Quartz Composer: Processor Suite Plugins

ACProcessorSuite is a suite of custom plugins for Apple’s Quartz Composer, a realtime visual programming environment that comes free with Mac OS X (Developer Tools). Now updated for Mac OS X 10.6. Snow Leopard!

The main two plugins are
– ACPlotter, an Oscillator-like line renderer, that plots a series of values over time
– and ACSignalEnhancer that provides various smoothing and scaling algorithms to improve (for example) incoming sensory data. With ACSignalEnhancer it is easily possible to scale values from a range of say 100 .. 255 to e.g. -1 .. +1.

Surprisingly, this is the first plotter/oscillator function, as I could not find anything similar on various QC sites or forums. Enjoy!

The second most useful plugins in this suite should be ACSignalEnhancer, which tweaks almost any aspect of how one can improve, scale and bend a numeric value.

I’m also using ACStructureTools a lot, which provides missing Pop/Push and SetAtIndex functions for Structures (Arrays). They are very fast compared to other workarounds in JavaScript patches.

The suite contains:
1. ACAverage:
Smoothing values by averaging
2. ACInputMerger:
Logic input selector (forward input A or B)
3. ACNumberStore:
Delay patch (stores & outputs the previous value)
4. ACPeak:
Peak Detector (experimental!)
5. ACPlotter:
Oscillator like Line-Renderer
6. ACSignalEnhancer:
Various smooth & scale algorithms
7. ACStructureTools:
Pop & push for structures (= QC Arrays)

NEW in v0.6 (Snow Leopard)
8. ACSignal:
Replacement for -Signal: Generate signal after x secs or when x changes
9. ACSignalDelay:
Delays a value for x seconds

NEW in v0.7
10. ACBitLogic:
4-to-1-bit Encoder (useful for logic table lookup)
11. ACIdleDetector:
Sends a signal if a value remained unchanged for x seconds

System Requirements:
· Mac OS X 10.5. (Leopard) or 10.6. (Snow Leopard)
· 32-/64-bit Universal Binary for Intel or PPC Macs
· Quartz Composer (comes with Apple’s Developer Tools)

Installation:
1. Copy “ACProcessorSuite.plugin” to “~/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins/”
2. Launch QuartzComposer (“/Developer/Applications/Quartz Composer”)

License:
Artistic License 2.0

Download:
ACProcessorSuite Quartz Composer Plugins v0.7.2 (32/64-bit Universal Binary)

Version History:
v0.1, 2008-05-21:
· initial version
v0.2, 2008-08-27:
· added Enhancer, InputMerger, NumberStore
v0.3, 2009-02-01:
· added StructureTools & Plotter
v0.4, 2009-02-22:
· fixed Enhancer scaling algorithm: now working with negative numbers
· initial release
v0.5, 2009-07-21:
· added ACSignal and ACSignalDelay
v0.6, 2009-10-05:
· compatibility with 10.6. (Snow Leopard)
· two basic example compositions included (see comments below)
v0.7.2, 2010-03-08:
· added ACBitLogic
· added ACIdleDetector

Also look out for more Quartz Composer plugins:
· ACMarkov:
Quartz Composer plugin featuring Mac OS SpeechSynthesis, String Manipulation and Random Text Generators, soon to be released!
· ACNexusQC:
Quartz Composer plugin for ACNexus – a bluetooth (or Serial via USB) Arduino based sensor-box, soon to be released!

ps:

Cheers to Cybero for a very nice example presented on kineme.net:

The original Timestamp for this post was June, 8th 2009.