Making Plugins from Quartz Composer Patches

Materials:

  1. Quartz Composer​
  2. Knowledge of the Input Splitter object, first read the preceding tutorial.

The project file and Quartz Composer patch created for this tutorial can be downloaded here.​​​

Step 1: Add an Input Splitter to your QC patch and use the inspector to set it to the type of data that will be passed to VDMX.

Step 2: Use the contextual menu (right-click)  for the Input Splitter and select the option under 'Publish Outputs'.

  • Supported data types are numbers, booleans, indexes, images, and colors. When applicable be sure to set the range.
  • The rendered output from your patch show in the Viewer will automatically be available as a published image within VDMX, no need to create an extra image output for this.
  • Mouse clicks from preview windows in VDMX are passed in to the patch same as the Viewer the Quartz Composer editor.​

​Access the plugins folder quickly from the Help menu in VDMX.

​Adding the example plugin to the VDMX project.

Step 3: Choose 'Open Assets Folder in Finder' from 'Help' menu and move the composition in the plugins folder. The patch now shows up in the list of available plugins.

Step 4: Load the patch from the Plugins section of the Workspace Inspector.

​Like the standard built-in plugins the plugin created for your patch will appear in its own window along with an automatically generated interface controls for any published input splitters.

  • Published number, boolean and index outputs will be available as data-sources to control sliders, buttons, and other UI items.
  • Published color outputs can be used to control Color Picker UI items.​
  • Published image outputs are available as video streams in receiver menus.​