TouchOSC and openFrameworks first look

Posted almost 2 years ago on July 18, 2010

Wiring up TouchOSC and openFrameworks was pleasantly simple. I expected TouchOSC to have serious limitations, and one surprise was that its label widgets can be sent data over OSC. The current iteration of my controller has fields that display the current FPS, sketch name, and which parameter is being updated. Once I add a bit more metadata in the iPad controller, and take some of the code that's currently hard-wired up to a particular TouchOSC scene and abstract it out into a framework that can apply to any sketch, I will be that much closer to an interactive, contextual iPad controller for live animated visuals in oF.

Currently the sketch I'm testing these controls out with is a fairly simple one - it's a particle system that applies simulated "gravity" (just a downward vector) and "wind" (perlin noise on the x-axis) to a collection of points. What's amazing is the beauty that comes from abstracting the control one step back from "move left / move right" directly to a higher level - simulated natural forces unfold in a way that simple programmatic animations, like my old processing sketches, never do.

So the iPad controller works at this higher level - the things it controls in this sketch are more general - wind and gravity power, number of particles, and the particles are still left to fundamentally control their own actions. To someone who is just getting started in "creative coding" it's pretty mind-blowing. I can't wait to explore particle systems in more detail.

My oF sketch is here although it also requires my particle system code located here. Probably best to just hold out until I add some vids to my vimeo page.