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Hi,
I am currently using a small graphic software in a Windows system to design a web page background. I want to use Quartz Composer for this purpose. I just need a general overview of this tool. That means what are it features and is it a basic application or a advance one which can offer me more manipulation in my creations. I have a MAC OS X system with this tool. The interface is quiet easy. Thanks in advance.
The installation DVD of Mac OS X 10.4 contains many tools for quality development. Most, like Xcode 2.0, are only those changes that come with the previous system. However, to mark the introduction of the new Core Image library, Apple has added two extremely powerful tools, Core Image Fun House and QuartzComposer. The first lets you apply all the Core Image effects on an image and modify its settings. You can easily test combination before incorporating them into your source code. QuartzComposer works much the same principle but goes much further. This tool allows you to create graphic scenes interactive and dynamic.
You can use all the effects of Core Image and Core Video, but also combine the Image Units, elements QuickTime or OpenGL, browse RSS feeds using Quartz 2D operations and finally integrate MIDI audio services. The result can be played as a stand-alone animation be used as a screen saver you will see included in any Cocoa application through an API very simple. Apple has even included the possibility to easily link control parameters Cocoa QuartzComposer scenes.
At startup in QuartzComposer you can create a new composition from a model. To better understand how this program we will create a Basic Membership. This allows you to discover the two main windows of the program. The first is the editor in which is the graph of the scene in the main view, and the library of elements left. The second window is the monitor that displays real-time scene presented in the editor. The elements of a scene are called patches and can be interconnected.
Try for example to add the Rotating Cube clip to the stage and see the immediate change in the monitor. If you watch the clip you just integrate the scene, you find that its representation using rectangular edges and not rounded like the other patches. These special patches indicate that they contain other patches. You can navigate through the sub patch by double-clicking on an aggregation of patches or by clicking the button Hierarchy Brower. The Edit button allows parent to return at any moment the parent patch. By default, any composition is created in a patch root that we can not see or edit.