Hi everyone,

Gem was a perfect tool for small workshops: easy to understand for a beginner and fun.
It's now very outdated and have many consistencies problems on various plateforms (fullscreen, key codes pb, camera, media etc...).

So I need a good visual tool for my next pd workshop and Ofelia is the perfect library... but it's also a bit difficult for beginners because :

• Too many objects for fast prototyping
• Sometimes long object names with uppercases etc
• help files lead to OpenFrameworks documentation

So I made a few abstractions in order to think of a kind of "Gem" replacement.
Main ideas are:

• Modular single blocs primitives like Gem, with many methods and arguments + their help file.
• Allows to draw and see something on screen even with unfilled arguments (and expandable default arguments)
• Remove all dependencies but Ofelia (no need for more dependencies with this lib)

Here is a first test... I am learning Lua at the same time so it's a bit experimental.
Somebody have good hints to share? Best lua / Openframeworks practise?

https://github.com/60-hz/Ofelia-Fast-Prototyping

(of course the only lib needed is Ofelia)
Cheers!

That looks pretty interesting @60htz, l'll have a closer look at your patches but it seems to be working really well. It's a good idea and I agree that Ofelia has a rather steep learning curve for a beginner, which is a shame because it's actually really powerful and easy to use once you understand the logic.

One thing I would do to make the development process a bit more comfortable is to use the [ofelia] object to import external Lua scripts instead of hard coding the script in each Pd abstraction. I find it much easier to develop complex Ofelia projects this way.

@60hz I made a (simple) cube without abstractions: ofeliaCube.pd
And here I made a video player some time ago: https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/12152/ofelia-glsl-video-effects/6

@dom1817 said:

use the [ofelia] object to import external Lua scripts instead of hard coding the script in each Pd abstraction.

Yes, definitely, it's more convenient to use sublime editor when I am doing complete stuffs sometimes... But on a pedagogical purpose, I like the idea to check and modify the code one click away from abstraction.

Thanks @Jona, I checked your patches before, and the glsl one is pretty nice thanks. The problem I have is only 3 or 4 of them works in my system (GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER shader failed to compile pb), maybe it's because another OpenGl version should be setuped inside ofelia?

Going back to my problems with my abstractions instantiation, it's more sensitive on OSX systems and perfectly stable in Windows. With simple 3d geo like [ofDrawBox], no problem at all. But as soon as I use [ofBoxPrimitive] in my lua scripts, I get crash sometimes at windows creation in OSX...

I prefer to use of3dPrimitive functions because It offers more rendering options. Maybe there is a better way to write the lua scripts? It opens a lots of questions regarding pd objects and lua, because there are many ways to do...

@60hz "Going back to my problems with my abstractions instantiation, it's more sensitive on OSX systems and perfectly stable in Windows. With simple 3d geo like [ofDrawBox], no problem at all. But as soon as I use [ofBoxPrimitive] in my lua scripts, I get crash sometimes at windows creation in OSX..."

Thats interesting. Perhaps I did not face those issues because I only used Linux and Windows? And, yes, you can specify a specific openGL version (which could solve the GLSL problems).

I think in a lot of cases, like the video player, a script or an abstraction makes absolutely sense. I also do not know how to use [ofBoxPrimitive], for example, without a script (though it could be possible). But in some cases, like [ofSetColor] for example, I do not see a difference in functionality compared to [gl.color].

Thanks for checking @Jona. I will try on my other OSX system, but I am sure I did something wrong in my windows creation or in primitive instantiation...

about [ofSetColor] and other "simple" abstractions, that's part of my project: to allow a set of object for workshop, and avoid problems I experienced in the past;

• User friendly: The user need to fill the exact number of arguments with classic Ofelia objects, otherwise the object "couldn't create". Students might get quickly frustrated if an object "couldn't create" for the 5th times... in [gl.color] and all [gl.abstraction] if user fill 1, 2, 3 or 4 arguments the object is created and fill empty arguments with default white color.
• Consistency with Gem and OpenGl: Some [gl.abstraction] like [gl.draw] put the coordinate system 0,0,0 at center and activate the depthTest by default, Openframeworks has the coordinate, 0,0,0 top left which I find less intuitive (would be nice to switch between the 2 coordinate systems later). in Ofelia, [ofSetColor] is black by default, so [gl.color], is white by default, like Gem (white on black default logic).
• Convenience: Users can also set a list of all arguments at once with all [gl.abstraction]. So in [gl.color] user can change all channel in one single message, where Gem had 2 objects for that and many weird behaviors).

@60hz Very nice patches and documentation, i like the simple geo.
with the second one i get the message" : ofPixels: format doesn't support channels"
with the local files, but the image from the internet works, which is very nice.
and the video player does not display the frames yet.
the possibility to input lists is also nice.

@Jona , If you are on Windows, media files might not open because of space or special characters in your paths... you can copy to a root hardrive to test I need to fix this in lua but I am learning only the basic now.

@60hz thanks, now its working (it was a space in the folder name).

I finally fixed many problems, optimised the scripts so no more crash on all my systems now
I fixed and understand also the world coordinate system in Openframeworks and how to make it like in classic openGL.
I added all primitives, and many methods for all the 3d and 2d shape to be able to do transformation localy.
Also added a screen grabber.

The there are so many things to explore, this library is endless...
I tried to create a global camera for every rendering, but it doesn't work yet. (if somebody know why?)

May I ask how this worked out for that workshop?

After a year of trying to use GEM in an interactive multimedia course, I've just about hit a wall with it, too many bad surprises. I'm also looking for a way to make Ofelia friendlier to students who do not want to write code.

Thanks,
hjh

Hi @ddw_music,

I did not have time to finish it in a "satisfaying usable state" for my last workshop unfortunately. Making such an exhaustive library pretending replacing Gem from scratch is not an easy task.

Also since then Ofelia v4.0 was released and Zack Lee did what it should to make ofelia a better and cleaner lib: remove all openframeworks pd's objects and keep only one [ofelia] main object as function call.
This make this "Fast Prototyping Ofelia" project even more useful for workshop, since with current ofelia v4.0, students really need to know lua to be able to draw anything on screen!

But I made many improvement on the project recently and totally re-designed a lot of stuffs, specially for the coordinate part because historically Openframeworks used a pixel based coordinate system (point 0,0 is top left of the screen) and we need to have a true normalized one (like Gem where 0,0,0 is at center). So the solution was to create a default camera along with the window context rather than rendering things at the center of the screen). Also I discovered the reversed openGl coordinate for texture etc that need a bit of time to be fixed before going further.

So expect a test update very soon, so I might be ready for my next workshop beginning of december, if the Coronavirus Lockdown in France will finish :/

@60hz I'm quite interested... I'm quite busy for the next month but would be glad to take a look at a prerelease version.

I understand why the OF objects would be removed... but that pretty much rules out Ofelia for my class, unless there are some wrappers. I don't mind the code but these students will simply refuse to engage with it.

hjh

@ddw_music it does include some abstractions which encapsulate an [ofelia d] object with a Lua script, like [ofSetup] for example. Haven't gone through it exhaustively though.

@60hz Hi, I just found this. Thanks for the amazing work!
I tried your patches and they work fine with Ofelia v3 but not with the latest v4.

Do you have one that works with v4? If not, do I need to just replace the listener objects (e.g. [ofDraw]) with the abstractions in v4? Any tips on how I can make your abstractions also work in v4?

@cuinjune Nevermind, I got an answer to my question from @alexandros
He said I simply need to add [declare -path ofelia/abs] to patches so the listener objects can be created as abstractions.

FWIW, I don't think it needs to be a replacement for GEM, or pretend to make the interfaces similar to GEM. As noted at the top of the thread, GEM is outdated.

If an obstacle is converting Ofelia's pixel system into something like GEM's normalized coordinates, then... why not simply abandon the idea of normalized coordinates? Unless it's really necessary for practical use. If the only reason to normalize the coordinates was to make it "similar to GEM," I'd say, don't waste time on it.

FWIW, I'm not going to be able to tolerate GEM for another year. Like today -- it took me over two hours to figure out how to extract the alpha channel from pixes. (Like, how many years has GEM existed, and nobody thought it would be useful to have an object to transfer the alpha channel to the main channel of a grayscale pix? Or, if you don't need an object for it, this still seems to me a pretty basic use case... but of course hard to find in the documentation...)

I realize that a set of abstractions on top of Ofelia is not likely to be fully-featured -- but I could cobble together enough Lua to add abstractions myself where needed (and contribute them back), whereas trying to add objects to Gem is impractical (1, my C is not that good and 2, I could build in Linux but not Mac or Windows). Even a partial set of abstractions might be a starting point to get around the kinds of problems I'm facing now, where the existing objects don't quite do what I want and there's not a good way to add functionality.

Otherwise, for this course, I might not have a choice but to jump ship and go to jitter (which some of the students have already done). It pains me to think of switching away from FLOSS but where I am right now is simply not sustainable.

TL;DR Even if the current state is incomplete, would you mind sharing so I could have a look?

hjh

@cuinjune Thanks to you for realeasing the great ofelia library, it is really a lifechanging library in the puredata world for many of us.
All is working with v4 and now I am using only [ofelia] objets in all the abstractions.

@ddw_music actually the goal is to be able to use the camera function when needed, and keeping everything simple. I agree with you that Gem is obsolete but some ideas are still valid like a normalized coordinate system which is more handy for 3d. Actually now I made [gl.draw] behaviour better: you can send a negative rendering value so the rendering will be done outside of the camera and go back to the traditionnal Openframework coordinate system, maybe more suitable for 2d.

Here is a better place to download the updated abstractions: https://github.com/60-hz/Ofelia-Fast-Prototyping

Feel free to test it, I am not sure it is ready for distribution with students yet but at least I make progress and learn a bit of lua/openframeworks

Any help for making new abstractions are very welcome, what would be nice is a good 3d model importer, but I don't know if it is a good idea to make one from scratch, maybe adding the ofxAssimpModelLoader would help @cuinjune ?

Downloaded.

Your example 1-OFP-Simple_Geo is already a hundred times cooler, and easier to read as a patch, than anything I could manage in Gem. I'm sure it's already enough for an undergraduate class geared towards audio artists who need to learn a bit of video.

hjh

Hi @60hz -- I was just looking into what it would take to add a [gl.multiimage] (analog of Gem's [pix_multiimage]).

I'm thinking...

• Add local images and fill it as an array of ofImage() objects.

• Add a method show i to choose the image to display -- here I'm not completely sure. Should this simply set image$0 = images[i]? Or do we need to copy the image data?

• It seems pretty easy to replicate [pix_multiimage]'s approach of requiring images to be named e.g. /path/to/images_*.jpg where * is replaced by 0, 1, 2... n (formatted without leading zeros). I never really liked that, though (spoiled by SuperCollider's pathMatch globbing function). I saw online that Lua doesn't have globbing built in... so I'm stuck with the sequential numbered approach? Or do you know if there's a way to reference Lua libraries from Ofelia?

Thanks!
hjh

Also, relative paths for [gl.image] are not working.

hjh