Getting Started

Hi all, Rory is my name, and Im glad to have found such a great program!

I have been playing with some basic patches and I think im getting used to the way VVVV works. I have some Max MSP experience, and a small bit of Jitter so the concept is not entirely new to me, but I would really appreciate some direction…

Inspiring artists so far have been pretty much everyone in the ‘Galleria’ section of this site, who are doing some great work. Also Alex Rutterford’s creativity in Autechre’s Gantz Grafs really blew me away, and inspired me to explore the possibilities of ‘generative visuals’.

Besides the initial tutorials, are there any other sites/places/books that could help me get started? What are good aspects of VVVV to pay attention to?? I see alot of artists mention Vertx Shaders and things, but I would like to understand these more, to build an artistic vocabulary within VVVV.

Sorry if this post is in the incorrent forum, but it seemed like the busiest place, and as I am keen to get beginning, I could do with any advice you might have.

Thanks in advance,
Rory

try to understand the patches in the girlpower folder and don’t be shy to ask ANY questions here.

also lots of help is hidden deep in the depths of these forums and deep in the wiki. use the (hopefully working) search function to dig manifold informations.

Hi and welcome,

I’d recommand to learn each page of the manual sections slowly and carefully to be sure you understand everything in it. Take your time but it’s important to get everything.

The girlpower folder coming with the vvvv apps contains some really clever patches. Most of them aren’t documented, but that’s how it’s supposed to work. You mess with it until you understand the logic of the patch.

Another good way of learning is to select each unknow nodes and press f1 each time. And read carefully the help patches too.

Also check the users pages, patches, modules and shaders. Lots of good ressources.

One other important thing, is to have a goal to achieve before starting vvvv. If not you’ll do nothing just some random patching which can be good sometimes but can make you spends hours and finally not producing smth usefull.

And if you’re a freak like most of us you can read all post in vvvvorums, but it’s not the first place to start.

Cheers and whenever you’re stuck ask in the vvvvorums,
a.

Learning vvvv is an odd experience. It seemed to me like there were many layers of understanding before I felt like I really knew how to do things effectively, and I’m still learning every time I use it. Definitely at least skim over everything in the manual.

After reading the manual you might want to read over some more pages in detail, visit them often as you’ll probably learn new things every time that didn’t make any sense to you the first time around. Here are some I recommend.

The vvvv interface can be daunting at first, but you will learn to absolutely love it after you are experienced with it.

Read about the UI in detail and check out the GUI FAQ

and it doesn’t hurt to learn some keyboard shortcuts either.

I know the whole spread concept can be weird at first, it took me awhile to understand them, so read about spreads!!

I think the best advice I can give you though is to use the F1 key every single time you run across a node you don’t understand. Select the node, hit F1. There are help files for many of the nodes, and in my opinion that is the absolute best way to learn vvvv.

Good luck, and welcome!

thanks very much for the replies, and sorry for my late one !!! i have only recently got the chance to site down with VVVV.

do i say 4V? V4? or v-v-v-v? :)

anywho… i have a printed version of the manual here, and im going through it step by step, and will continue onto those provided links. thanks muchly, and have a good holiday!!

rory