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It's now very outdated and have many consistencies problems on various plateforms (fullscreen, key codes pb, camera, media etc...).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!

Nice one! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks, I have updated the files with a simple imager reader object, so we could see the benefit of such a project.
But since there is many 3d primitives abstractions to create, I prefer to wait a bit untill I found a fix and a better lua code paradigm for the abstractions...

Lua / Openframeworks coders hints are very welcome

@60htz Nice. Not sure if everything what I write is true: The objects are basically the OF core functions, because the idea was that they are compatible (if you do something in OF you can do it with the same names in Ofelia). Thats also the reason for the length and the linking to the OF documentation. Still you have to call them a bit differently, because they are bound to Lua in Ofelia. Or just use the objects in the patching style.
In the Ofelia help folder are some objects with regular help files, those are specific to Ofelia (they do not exist in OF).
You mix Ofelia and Gem objects in your patch, and that could be the reason for the crash. There were some experiments that tried to combine them, but I would say it is not recommended: https://github.com/cuinjune/Ofelia/issues/2
If I am right you want to have a textured cube? There is an example for a cube in this folder Pd\externals\ofelia\examples\3d\coloredCube and for loading images Pd\externals\ofelia\examples\image\loadDisplayImage

Edit: Sorry, I realized one problem. It is not that you mix up Ofelia and Gem objects. It is just that I have installed both, so Pure Data "thinks" that your [color], [translate] and [rotate] objects are from Gem (because they are named the same). In Ofelia they are named [ofSetColor] and [ofTranslate].

Thanks for your reply @Jona

It looks like I am a little bit further than what you thought
I can display almost any (basic) things I want with ofelia, the problem is making abstraction and modularize the logic of Openframeworks/lua/ofelia in puredata.

Sorry for the name clash with Gem, I fixed it and proposed [gl.name] (Edit: [of.name]) objects now (The same name convention used in pd-ceammc, which is the perfect tool for workshop with students).

I've done a video player, video cam input etc... the files are updated in the main post.

I have also found a fix for the basic prim object and windows (re)creation crash. I guess the problem is primitive class instantiation that should be at setup time and not object creation time... but I am not sure.
It works for me this way but still thinking...

The tricky part of this project is that I want to have completely modularize objects + arguments + real time variable etc etc...

@60htz Sorry, it seems I misunderstood your post a bit. Thanks for your work.
Actually I like that idea: "The tricky part of this project is that I want to have completely modularize objects + arguments + real time variable etc etc..."

No worry @Jona, there was some ambiguity in my first post since I am asking for hints and presenting a "project" at the same time

As I said it's still experimental but it is working well on my OSX and Windows10 systems.

There's still a lot of work to do, and many opened questions with lua and good practice. The first one being the way I am instanciating box / plane etc 3d primitives in lua and pd.

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?