the week of October 2nd to 8th, then consider joining us for NODE20 where we have the following series of workshops dedicated to getting you started with VL.Stride:
- Introduction to vvvv, VideoFX & Compositing by Maria Heine
- Realtime graphics with Stride 3D – The Fundamentals by joreg
- Patching Materials by robotanton
- Beyond Sound and Visual by dottore
- VL.Stride Deepdive by tonfilm
- A preview to ShaderFX by tonfilm
- Working with the Stride GameStudio by Marian Dziubiak
A tickets costs 50€ and gives you full access to all of the above and so many more workshops and their recordings.
Thanks
A couple of people believed in the development of VL.Stride from the beginning and substantially supported its development. We bow before you:
- Marshmellow Laser Feast
- schnellebuntebilder
- m box
- Refik Anadol
- Jarrad Hope
When Fri, Oct 2nd 2020 - 10:00 until Thu, Oct 8th 2020 - 17:00
Where online webinars, Germany
NODE20 is taking shape!
We have a fantastique list of workshops for you, ranging from beginner to pro, from user to contributor. Here is a convenient overview of all the online workshops you can participate in during the week from October 2nd to 8th. A ticket is only 50€ and gives you full access to the festival and workshops plus recordings to rewatch them.
Hope to see you all in cyberspace!
Saturday
Introduction to vvvv: For DesignersThe "getting started" for people who are not necessarily familiar with vvvv beta or other creative coding environments. Here we take you by the hand and start from scratch so from here on you can follow other workshops. Generative Design AlgorithmsIn this workshop, we will be practicing the commonly known aspects of generative design algorithms. Despite the wide range of the term, we will introduce you to the fundamentals as well as simple tips and tricks. |
Introduction to vvvv: For CodersThe "getting started" for people who have a background in programming languages like java, csharp, c++, javascript,... Here we show you how you can combine your knowledge with visual live-programming in vvvv. Create a Learning Game for Your KidsWhile designing a learning app for kids, you will learn object-oriented patching patterns along the way. We will go from 0 to exe in 3 hours. |
Sunday
Introduction to vvvv, VideoFX & CompositingGet a short introduction to vvvv and learn how to use chains of visual effects to get from zero to wow within minutes – Real-time graphics for beginners. Building UI's with VL.ElementaIn this introductory workshop, we’ll explore the functionalities and widgets you can find in the VL.Elementa library to effortlessly build wonderful graphical user interfaces. |
Using .NET NuGetsIn this workshop, we’ll show you how easy it is to use any .NET nuget with vvvv and how to navigate common issues that you may encounter doing so. Procedural Graphics with Field TripIn this workshop, we will be learning how to constantly produce procedural graphics using the FieldTrip pack. |
Monday
VVVVj starter packThis workshop will cover the basics of VJing using vvvv. You'll be provided with an initial VJing setup with generative examples, postFX and a composition system, which you can then customize. Realtime graphics with Stride 3Dvvvv has just adopted the powerful realtime 3D graphics engine Stride 3D. In this workshop, we are looking at its basic concepts and learn to set up a scene with geometries, lights and material. Remote CocreationCreative Coding is about finding inspiration in the process of work. Add a few friends to this process and it is going to be even more inspiring! This workshop gathers participants from all over the world to work together on one patch. |
Having a Field DayFieldTrip is a vvvv beta pack for working with 2D and 3D scalar and vector fields. Think generative patterns, agents, procedural noise and 3D graphics beyond the triangle. Building Systems with VLIn this workshop, we'll zoom out and try to gather a birds-eye view onto systems built with VL. We'll explore some of the underlying ideas that helped shaping the patches of some VL libraries or projects. DevOps vvvv – Installation Infrastructure MaintenanceMaintaining installations with a lot of vvvv clients. Deploying, updating, synchronizing, monitoring, infrastructures based on vvvv and third party tools using vvvv and third party tools. |
Tuesday
Audible DataEveryone can make numbers look interesting – but let’s learn how to make them sound vvvvonderful! Beyond Sound and VisualThis workshop is for artists, musicians, creative coders, professionals, students, designers, and whoever is interested in creating audio-visual content using vvvv. Networking ProtocolsThis workshop is for everybody who needs a kickstart on the topic of networking in general, how the different protocols (UDP, TCP, MQTT, OSC, ZMQ,..) can be used in vvvv and what properties they have, so you can decide which one fits best for your use case. |
Turning a .NET library into a VL libraryIn this workshop, we'll guide you through the whole process of turning a .NET class library into an easy-to-use node library for VL. Making of SchémaSchéma is a visual programming environment created in... a visual programming environment, namely vvvv gamma. Curious about building something of this scale in VL, then join this lecture! Introduction to Reactive PatchingIn this workshop, we introduce the basic concepts of reactive programming that will make you understand how to work with Observables, react to events, and run computations in a background thread. |
Wednesday
Introduction to Computer VisionIn this workshop, we will start with a general overview of the functionality provided by VL.OpenCV to then dive in a hands-on session where we will experiment with some of the more accessible and exciting features that this library ships with. Patching MaterialsMaterials define the appearance of 3D model surfaces and how they react to light. They can affect both the geometry of a model and its colors and multiple material layers can be combined to build more complex materials. In this workshop, we're going to explore the node-set that allows us to patch custom materials. Machine Learning with RunwayMLIn this workshop, we'll get familiar with RunwayML, a tool dedicated to artists willing to use machine learning models in their workflow. Using the vvvv implementation, VL.RunwayML, we'll see how easy it is to integrate an existing model in our patches. |
The Stride Game StudioStride is an open-source C# game engine for realistic rendering and VR. But how to get started? In this workshop we'll go through the basics of getting Stride, managing projects, importing assets and creating and controlling entities in a scene. Object Oriented PatchingVisualprogramming is often equivalent to dataflow programming. With VL though, you can also use metaphors known from object-oriented programming. This means that with VL you can define your own datatypes, instantiate them, manage them in collections and call individual operations on instances. A preview to ShaderFXVisual shader patching? Yes, please! These days, all major game engines have node-based material and/or visual effects editors. And their common purpose is to provide a way to work creatively with CPU and GPU data. The experimental ShaderFX in VL.Stride generalizes this approach and takes it one step further. You work with CPU & GPU data and operations on the same canvas, at runtime – vvvv style. |
Thursday
The vvvv APIIn this workshop, we will be diving into the VL runtime API. We'll touch general library design philosophies, like offering descriptive high-level process nodes that are easy to play with and talk about enhancing the patching experience for users of our library. Let's interact with electronics, wirelessly using ESP8266/ESP32This workshop is for anyone without any experience in electronics/hardware, it's intended as a first contact between code <-> electronics, but with one of the most used and powerful and inexpensive micro controllers. |
The State of Machine LearningThis talk looks back over a few years of swimming against the tide of Python to make machine learning a technology easy to use with vvvv. You'll see that, by getting your head around a few important principles, running models in vvvv can be pretty straight forward. VL.Stride DeepdiveOne major strength of VL.Stride is that it offers an easy to use scene graph and at the same time lets you go as far down to the graphics API as you want. This workshop will approach 3d rendering from these two opposite ends and you'll learn how to combine them. |
Hello everyone!
Here is the second big release this year for vvvv gamma! Available for download and purchase. Now!
It comes with improvements that strengthen the toolkit character of vvvv gamma and VL, which are outlined over here: vvvv-the-tool.
It also comes with small improvements for object-oriented programming patterns by introducing the This node. Many of those changes were motivated to be able to roll out a certain library. So this is the last version without that exact library.
For the full list of changes, see the The Log of Changes.
Updating libraries
This release introduces a breaking change for certain NuGet packages! If you use any of the following packages then you'll have to make sure to use the latest available version:
- VL.OpenCV
- VL.Devices.Kinect2
- VL.Devices.AzureKinect
- VL.Devices.AzureKinect.Body
- VL.Devices.Nuitrack
- VL.Devices.RealSense
- VL.MediaFoundation
- VL.Elementa -pre
- VL.Audio -pre
- VL.IO.OSC -pre
- VL.RunwayML -pre
So when updating to 2020.2.x you need to update to the latest version of these libraries. See Manage Nugets on how to do so via command-line.
Running 2020.1.x on the same machine
If, after running 2020.2.x and updating the above libraries you want to run 2020.1.x again, you'll have to make sure to first remove the new packs that are only working for 2020.2.x.
To do so, you'd go to your
AppData\Local\vvvv\gamma\nugets
and either delete packs selectively or simply clean the whole directory and re-install NuGets as you need them.
Info for library developers
This breaking change only affects your library if it is using a CSharp-project that is referencing VL.Core! In this case, all you have to do is to update VL.Core to 2020.2.x.
Then please communicate which version of your library is compatible with which version of vvvv.
Sorry for the inconvenience, we hope to make it up soon, by sharing a certain library...
Happy patching & see you soon,
yours devvvvs!
bonjourbonjour,
Following tests from a few months ago regarding publishing your shiny VL nugets with Github Actions, we now have a dedicated action ready to be used!
Nuget what?
For more informations on nugets, please refer to this section of the Gray Book.
Github what?
Github actions are small scripts with a specific purpose, allowing you to automate tasks on your repos. They are actually the building blocks of what's called a workflow : you chain several actions one after the other in your own small script, and decide under which condition the workflow is triggered (a new commit on master, a new tag, etc).
There are already tons of actions allowing you to do all sorts of things from creating issues to running unit tests, and even make phone calls with a predefined text!
The PublishVLNuget action
This action allows you to easily do the following tasks :
- Build your Visual Studio solution, if your plugin has one
- Download a package icon from an external url if you don't want to commit it to your repos every time
- Pack your nuget either using a nuspec or a csproj file
- Publish it to nuget.org (or any other feed)
In other words, you just have to push your code/patches and nuspec to github, and the script takes care of bringing it to nuget.org for you.
You can find the list of input parameters the action expects here.
How do I setup a workflow?
To get started with workflows, head over to the Github documentation.
Use cases
The action can adapt to many different scenarios. Let's cover three cases so you get an idea of how the action works, and how to adapt it to your needs.
My plugin does not have a visual studio solution
So your plugin solely consists of one (or many) VL documents and some help patches, plus your nuspec file that describes how your package will be structured.
(...) - name: Publish VL Nuget uses: vvvv/PublishVLNuget@1.0.28 with: nuspec: deployment/VL.MyPlugin.nuspec nuget-key: ${{ secrets.NUGET_KEY }}
Here, we are just using the nuspec and nuget-key inputs of the action.
My project has a Visual Studio solution and no nuspec file
Your csproj file can also describe how your nuget will be packed. In that case, simply omit the nuspec input. Note that if you provide a nuspec file anyway, it will take priority over your csproj.
I want to push to another nuget feed
By default, the action will push your package to nuget.org. You can simply use the nuget-feed input to push to a different feed.
Regarding external icons
I want to use an external icon, and my plugin has a nuspec file
The icon must be downloaded to an existing folder in your repo. We suggest you simply download it to its root :
(...) - name: Publish VL Nuget uses: vvvv/PublishVLNuget@1.0.28 with: (...) icon-src: https://wwww.url.to/nugeticon.png icon-dst: ./nugeticon.png
Here, we ask the Github Action to download the icon from our URL and place it at the root of the repo.
Then, in the file section, your nuspec file must reference it from where the action will download it (src attribute) and place it wherever you like (target attribute), making sure target matches where the metadata section expects it.
(...) <metadata> (...) <icon>icon\nugeticon.png</icon> </metadata> <files> (...) <file src="..\nugeticon.png" target="icon\"> </files> (...)
I want to use an external icon and my plugin does not have a nuspec file
You can setup an icon for your project inside Visual Studio. The tricky part here is that you'll have to specify a path to a file that does not exist yet, since the Action will take care of downloading it later on. This can feel weird since Visual Studio's UI gives your a Browse button for you to pick a file. Simply fill the path manually to match the icon-src property of your workflow file.
For instance, your workflow file would look like this:
(...) - name: Publish VL Nuget uses: vvvv/PublishVLNuget@1.0.28 with: csproj: src\Whatever\Whatever.csproj icon-src: https://wwww.url.to/nugeticon.png icon-dst: ./deployment/nugeticon.png nuget-key: ${{ secrets.NUGET_KEY }}
and your VS package settings :
Thanks for reading, hope you'll enjoy using this one! If you are stuck or want more precision, don't hesitate to shout in the comments or in the forums.
Cheeeerz
Hello everyone,
Introduction
I'd like to give you an update on the toolkit front, that vvvv has always been. While vvvv beta can be described as a dynamic system, mutating while you mold your patches, vvvv gamma and its workhorse VL are of a different kind. With VL we embraced features like
- static typing with its ability to detect errors early,
- .Net DLL import opening a universe of possibilities,
- user-defined data types that interplay with those defined by others,
- compilation with its ability to export an app as an executable...
In short, we embraced robust software developing strategies that at first seem to contradict the idea of a playful development toolkit that allows you to mold your app. We went for compiled patches, running, and hot-swapping them while you are building them.
But we envisioned vvvv to be both
- the playful toolkit you fell in love with
- combined with the promises of a compiled language
While my last blog post was about the language, let's focus on the toolkit this time.
Toolkit
Let's have a look at some features that allow you to interact with the VL runtime, the system that runs your patch while it allows you to edit it. The features here empower you to enrich the patching experience. We understand that these improvements need to "trickle up" into the libraries and only thereafter will have an effect for all users.
So the following is probably mostly interesting for advanced user and library developers.
Tracking Selection within the Patch Editor
You now can react to a selection within the patch editor. The more libraries do this the more playful the environment gets. We still have to figure out all the use cases, but here is a list of what's possible already
- separate the core functionality from its Editor UI. Imagine a TimeLine node that is decoupled from the timeline editor.
- an Inspector for nodes or pads
- a Preview like this:
- even the help browser itself uses the feature to provide help for the selected node.
And there is more:
You can get a Live Element for a certain Pin or Pad.
- Copy the permanent identity of the element into the clipboard by CTRL-SHIFT-I (I stands for Identity).
- GetLiveDataHubForSerializedID hands you the pin or pad.
useful for the cases where you want to always inspect a specific pin or pad of some patch. This can be helpful for debugging.
Let the Patch Editor navigate to a Patch
When a Skia Renderer is your active window, Ctrl-^ let's you jump to the patch in which it is used. This is handy when you opened a bunch of help patches and you want to see the help patch that is responsible for the output.
You can use the node ShowPatchOfNode to do the same trick.
Tooltips for your own data type
Here you can see a custom tooltip for a user patched type "Person".
You now can patch your own tooltip with RegisterViewer. This way the patching experience will be so much more fun. We're in the process of adding more and more viewers for our types.
Runtime Warnings
Up to now, we had
- Red elements: Static errors. (E.g. a node that can't be found) These errors make the compiler ignore certain parts in your program as they are currently in development. The rest still runs. (Something what C# and others just can't)
- Orange socks on links: Static warnings, potential problems. Something to look at when searching for a bug.
- Pink nodes: Runtime Errors. A problem that only got detected during runtime and which is such a big problem suddenly that the system can't work as planned. Some patches don't run as planned. There are different ways how to handle these, pointing you at problems at runtime, but they can be painful.
And now we introduce to you:
- Orange nodes, Runtime Warnings: They show you a problem at runtime. But it doesn't harm your system as pink nodes do. Orange nodes are runtime warnings. Library developers can put warnings on their nodes in order to communicate to the user that something is slightly off.
You can try it yourself by using the Warn or the Warn (Reactive) node.
The warning will not only show up on the Warn node, but also on the applications of your patch.
S&R nodes
Sometimes it's just convenient to be able to send data from one patch to another without the need of feeding the data via pins. We now have send and receive nodes, like known from beta.
Features:
- The channel can be anything. It doesn't have to be a string.
- They have several warnings. E.g. for when none or many senders are on a channel that a receiver is listening to.
Descriptive Tree patching
Some libraries focus on a simple idea:
Let the user build an object graph that describes what he wants in a declarative manner and the library will do the hard work to follow that description.
Examples for this approach are
- VL.Stride
- VL.Elementa
- to some extend VL.Skia
VL.Stride and VL.Elementa have in common that they focus on a very certain type of object graph: A tree made out of entities and components.
Libraries like these can now talk to the user and enforce the user to not build any kind of graph, but a tree-shaped graph (where one child doesn't have many parents).
VL.Stride uses TreeNodeParentManagers, Warn nodes and S&R nodes internally to the deliver this feature:
You'll very soon be able to inspect those patches.
Help patches to all those topics will show up in the CoreLib API section (at the bottom of the listing).
We hope you'll enjoy these ways of integrating with the development env.
Thank you and we'll see you soon!
yours devvvvs
Helo evvvveryone!
Are you teaching or studying vvvv in an educational institution? Want to join NODE20 with a group of students? Please get in touch, we want to offer you a discount!
- Email edu@vvvv.org
- Tell us about your institution and how many students want to join
- We'll get back to you with an offer
NODE20 features 25+ online vvvv workshops on various topics covering the needs of beginners and advanced users. This means the week of October 2nd to 8th will be a very good moment to divvvve deep. Besides, there'll also be a rather fine conference program you'll not want to miss.
vvvv in education
You may say we're biased, but we believe that vvvv is one of the more suitable ways to get people in touch with topics like creative coding, generative design, computer graphics, interaction design, data visualization, computer vision, physical computing, machine learning and similar. This is even more true for the all-new vvvv gamma. Why? Here is a list of pros and cons with a focus on use in education:
Pros
- It is free for non-commercial/educational use without any restrictions or registration
- It is quick and easy to install
- Its visual live-programming approach allows you to get to results and iterate quickly
- It comes with a HelpBrowser that makes it easy to find tutorials and documentation on various topics
- It is easily extendable with custom nodes by writing standard C# code or using almost any .NET nuget
- All of its libraries are open-source, meaning they can be explored, learned from and extended
- It uses industrie standard programming concepts known from object-oriented programming that once understood, can also be applied in other programming languages
- The core developers and fine community of users offer direct help support via chat and the forum basically 24/7/365
Cons (status fall 2020)
- It runs on Windows only
- It cannot export to mobile, the web or microcontrollers
Have more? Let us know in the comments.
Hope to see you at NODE!
Did you ever wonder what the first things were, that the cool kids in the VL.Stride EarlyAccess program created with the new 3d rendering engine for vvvv gamma?
It's been only a few weeks, but stunning pixel combinations got posted into our early access chat room.
And we collected them in a gallery for you:
A big THANK YOU to everyone involved!
We can't wait to see what you will create with it. And don't miss the workshops at NODE20 if you want to learn how to use it.
We are looking forward to the public release as much as you do,
yours devvvvs
Who Takuma Nakata
When Mon, Sep 28th 2020 - 17:00 until Wed, Sep 30th 2020 - 20:00
Where Gray Area Online, United States
In this two-day workshop, learn to create generative graphics using node based programming language called vvvv. During this session you will learn to build an immersive visual system, by applying various visual effects on a 3D animated character exported using Adobe Mixamo. This session will be a practical introduction to vvvv, with focus on 3D graphics and using data. For those who are interested in creating immersive visuals through code with the flexibility of creating interactive, physical experiences, this workshop is the perfect place to start.
Workshop Logistics Dates:
Monday September 28 &
Wednesday September 30
Times: 5 – 8pm PST
Cost: $120 Experience
Level: Beginner to Intermediate.
Requirements:
• Windows PC with a microphone input and a mouse (both necessary for this workshop)
• Install vvvv beta 64bit version.
Workshop Outline • Introduction to vvvv
• Installation vvvv and packs
• Importing Animated 3D character
• Tweaking vertices
• Making it audio reactive
• Learning DX11 Particle Packs
• Applying particle effects to the character
• Introducing https://visualprogramming.net/
Online Workshop This 6 hours online workshop will be held as two 3 hours workshop over two days via video webinar. We will have an online community chat to share your questions during and beyond the workshop. Please contact us if you have any additional questions at creativedev@grayarea.org.
https://grayarea.org/workshop/generative-graphics-workshop-with-vvvv/
This NODE's extensive workshop program will be held as interactive online webinars. In addition we will also live stream all sessions for the worldwide community.
You can now join the NODE team on-site in Frankfurt (Germany) for the duration of the festival week. We are looking for committed people who want to get involved in our braodcasting studios for webinars.
For full details and how to apply, please see the Call for Tech Support.
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