Quartz Composer + MadMapper tutorial

Hiya,
this is a basic tutorial to grasp the goodness of using QC files into MadMapper.
You’ll learn how to publish QC parameters directly into MadMapper’s interface, and even manipulate QC content with the mouse, directly from MadMapper’s input view.

– Quartz Composer (free, how to install here)
– MadMapper 1.4.2+(free demo here)

Let’s get started.

Open up Quartz Composer and create a new blank file.
Drop in some picture of yours, place a Billboard patch in the composition and connect the image to the billboard, just like that:

Insert a filter in the image chain. I’ve used a Color Controls patch, to modify Brightness,Saturation and Contrast:

Now, we want to push some parameters so that we can tweak them in MadMapper directly. Right click on the Color Controls patc, and select “Publish Input”, then select Saturation:

Repeat the same for Brightness and Contrast.
Right click the Billboard, and publish the Color as well.

These 4 parameters will now appear in MadMapper’s interface, auto-magically.
Now add an Interaction patch (note that some people have reported problems with this patch when using Mac Osx 10.8), and connect it to the Billboard like that:

Save the QC file.
Launch MadMapper and drop the QC file into the input section, click it to activate it in the input view. See how the parameters when published now appear in MadMapper’s media inspector section:

You can now tweak your parameters. I’ve changed the color to red, and added some contrast:

The final part of this tutorial is the interactive mode.
When clicking on the [i] button in the inspector – it will turn blue -, MadMapper will pass the mouse information to your QC patch (but only in the input view). You can now click on your billboard, and move it somewhere else… :

Et voila ! You’ve learned the basic principles of parameter publishing.
Congratulations, we wish you some good fun tinkering with QC and MadMapper…

Note: here’s a list of the input types that you can publish into MadMapper:
– numbers (with/without range)
– indexes (named, limited, unlimited)
– strings
– colors
– booleans

MadMapper won’t recognize the following inputs:
– Mesh
– Structure
– Images