vvvv - a multipurpose toolkit

dujoducom's picture
Posted September 8th, 2008 by dujoducom
in

Introduction
I tried to host this session last year but had some issues that prevented me from attending.

Description
on the official website, vvvv is described as:

"a toolkit for real time video synthesis. It is designed to facilitate the handling of large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact with many users simultaneously."

I would hope to do some demonstrations on physical interfaces (sliders/knobs/motion sensor), motion tracking, marker tracking, real time motion graphics, wii-mote connectivity, as well as a basic feature overview and introduction to its visual programming paradigm (similar to GEM, pure data, max/msp, etc). You can also do a lot of fun stuff with a webcam, so I'll probably bring one of those too.

(optional) Requirements
If you want to play along, head over to http://vvvv.org and grab the latest version from the download section (vvvv_40beta18) at the moment. vvvv is free for non-commercial use. Unfortunately because of its intimate relationship with directx there is not a mac version- you'll have to boot into windows. You will also need a version of DirectX more recent than August of 06. Grab the most recent version here:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=2#

Bring a webcam for extra fun, I will probably have a webcam and high-end firewire camera.

Extended Fun
I could play with vvvv for hours. If anyone likes the demo and wants to mess around later in the evening I'd probably be down for that. Maybe we could even create some sort of installation to help document barcamp? We could make a time-lapse video recorder, a snapshot taker that uploads images to the website, a drawing application similar to laser tag. Lots of possibilities. If there is going to be some sort of mashup perhaps we could create a vvvv interface for it.

Some Random Pictures

Lead Presenter: 
dujoducom
Prefered Session Time: 
Saturday - Afternoon (2-5)
Saturday - Evening (5-10)
Saturday - Night (10-2)

Just for the record

On October 3rd, 2008 crudoliffic says:

vvvv is really a very amusing language? toy? contraption?

I'm really not sure what to call it, but for those who haven't seen this, I'd recommend you take a glance at it.

Second Try

raster's picture
On September 9th, 2008 raster says:

I'm glad you didn't just let this one go, and decided to try to present again, as it looks really interesting. (Still no Mac version though... :( )

hmmm

dujoducom's picture
On September 11th, 2008 dujoducom says:

I thought I replied to this, but maybe I just previewed. Either way, I'm excited about presenting it, because I really wanted to do it last year! It's true that there is no mac version and unfortunately there probably won't be one until someone ports all the directx, directsound, directshow, etc.. objects to mac compatible equivalents... or until apple implements directx into their OS. Thankfully you can use bootcamp if you have an intel based mac and a directx capable video card (pretty sure macbook pros do, probably macbooks as well).

I think next year (or next barcamp that I can bike to anyway) I will try to do a presentation on openFrameworks, which is a c++ framework that can accomplish some of the same tasks as vvvv. It does require a little more of a programming background though, where with vvvv you don't really need to know much at all about programming, and in some cases thinking in a linear sense can hold you back!

I think I rambled a little longer in my original comment, but that is basically what I said.

Still no mac

dujoducom's picture
On September 9th, 2008 dujoducom says:

Yes, I really wanted to do it last year! There is no mac version, but if you have bootcamp and a directx capable video card (The intel macbook pros do?) then you should be fine. There will probably never be a mac version unless apple implements directx, or someone writes equivalent nodes to all the directx based ones (3d stuff, video stuff, sound stuff... pretty much everything).

I MIGHT be able to host another session about openFrameworks (http://www.openframeworks.cc/) which is a cross platform (mac/windows/linux) c++ library capable of similar things with a more traditional approach to programming (ie: not visual/node based). Setting up the development environment would be almost an entire session in itself though. Maybe I'll plan on it for next year with more time to prepare.

Another fun session might be processing (http://processing.org) which has some similarities as well. I would probably need to beef up my skills here though as I haven't used it in awhile.

Neither of the above capture the simplicity of experimentation & creation of vvvv though. Hopefully there will be enough bootcampers/windows users that are interested.