CoGe 1.2.1 with better font handling, text files playback and bug fixes

Posted on January 3, 2012 by .lov.

Hello 2012, Hello CoGe, so Hello first minor update of CoGe in 2012 :)

CoGe 1.2.1 just released a few moments ago, with some performance-, rendering- and other minor and misc fixes – see the complete changelog on the download site. Thanks for all people reported those issues by sending reports or posting to the forum!

This version also extends the functionality of CoGe with two little but fancy new features:

Text File Playback

Some weeks ago I made a very little plugin for Quartz Composer CoGeTextFileReader, which can read and divide a plain text file to subdivisions – separated by the space characters. This plugin now bundled with CoGe, so you can playback plain text files in the app, and also made a Player Module for that to read a new part of the text file on every beat. From now .txt files also handled with APS.

Text Files playback in CoGe

Showing up font-look with the fontName parameter

Some of the effect of CoGe has a fontName parameter, where you can select the font used to rendering text. This is cool, but before CoGe 1.2.1, you just saw the name of the font, which is not really useful in many cases, so CoGe 1.2.1 draws title cells of the fontName parameter pop-up with the font it represents. Take a look at the screenshot, much better, isn’t it? :)

Font Names in CoGe 1.2.1

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to grab CoGe 1.2.1 with the built-in updater or just download from the download section of the CoGe site. Also don’t forget about you can purchase CoGe at discount price with the X-Mas Offer till 5th of January, 2012!

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Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

Posted on January 1, 2012 by .lov.

2011 just ended, and it was the very first your of me and CoGe in the commercial land. I was a bit scared about taking that step, but now it really seems to be a good choice. There are many CoGe users all around the world now, from 28 different countries and the most users are from Japan, France, USA, United Kingdom and Canada!

CoGe 1.0 released 4 months ago, and in the past months more then 20 little and big new features added, and also more then 30 bugs fixed, so 2011 was a successful year on the coding side too!

This cannot be done without you guys, you just rocks! Thanks for supporting the project, I hope you really enjoy using CoGe.

Hope year 2012 will be at least great than 2011, I have a lots of ideas and a pretty great feature wish-list from you guys, so, lets start 2012. :)

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Footage: NYE Countdown in Quartz Composer

Posted on December 28, 2011 by .lov.

Just before a few days of NYE, tons of NYE related content taken recently, you know countdowns, fireworks and other stuff. That files mostly video loops, and I just got the idea why not creating this by Quartz Composer and make it re-usable every year. I’ve got a little free time in the past days and just made a little countdown in Quartz Composer, and I want to share with you. It should working in any Quartz Composer hosts, but I think the best way is using it with CoGe :)

Well, see what this composition does, and what you can set up:

  • you can set up the destination year
  • you can set up the message that will be displays when the new year reached
  • you can set up the font and font size displays the countdown and the color as well
  • the composition has some basic position and rotate controls
  • this composition will displays to seconds remains till the destination year
Posted in Quartz Composer | Tagged , | 2 Comments

New Quartz Composer Plugin: CoGeTextFileReader

Posted on December 26, 2011 by .lov.

CoGeTextFileReader

I just made a little new plugin for Quartz Composer with the name CoGeTextFileReader.

Nothing fancy or magically inside the plugin, it just builds an indexed structure from a .txt file, by dividing the text to components separated by the space characters.

Licensed under the LGPL, available from the project’s site:  http://code.google.com/p/cogetextfilereader/

Posted in QcPlugin, Quartz Composer, release | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

CoGe 1.2 Out Now and X-Mas Offer!

Posted on December 20, 2011 by .lov.

After 2 months of the latest CoGe 1.1.1 release I am really happy to let you know CoGe 1.2 just released! I think this is the best version of CoGe I ever made, me and the Beta Tester worked a lot on it, and I’m pretty sure this version is  a huge step forward. It contains more than 12 smaller and bigger new features and more than 10 important bug fixes!

You will find the complete change log on the download site, but I recently wrote about the most important changes and new improvements, if you missed that, here is a small list in non particular order:

I hope you will find CoGe 1.2 pretty awesome and useful, and will have a lot of fun with it!

I’m also happy to introduce the X-Mas Offer! You can purchase CoGe at a discount price with 20% off till 5th of January, 2012 (GMT)!

I wish you Merry X-Mas, and don’t forget to grab CoGe 1.2 from the download site or with the built-in updater!

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CoGe 1.2 – Auto Player Select

Posted on December 18, 2011 by .lov.

I think one of the first things you learned when you first met with CoGe is you should create a Player to play anything thing – except Quartz Composer compositions. Right? But after a while you’ll find this thing pretty boring because you probably find the best Player for your needs, are create your own, or just using only one Player for a project. Thats why I created a new way to handling this stuff in CoGe 1.2, called Auto Player Select.

Auto Player Select Preferences

Auto Player Select aka APS works in a pretty simple way. You should set up the default Player modules for each Media types. Media types are defined in CoGe core, there are actually Movie, Image, SWF and Colladaformats, and you can assign the default Player module for those in CoGe Preferences.

Then, when you trigger a Media Slot on a ClipSynth, CoGe will look into the currently loaded player modules in the ClipSynth – only if APS is enabled on the ClipSynth, so there is a button on each ClipSynth for toggle this feature on/off -, and if the selected module is exists – you already loaded that module – the application will automatically select it. If you module not already loaded, CoGe will automatically create it! See it in action:

I think this is an other very handy new feature of the upcoming 1.2 release, hope you will love it, and the other improvements too, CoGe 1.2 will be released a few days before X-Mas!

 

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CoGe 1.2 – Layer Groups

Posted on December 15, 2011 by .lov.

With CoGe you can use arbitrary layers since the 1.0 version released. For handling those layers you could use the Mixer chain, but as in the name is more like a mixer then a tool too handling layers, if you just want to use them layers like in other layer based application. Okay, its a bit crazy sentence, but you know, if you just want to place layers of the top of the each, playing with opacity… now you feel, isn’t it? :)

Thats why I created a new Gadget with the name Layer Group in CoGe 1.2. A Layer Group is for manage multiple layers, where layers are CoGe layer sources: ClipSynths and SyphonSources actually. A Layer Group is a layer source too, so you can mix them together or with other layers in the Master Mixer. Layer Groups also have a Syphon Server at the end, so you can use Layer Groups outputs as  sources in other Syphon capable applications.

A Layer Group with some layers added. You can also see all Gadgets are renamed as well.

Here is a summary list about what a Layer Group can do in non particular order:

  • you can use arbitrary amount of Layer Groups
  • it can has arbitrary amount of layers
  • you can change the source of a layer item
  • all layers have an Opacity slider
  • you can toggle on/off a layer
  • you can re-arrange layers
  • you can apply an Effect Chain on each layer
  • you can apply an Effect Chain on the whole Layer Group
  • you can change the blend mode (currently Over and Add) of a layer
  • you can use a layer source multiple times

For now, that’s all. Watch the video below to see this stuff in action. Anyway, only one new feature left I should talking about, and keep in mind CoGe 1.2 will be released next week, yay!

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CoGe 1.2 – Sliders and buttons are able to send MIDI and OSC messages

Posted on December 13, 2011 by .lov.

MIDI and OSC sending shows up in the contextual menu

Release of CoGe 1.2 getting closer and closer, so I’ll leak some more information about it. As a new feature in version 1.2, sliders and buttons are able to send MIDI and OSC messages, in a super easy way. To that, you just need to do a right-click on a slider or a button, and select Enable MIDI/OSC sending. For MIDI sending, you can define the send-to channel and the CC/Note number as well. Messages will be sent to all available MIDI devices, and to a  special, dedicated MIDI port called From CoGe.  For OSC, you can define the name of the message (the output Port and IP are defined in the CoGe Preferences).

Windows for setting up MIDI and OSC sending for sliders and buttons

I think this feature really opens some new doors, because with this stuff you can control external MIDI devices, controllers, audio softwares or an other computer by CoGe. I planning to make some videos showing this things in action, but also would be super-cool to see some videos from you using this little features after the new version released :)

Stay tuned, I’ll leak some more information soon about CoGe 1.2, which is going to be released next week!

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Frames and Shapes…

Posted on December 11, 2011 by .lov.

… is the name of the most popular video I made on Vimeo. I surprised a bit about it, because it is soooo simple, its just based one a simple idea. Its a good example of how you can make good stuff with just a simple idea. I think this is an important topic, because we have a lots of possibilities nowadays, and we recently making very complex stuff, tons of layers, effects and sometimes just forgot things can be easy and simple, and a simple idea can be better than a load of … anything :)

 

When I started to make the video for the music, I just got an idea: using only one abstract image in the background, and create layers from it, by using little moving boxes as masks on the same image used to the background but with 90/180/240 degrees rotation. So I just created an abstract image in Photoshop, by using some brushes and vector sources from DeviantArt - sorry, just can’t remember what I used exactly. Then I made the whole masking and animating things in After Effects – done very fast –  also added some move to that background image -, I not spent more time than a couple of hours on the project.

Polygon - the image I created and used for the Frames and Shapes video

I re-created the process when working on CoGe 1.0, and made an Effect from it, called Frames and Shapes. The Effect is part of the official CoGe effects, you will find it in the Special category of the right-click menu. So, its available for everyone, yay! :) Give it a try if you missed  and have fun with it, and remember, you can create awesome stuff only with a good idea ;)

The Frames and Shapes Effect in CoGe

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CoGe 1.2 – Renaming Gadgets

Posted on December 5, 2011 by .lov.

Last time I talked about the upcoming major update, CoGe 1.2 and the performance improvement, and I said there are other new things too. We do we see  now is one of the new things is not a breathtaking, but a very useful feature, Gadget Renaming. Let me explain what is this exactly.

Effect Chain with the default title - note the NC button on the left side!

So, CoGe is a modular application, this means you can create a lot of little things, Gadgets runtime, like ClipSynths, Effect Chains, Sequencers and more. When you create one of them, CoGe will automatically assign a name – a title – to it, you know, ClipSynth-1, ClipSynth-2 and more. If you created a couple of things, some ClipSynths and some Effect Chains for example, and you drank a few beers – just for the example, haha :) – you will ran into the issue things with those numbered names not easy to identify. I got some feature requests on this topic, and in CoGe 1.2 I just implemented it. Anyway, the feature requests are usually implemented in time ;) It was not as easy  as it looks like because CoGe using those title to identify things under to hood, but it was not impossible.

This happens when you click on the NC button - yay, you can type a new name!

Using this feature in CoGe 1.2 is a really easy task. All Gadgets got a button-like-thing on the left side of the title bar with the title NC aka Name Change. When you click on this button a window will pop-up, where you can type and apply the new name. CoGe will also take care of what you need, for example, does not admit two things with the same name.

Once the new name is applied, CoGe will do update all things to use the new name in the background, for example, if you just renamed EffectChain-1 to My Super Cool Effects, and it was assigned to a ClipSynth or something, the new name will appear on the chain select pop-up. This is so cool, isn’t it? :)

Gadgets after renaming. Note that the ClipSynths also renamed, and see the new name also appears on the FX Chain select popup.

I think this is good for know, next time I will telling about an other new feature, but till then, have fun ;)

 

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