Fugio Friday – 5th August 2016

Fugio-Friday-2016-08-05

Download Fugio 1.5.1 for Windows, OS X (get the source code)

NEW

  • Lots of new examples including network stock checker and audio processing nodes
  • Added group breadcrumb widget to the bottom of the editor window
  • fillRect() method to qt.painter
  • PortAudio input and output now have default device options
  • Added LuaMatrix4x4
  • Save images from NumberMonitorForm by right-clicking on its window
  • Added FileLoadNode
  • Added AutoRangeNode
  • Added MinMaxNode
  • Added RingModulatorNode
  • Added ArrayListPin, VariantListPin
  • Added extra include paths for Lua

UPDATED

  • NetworkRequestNode saves data to a temporary file, rather than always into memory
  • Renamed NetworkRequestNode to GetNode
  • Added RegExp pin to RegExpNode
  • ScaleImageNode can scale to width/height/size
  • Cut/copy/paste now works between patches
  • You can also paste as plain text in any text editor or window

FIXED

  • Lots of work on cut/copy/paste/delete functionality
  • Fixed all colour selections in editor
  • Fixed StringNode not showing loaded value
  • Fixed StringJoinNode

TESTED ON

  • Windows 10 (x86)
  • OS X 10.11 (x64)
  • Ubuntu 16.04 (x64)

New Payment Options

6134-close-up-of-three-credit-cards-pvWhile bigfug.com has always accepted credit and debit card payments, we’re aware that using PayPal isn’t always a great solution for all our international friends.

Today we’re happy to announce that we have integrated a new payment gateway that processes Visa, Mastercard, and American Express cards directly.

As a beneficial side effect of this improvement, the shop also now supports SSL encryption, which will automatically be used at checkout.

And finally, to take advantage of the new gateway, we’ve moved Painting With Light into the shop, too.

The End Game for Software

I think we’re in the end game. I think that Learning to Code is a last ditch cry to wrestle control and we’re too late. I think that the cost of major software is spiralling to zero and, just like the music industry, the focus is now on mass adoption with revenues generated around the product, not from it. It happened on the web and it happened on your phone and in your home. They’re coming for open-source, they’re coming for us lone developers, they’re controlling the formation of culture, and they have a leash for us all. If you’re going to code then code to distrupt, code to disseminate, code with fire and bile and fury. No one may thank you but stand against the wave in the best way you can and hold fast. Coding is a manifestation of imagination and will; whose do you choose?

Fugio Keyboard Support

I’ve been away for a couple of days running a Painting With Light video mapping workshop at Bournemouth University so today I managed to do a little Fugio coding and added a keyboard node to catch any keyboard sequence such as simply pressing R or combinations like CTRL+7 and generate a trigger.

Screenshot 2015-01-21 12.45.12

In this patch pressing R generates a new random number.

Christmas Goodies

I used this Christmas as an excuse to get a few things relating to the various software tools I’m writing at the moment.

The C++ Programming Language 4th Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup replaces my well loved, dog-eared 2nd Edition that I’ve had for many years.  I haven’t felt like I’ve fully  got my head around the new language features of C++ 11 and I enjoy Bjarne’s non-nonsense description of them.  He did create C++ after all…  It’s probably not a book for the absolute beginner but it’s one that I refer to often, always picking up new tricks or refreshing some of the less used techniques.

FugioI’ve been working on my new software called Fugio (pictured above) for over a year now and I want to make it support a variety of hardware, so I got a couple of new things to try it with:

The last game controller I had was an ancient Logitech one that was quite nice until batteries kept leaking inside of it.  I upgraded to the Xbox 360 controller for Windows and wrote a node for Fugio to read all the various parameters from it.  It’s very simple to do with the Microsoft XInput API, although obviously Windows only.

While I love my original Korg nanoKontrol for MIDI control, I felt like I needed something a bit more ‘hitty’ so I plumbed for the Akai MPD18 Compact Pad Controller so I can experiment with triggering off events within Fugio.  I’ve got most of the controls mapped in using PortMidi and am just sorting out a small bug in the MIDI clock code so I’ll be able to use the note repeat controls on the MPD18 in sync with the Fugio playback.

And while not related to software development and much more related to the process of creating visuals and art, I’m very much enjoying reading Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema by the late, great film director Andrei Tarkovsky.  It’s a no-holds-barred personal rant about his views and experiences on making films and is full of inciteful comments that are giving me much food for thought.

And with that Amazon Affiliate link laiden post done, I will wish you all a very happy New Year and am looking forward to bringing you some new exciting tools in 2015.

Atmospheric Scattering Shader

Atmosheric-Scattering

Just found this rather nice Atmospheric Scattering rendering C++ code over at scratchapixel.com and thought I’d do a quick conversion to a GLSL shader as a test for the Timeline software I’m working on. Works rather nicely…

Screenshot-2014-08-20-11.25

My (none optimised) fragment shader conversion is:

#version 150

#define M_PI 3.1415926535897932384626433832795

uniform float TimeOfDay; // range 0.0 -> 1.0 (0.0 = Midnight, 0.5 = Midday, etc)

const float RADIUS_EARTH = 6360e3;
const float RADIUS_ATMOSPHERE = 6420e3;
const float RAYLEIGH_SCALE_HEIGHT = 7994;
const float MIE_SCALE_HEIGHT = 1200;
const float SUN_INTENSITY = 20;

const float g = 0.76;

const vec3 betaR = vec3( 5.5e-6, 13.0e-6, 22.4e-6 );    // Rayleigh scattering coefficients at sea level
const vec3 betaM = vec3( 21e-6 );                       // Mie scattering coefficients at sea level

vec3 sunDirection = vec3( 0, 1, 0 );

const int numSamples = 16;
const int numSamplesLight = 8;

struct Ray
{
    vec3 o; //origin
    vec3 d; //direction (should always be normalized)
};

struct Sphere
{
    vec3 pos;   //center of sphere position
    float rad;  //radius
};

const Sphere SPHERE_EARTH      = Sphere( vec3( 0 ), RADIUS_EARTH );
const Sphere SPHERE_ATMOSPHERE = Sphere( vec3( 0 ), RADIUS_ATMOSPHERE );

bool intersect( in Ray ray, in Sphere sphere, out float t0, out float t1 )
{
    vec3 oc = ray.o - sphere.pos;
    float b = 2.0 * dot(ray.d, oc);
    float c = dot(oc, oc) - sphere.rad*sphere.rad;
    float disc = b * b - 4.0 * c;

    if (disc < 0.0)
        return false;

   float q;
    if (b < 0.0)         q = (-b - sqrt(disc))/2.0;     else         q = (-b + sqrt(disc))/2.0;       t0 = q;     t1 = c / q;     // make sure t0 is smaller than t1     if (t0 > t1) {
        // if t0 is bigger than t1 swap them around
        float temp = t0;
        t0 = t1;
        t1 = temp;
    }

    // if t1 is less than zero, the object is in the ray's negative direction
    // and consequently the ray misses the sphere
    if (t1 < 0.0)
        return false;

    if( t0 < 0.0 )
    {
        t0 = 0;
    }

    return( true );
}

vec3 computeIncidentLight( in Ray r )
{
    float       t0, t1;

    if( !intersect( r, SPHERE_ATMOSPHERE, t0, t1 ) )
    {
        return vec3( 1 );
    }

    float segmentLength = ( t1 - t0 ) / numSamples;
    float tCurrent = t0;

    vec3 sumR = vec3( 0 );
    vec3 sumM = vec3( 0 );

    float opticalDepthR = 0;
    float opticalDepthM = 0;

    float mu = dot( r.d, sunDirection );
    float phaseR = 3 / ( 16 * M_PI ) * ( 1 + mu * mu );
    float phaseM = 3 / (  8 * M_PI ) * ( ( 1 - g * g ) * ( 1 + mu * mu ) ) / ( ( 2 + g * g ) * pow( 1 + g * g - 2 * g * mu, 1.5 ) );

    for( int i = 0; i < numSamples ; i++ )
    {
        vec3    samplePosition = r.o + r.d * ( tCurrent + 0.5 * segmentLength );
        float   height = length( samplePosition ) - RADIUS_EARTH;

        // compute optical depth for light

        float hr = exp( -height / RAYLEIGH_SCALE_HEIGHT ) * segmentLength;
        float hm = exp( -height / MIE_SCALE_HEIGHT      ) * segmentLength;

        opticalDepthR += hr;
        opticalDepthM += hm;

        // light optical depth

        Ray lightRay = Ray( samplePosition, sunDirection );

        float lmin, lmax;

        intersect( lightRay, SPHERE_ATMOSPHERE, lmin, lmax );

        float segmentLengthLight = lmax / numSamplesLight;
        float tCurrentLight = 0;
        float opticalDepthLightR = 0;
        float opticalDepthLightM = 0;
        
        int j = 0;

        for( ; j < numSamplesLight ; j++ )
        {
            vec3 samplePositionLight = lightRay.o + lightRay.d * ( tCurrentLight + 0.5 * segmentLengthLight );

            float heightLight = length( samplePositionLight ) - RADIUS_EARTH;

            if( heightLight < 0 )
            {
                break;
            }

            opticalDepthLightR += exp( -heightLight / RAYLEIGH_SCALE_HEIGHT ) * segmentLengthLight;
            opticalDepthLightM += exp( -heightLight / MIE_SCALE_HEIGHT      ) * segmentLengthLight;

            tCurrentLight += segmentLengthLight;
        }

        if( j == numSamplesLight )
        {
            vec3 tau = betaR * ( opticalDepthR + opticalDepthLightR ) + betaM * 1.1 * ( opticalDepthM + opticalDepthLightM );
            vec3 attenuation = exp( -tau );

            sumR += hr * attenuation;
            sumM += hm * attenuation;
        }

        tCurrent += segmentLength;
    }

    return( SUN_INTENSITY * ( sumR * phaseR * betaR + sumM * phaseM * betaM ) );
}

void main()
{
    const int width = 512;
    const int height = 512;

    float a = mod( TimeOfDay - 0.5, 1 ) * 2.0 * M_PI;

    sunDirection = normalize( vec3( 0, cos( a ), sin( a ) ) );

    float x = 2 * ( gl_FragCoord.x + 0.5 ) / ( width  - 1 ) - 1;
    float y = 2 * ( gl_FragCoord.y + 0.5 ) / ( height - 1 ) - 1;

    float z2 = x * x + y * y; 

    if( z2 <= 1 )
    {
        float phi   = atan( y, x );
        float theta = acos( 1 - z2 );

        vec3 dir = vec3( sin( theta ) * cos( phi ), cos( theta ), sin( theta ) * sin( phi ) );
        vec3 pos = vec3( 0, RADIUS_EARTH + 1, 0 );

        gl_FragColor = vec4( computeIncidentLight( Ray( pos, normalize( dir ) ) ), 1 );
    }
    else
    {
        gl_FragColor = vec4( 0 );
    }
}

Reorganising Websites

It’s been long overdue but I’m slowly getting around to reorganising my various websites to be more focussed on specific topics, so:

www.alexmayarts.co.uk – is now the web site for my art, talks, and workshops.

www.bigfug.com – will now be for my FreeFrame, video streaming, and other software tools

paintingwithlight.bigfug.com – is now pwl.bigfug.com and is the place for my video mapping software Painting With Light

mantis.bigfug.com – is the place to report bugs for any of my software projects

I’m moving these about at the moment so expect pages to come and go.

FFGL bigfug plugins at Echostage in Washington DC

Michael DeMattia sent me a couple of images from the recent VJ gig he did at Echostage, which is Washington DC’s largest concert, where he’s been using my fugScopeGL and fugPowerGL FFGL plugins.

EchoStage01

EchoStage02Images by Doug Van Sant Photography courtesy of Michael DeMattia (@MDfilms) and Echostage (@echostage)

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