QuartzCrystal is an offline renderer that turns Quartz Compositions into portable QuickTime movies. It supports 3rd party plugins, as well as patches that do not work in safe-mode-only environments (such as QuickTime Pro). It also supports software scene antialiasing, so if you have a Mac with plenty of RAM and a hard-core video card, you can make spectacularly beautiful renderings of your plugins, effects, and compositions.

Beside QuartzCrystal, the only other product that renders and encodes compositions to movies is Apple’s own QuickTime Pro, which doesn’t support plugins, unsafe patches, or antialiasing.

Along with the new site, a few new patches are available as well based on requests from users.

This release is only compatible with Tiger (10.4).
Please see kineme.net for Leopard-specific informations.

1. Set up a QCIndexPort input. QCIndexPorts provide values from 0 to whatever max you specify using - (void)setMaxIndexValue:(unsigned int)max;.

@interface IndexPortPopUpDemoPatch : QCPatch
{
    QCIndexPort *inputPerson;
}
	
...
	
@end

2. Add the “menu” key to the port’s input attributes:

	<key>inputAttributes</key>
	<dict>
		<key>inputPerson</key>
		<dict>
			<key>description</key>
			<string>Person</string>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>Person</string>
			<key>menu</key>
			<array>
				<string>Arthur Dent</string>
				<string>Ford Prefect</string>
				<string>Zaphod Beeblebrox</string>
				<string>Marvin</string>
				<string>Trillian</string>
				<string>Slartibartfast</string>
				<string>Agrajag</string>
				<string>Wonko the Sane</string>
			</array>
		</dict>
	</dict>

3. Make sure you set the max index value in the initWithIdentifier function:

- (id)initWithIdentifier:(id)fp8
{
        id z=[super initWithIdentifier:fp8];
	
        [inputPerson setMaxIndexValue:7];
	
        return z;
}

4. Read the value out of the QCIndexPort using - (unsigned int)indexValue;.

Changes:

• Rebuilt from scratch — no longer depends on QCJP’s work — and, by extension, the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike” license. My Xcode Template, as of version 0.2, is released into the Public Domain. You are free to use it for whatever — commercial or non-commercial.
• QCJP’s headers were replaced with headers assembled directly from the QuartzComposer framework — now located in the QuartzComposer/ folder of the project. I’ve exported a few more headers than QCJP had constructed, so there’s some added functionality (namely, image input/output ports).
• The project now automatically assigns an icon to the patch bundle, and installs it in /Library/Graphics/Patches/ for you each time you build, for faster edit-build-test workflow.

This release is out-of-date.
Please see the latest version.

Download the installer, version 0.2.

See the old version’s blogpost for some additional instructions and user comments.

This release is only compatible with Tiger (10.4).
Please see kineme.net for Leopard-compatible patches.

Get version 0.1 here.

Notes:

• This depends on Tim Kreger’s OS X kernel extension — part of P5osc. Install and enable the driver first.
• Make sure you’ve plugged the glove in before attempting to render the patch — there’s currently no way for it to detect the plugging/unplugging of the glove.
• Only a single glove at a time is supported.

This release is only compatible with Tiger (10.4).
Please see kineme.net for Leopard-compatible patches.

Get version 0.1 here.

Notes:

• These require the Phidget21 drivers to be installed.
• Device Labels are specified using POSIX Regular Expressions.
• Due to a bug in the Phidget21 driver, I can’t manually fetch a list of interfaces, and so need to rely on notifications.. So if you change the Device Label regex, you’ll need to unplug-and-replug the Phidget for it to be recognized.
• Both patches are pink “Renderer” patches because they provide output from Quartz Composer — they are “sinks” in graph theory. Given QC’s graph evaluation model, I haven’t yet found a way to make these patches reliably output data unless they’re (improperly) marked as “Renderer”s.
• Both patches should support multiple InterfaceKits of the same or differing types — as long as you specify non-overlapping Device Labels for each. I haven’t been able to test this yet — my second InterfaceKit 8/8/8 should arrive later this week.

Here’s a little test setup, using a distance sensor connected to one of the InterfaceKit 8/8/8’s analog inputs, which — via Quartz Composer — controls a relay output on the InterfaceKit 0/0/4. Beth and Robert built the 0/0/4 into a box of 120VAC receptacles, into which I’ve plugged a light.

Far from distance sensor = Relay off

Close to distance sensor = Relay on

Piece of cake.

I took Martin Kahr’s Apple Remote Controller Wrapper Class and built a Quartz Composer patch around it.

This release is only compatible with Tiger (10.4).
Leopard (10.5) includes a built-in Apple Remote patch.
Please see also kineme.net for Leopard-compatible patches.

Get version 0.1 here.

Some notes:

• The events received from the Apple Remote are fairly strange to begin with.. You don’t simply get “key down” / “key up” events as I would have assumed, but instead get cooked events — for many of the buttons, holding the button down generates a different event than tapping it.
• My patch queues events, to ensure that each keypress is visible for at least one frame.

• QCPatch Configuration
• QCPatch Events
• QCPatch Methods

This release is only compatible with Tiger (10.4).
Please see kineme.net for Leopard-specific informations.

1. Start up Interface Builder:
   
2. Make a new NIB, with a “Cocoa / Empty” starting point:
   
3. Make a subclass of NSObject called QCInspector. Then make a subclass of QCInspector with the class name of your patch, followed by “UI”. P5GloveUI in this case:
   
4. Drag a “CustomView” into the project:
   
5. Select “File’s Owner” and set its “Custom Class” to the UI subclass you created above (P5GloveUI in this case):
   
6. Control-drag from “File’s Owner” to “View”, then “Connect” the view to the UI subclass’s “view” outlet:
   
7. Throw a few controls onto the View if you’d like:
   
8. Save the NIB in your patch’s English.lproj folder, and add it to the project:
   
9. Add the QCInspector interface to your patch’s qcplugin.h:

   @interface QCInspector : NSObject
   {
   	NSView *view;
   	QCPatch *_patch;
   	void *_unused2[4];
   }
   + (id)viewNibName;
   + (id)viewTitle;
   - (id)init;
   - (void)didLoadNib;
   - (id)patch;
   - (void)setupViewForPatch:(id)fp8;
   - (void)resetView;
   - (id)view;
   @end
   

10. Add inspectorClassWithIdentifier to your patch’s interface:

    P5Glove.h:

    @interface P5Glove : QCPatch
    	
    ...
    	
    + (Class)inspectorClassWithIdentifier:(id)fp8;
    @end
    

11. Implement inspectorClassWithIdentifier:

    P5Glove.m:

    @implementation P5Glove : QCPatch
    	
    ...
    	
    + (Class)inspectorClassWithIdentifier:(id)fp8
    {
    	return [P5GloveUI class];
    }
    @end
    

12. Add the P5GloveUI class interface and implementation to your patch’s project:

    P5GloveUI.h:

    @interface P5GloveUI : QCInspector
    + (id)viewNibName;	// IMP=0x97b89415
    @end
    

    P5GloveUI.m:

    @implementation P5GloveUI : QCInspector
    + (id)viewNibName
    {
    	return @\"P5GloveUI\";
    }
    

13. Build and launch Quartz Composer. You’ve got an inspector:
    
14. Enjoy.

Frustrated with the tedium of going through all the Xcode project files in a text editor and manually replacing all of the identifiers and filenames when creating a new Quartz Composer Patch, I decided to finally figure out how to create a new Xcode template. It’s pretty straightforward, actually, given Karsten Kusche’s instructions.

I started with QCJP’s Custom Patch code, made it a little more generic, and substituted macros for all the specific names.

This release is out-of-date.
Please see the latest version.

Download the installer.

To make a Quartz Composer Patch, now all you need to do is:

1. Create a new Xcode project with this template
2. Give the project a name
   
3. Build the project
   
4. Move the .plugin file into /Library/Graphics/Patches/
5. Launch Quartz Composer
   

And, of course, modify the code, if you want to do something other than draw a triangle.