The Mac may be in the spotlight these days, but Windows may boast the broadest access to freeware and open source tools for live visuals.

The latest edition: VisualJockey, as pointed out (alongside other free Windows tools) by beatfix on comments.

VisualJockey: Real-time Animation

You get a pretty powerful set of tools in this app, first introduced in 1999:

• Full Windows support, including Vista
• Alpha support throughout; image, AVI, QuickTime file format compatibility
• Global keystone capability
• MIDI, multi-monitor support
• Compatible with FreeFrame plug-ins (open plug-in spec for visuals)
• Sound beatmatching, internal LFOs with lots of waveshapes
• Generators for particles, patterns
• 2D color filtering, effects, blue screen
• 20+ transitions or custom bitmap transitions
• 3D support for 3DS import, primitives, 3D animation
• Export to AVI (which means it can double as an editor)

In fact, VisualJockey’s approach I think is unique — a set of tabs controlling different approaches, a hybrid blend of other interface paradigms. Want a timeline? A reactive sound system? A modular, generative 3D patch? It’s all in there. The UI is decidedly retro, and you get more flexibility from true modular patching environments, but at this price, if you feel like you want another tool in your belt, it’s hard to resist. And with export, this could be handy to have around alongside your existing tool of choice.

But VisualJockey is just the start — here are a few more from beatfix (and me):

More reasons you love OSC? You can get input from a SpaceNavigator 3D mouse, and translate the data into Max/MSP/Jitter, Quartz Composer, VDMX5 (as mentioned earlier today), Processing, and other tools — plus everything else, via MIDI. The solution: the inexpensive Mac utility OSCulator, covered this evening over on CDMusic:

OSCulator for Mac: Alternative Control, Now with 3D Mice, AppleScript, Combos

3D mice, eh? Suddenly navigating those 3D generative graphics built in Processing for a live performance starts to sound more appealing, huh?

Earlier today:

VDMX5, Now with OpenSoundControl - Everyone Else, You Listening?

So, yeah, we will have to do that “dummie’s guide” to OSC as promised earlier!

If you’ve been intrigued by all this talk of Quartz Composer, the free visual creation software that ships with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, here’s your chance to actually learn how to do cool stuff with it. Our friend Momo walks us through a basic tutorial on simple 3D and audio processing, which you could easily apply to more complex ideas. With QC support in the upcoming VDMX5, you could drop this into a VJ set with traditional clips, as well. We’ve got step-by-step instructions, plus a video. Let us know if you create anything wild with this as its basis.

Quartz Composer: Lighting 3D Cubes and Moving them with Audio Input from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

In this Quartz Composer tutorial, We’re going to make a 3D cube that responds to our voice.

First we start up Quartz Composer. The icon will be different depending on whether you’re running OS X 10.5 or 10.4.

From the File menu, choose New Blank (or simply ‘New’ in Tiger).

Quartz Composer, first introduced in OS X 10.4 and rooted in the underground visual app PixelShox, is a hidden gem in Mac OS X. This free visual tool makes some sophisticated video and 3D magic possible without coding. While promising, the version in 10.4 had some significant shortcomings. We turn to Keith Lang of developer plasq, creators of Skitch and ComicLife, to give us an inside look. Keith is not a programmer — so he’s all the more eager to go the visual patching route — but he has had his hands on QC for some time in Leopard dev builds. And now, he’s free to tell us all he knows. -PK

Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” is here, and the initial hoopla about the reflective dock has died down. Now that we’ve all passed through the Seven Stages of Acceptance, we have an opportunity to take this brief slither of quiet to delve into the subtler changes within the big new cat. Those changes include improvements made to Quartz Composer, the quaint and oft-misunderstood visual processing environment bundled with the Developer Tools.

What You See: The Interface

For the uninitiated, Quartz Composer is an ‘environment’ tool which lets you patch together various elements in order to build screensavers, performance environments, and animated windows for use within an application. If you’ve ever looked at an Apple screensaver, played with the new iChat Effects or watched photos float and twirl on an Apple TV, then you’re familiar with what Quartz Composer can do. Its peers are tools like Pd (Pure Data), Processing, and Max/MSP/Jitter, with Quartz Composer heavily geared towards motion animation of processed video and images. Input can be everything ranging from your iSight to XML to audio to a Wiimote, with output being a window on 3d space containing all the sprites, effects and movement you care for. Because Quartz Composer is a real-time system, you can plug stuff together whilst watching and tweaking. The underlying engine is very efficient - and with a little work you can create teh cool, without ever needing to type teh code.

I’m a complete idiot when it comes to mental arithmetic and aspect ratios. Everything else I can convert in my head, and yet … here is an absurdly simplistic solution:

Aspect Ratio Calculator

Built in Java. Now, should Jaymis and I set about building our own open source alternative with lots of powerful features? (I expect I can work out how to program division.) Feature requests?

Adobe Labs keeps pumping out wonderfulness on a weekly basis. The latest treat is called kuler, an online color theme app. You’ve seen plenty of these before if you do any Web work, but this is different. First, the interface is absolutely gorgeous and intuitive; even if you’re as color-clueless as I am, you’ll love exploring different color themes. Second, it’s built entirely in Flash, making it far more dynamic. Third, and most importantly, you can share the color themes you create. Navigate by popularity, rating, or tag, then open a color theme and edit it yourself, or publish your own. When you’ve found one you like, you can export to Adobe CS2 apps (or just make a note of the color values, of course).

Check it out. Flash 9 is required (and if you don’t have it yet, it’s time — it’s out of beta).

kuler [Adobe Labs]

I’m always looking for color inspiration for my visuals and designs, so I’ll be back.

TyphoonLabs Shader Designer is a free IDE for creating your own vertex and pixel/fragment shaders, the magical code snippets that process 3D geometries, textures, and even images and video on your GPU. I’ve been fiddling around with it a bit on Windows as I work on learning OpenGL’s shading language, GLSL, and it seems quite handy. Previously Windows-only, it’s now available on Linux, as well. (It was developed with .NET, which is getting increasingly nice OpenGL tools of its own.)

TyphoonLabs Shader Designer

With code completion and syntax highlighting, easy access to settings, and real-time previews, this could be just the tool for someone learning about shaders for use in other software, like Max/MSP/Jitter.

If you’re on the Mac and want something similar, make sure you’ve installed the developer tools from the OS X 10.4 disc, and check out the 3D folders. There’s a similar tool for working with shaders included in the OS X distribution.

We hope to have more shader coverage through 2006, so hold onto your seats for some newbie-friendly shader tutorials. (I.e., if we can do it, you can do it.)

Via OpenGL.org’s news blog, an excellent source for all the latest OpenGL geekery.

Working with visuals means working with color, and if you spend a lot of time coding visuals in tools like Flash/ActionScript and Processing, keeping track of color and different color codes becomes even more vital. One of the first tools Mac users miss on Windows is the color palette. But I’ve become addicted to a tool that’s so handy, I miss it when I’m on my Macs:

Iconico ColorPic

ColorPic provides all the basic color picker options, with different available color mixers, HSV/RGB value readouts, and numeric and hex values. Where it excels, though, is in a powerful color picker with a magnification and grid option, and the ability to save palettes of chips. The grabber is especially customizable and makes finding exact pixel values unusually easy, and the whole palette floats on top of all windows. This free utility is better than some shareware options I’ve used. It’s definitely on my “top 10 list” for the first Windows utilities I’ll install.

Got a favorite utility for visual work, on Windows, Mac, or Linux? Let us know.

In our last episode, I was assembling my fantastic new portable Shuttle PC in glorious comic book form. I got as far as booting Ubuntu Linux off a CD, but obviously I wouldn’t want to stop there. Next steps: getting the onboard NVIDIA RAID working, and making a lean, livable Windows XP install I won’t hate (always a great reason for building your own machine). Happily, both problems have a single solution: nLite. (Shown below, with its awe-inspiring tweakability.)

Sorry, no comics this time. But if we can save time installing and tweaking Windows, we’ll have more reason to read real comics.