ofxAddon

ofxUI
github: https://github.com/rezaali/ofxUI
blog: http://www.syedrezaali.com/blog/?p=2172

With a double in HCI and a strong interest in being a UX designer, I find this project very interesting and with great potential. Practically every app developer, interface designer, and hackathon goer interested in UI everywhere is looking for a better way to create interfaces–namely a way for everyone to make any kind of interface they could want in an easy way. This addon is a good contribution to the field. I can’t quite imagine myself using this for the addon project, but I can imagine using this for inspiration and knowledge for future projects and interface designs.

ofxPostProcessing
github: https://github.com/neilmendoza/ofxPostProcessing
blog: http://www.neilmendoza.com/ofxpostprocessing/

This “easy way of putting together a chain of GLSL shaders” has a number of creative manipulations, my particular favorite being kaleidescope. I find it interesting that this project is the beginnings of a project for creating realtime visuals of music events. Not quite sure what that means for this guy, but I’ll look more into it later. I can find myself using this after creating something in openframeworks to add variation and manipulations. I’m not sure what I’ll be creating or what I’ll be manipulating it into, but I can see a good amount of potential from this post-processing addon.

ofxBox2D
github: https://github.com/vanderlin/ofxBox2d

I don’t really seem to see a specific direction for this addon, but that’s the fun of it. The interactivity (for the example, at least) of being able to create objects on the fly and toggle their interaction with the mouse (mouse force, etc.) can be really fun to play around with. I can see myself combining this with another addon to create variation depending on the number of objects and mouse force, especially audio.

ofxTonic
github: https://github.com/TonicAudio/ofxTonic

I have always wanted to do something dealing with audio. For every term project I get assigned, I keep trying to think of creations with audio, but it never pans out. Mostly it’s because audio is not dealt with as much as visual, so I find less help on the internet for it. Hopefully if I can find another audio addon to combine this with (maybe ofxBeatTracker even though it’s in Japanese). I can definitely see myself using this in combination with a flexible visual addon, such as Box2D. I’ll have to figure out how much I can do with Tonic first.

Frustrations: I convinced myself to actually download and try the examples, and over half of them fail.

ofxCv

I really want to do a project with computer vision both because it’s interesting and because the possibilities for interaction are pretty vast.  This add-on seems like a must-have for openFrameworks.

ofxVectorField

I honestly have no idea what exactly I would use this one for, but I like that this can generate vector fields from images, which seems pretty cool.  I wonder if it could keep up with live video at all?  It seems like it has a lot of potential for interesting animation.

ofxDna

This simulates genetic evolution and passing on of traits from one object to another.  I don’t know how it would fit into any of my projects, but I’ve always wanted to do some kind of simulation of “evolution” of very inorganic looking objects, so this might be useful.

openFrameworks

This project offers shallow contributions to the field, but I really connected with it. This “watercolor animation study” displays the movement of shapes and images in relation to music and in the style of watercolor. As a musical person, I was mesmerized by this project. When you first start watching, you think that the music isn’t necessarily related to what’s on the screen–maybe it’s just background music. But as you continue to watch and really listen, the visual’s connection with the audio is astonishing. I am also amazed by how the artist uses straight geometric shapes, that could look very rigid and cold, but the way they are animated brings them gentle warmth and lots of fluidity. This artist is definitely someone to check out; watch a video of another one of their works that I find interesting here.

Update: Apparently, the person who did this is pretty well known.

This video shows a test of a tracking project. This project displays a plane onto the floor and tracks a person moving around on it. The plane then interacts and adjusts to the person as they are moving around. I find this project a good contribution to the field because so many things can be done in an environment that interacts with the user. I always find projects that encompass the person interacting with it to be interesting. Project like this can be expanded to even greater interaction projects and art pieces, such as the Rain Room.

This project is a visualization of particles in which the user can change particle size, speed of rotation, and how spread out the particles are 360 degrees around the center (labeled as ‘rotation’). Though this project has a very simple concept, it can be used as a basis for various works of animation, visualization, or images. What I wish to be improved upon is the randomness and action of the particles to not be as jittery and reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed.

The inspiration from this piece came from work I am doing with Colin Pinto and Crusic Percussion. They are working on making digitally fabricated marimbas, so I decided to make parametric marimba keys where you can set an octave of C and it spits out a key.

thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:233060

//Kevyn McPhail
//Interactive Art + Computational Design
//Parametric Object(Marimba Keys)
 
//Enter Note (C no sharps or flats)
note = "C";
//Enter Octave (2 to 7)
octave = 3;
 
// estimated width equation: w = (0.1373*l) + 0.349
// estimated thickness equation: barT = (0.0532*l) + 0.2417
// estimated arch thichness equation: archT = -0.0234x + 0.7127
//estimated arch length equation: archL = 0.9857x - 6.7525
 
lengths = [23.0937,17.34375,14.4375,12.15625,9.4375,7.6875];
 
//Get key length
function getKeyLength(oct) = lengths[oct - 2];
l = getKeyLength(octave); 
echo(l);
 
//Get key width
function getKeyWidth(length) = (0.1373*length) + 0.349;
w = getKeyWidth(l);
 
//Get key Thickness
function getKeyThickness(length) = (0.0532*length) + 0.2417;
barT = getKeyThickness(l);
 
//get arch thickness
function getArchThickness(length) = (-0.0234*length) + 0.712;
archT = getArchThickness(l);
 
//get arch length
function getArchLength(length) = abs((0.9857*length) - 6.7525); 
archL = getArchLength(l);
 
//Generate blank bar
//cube([l,w,barT]);
 
//Generate Arch Piece
//rotate([0,0,0])cube([(l-((barT-archT)*2)),w*2,(barT-archT)]);
 
//for(i = [2,l -2]){
//translate([i,5,barT/2])rotate([90,0,0])cylinder(h = 10, r=.4);
//}
 
minkowski(){
sphere(.2);
difference(){
difference(){
cube([l,w,barT],center = true);
minkowski(){
sphere(.8);
translate([0,0,-1])cube([archL,w*2,(barT-archT)],center = true);
}
}
for(i = [(l-archL),-1*((l-archL))]){
translate([i,5,barT/6])rotate([90,0,0])cylinder(h = 10, r=barT/3);
}
}
}