7 ms·

Nannou: Creative Coding Toolkit for Rust

213 points by bpierre 7y ago

kkaranth 7y ago
It would be nice to see some examples with code. The showcases section is empty.
- Karliss 7y ago
  https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples
- eskimobloood 7y ago
  At least there are a bunch of example: https://docs.rs/crate/nannou/0.9.0/source/examples/ https://docs.rs/crate/nannou/0.9.0/source/examples/
  - kkaranth 7y ago
    It would be nice if they had included images/gifs.
    - joshuabatty 7y ago
      That's a great idea. We will start to put together a table or pictures that shows the resulting window of each compiled example. Hopefully have this up in the next few days. Thanks for the suggestion!
    - joshuabatty 7y ago
      I just finished making some short gifs that show some of the compiled examples. Thanks again for the suggestion. https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples
- maccam94 7y ago
  The author talks about some of their projects, with videos, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/byyu30/vulkan_lasers_and_more_in_the_biggest_update_yet/eqohiis https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/byyu30/vulkan_lasers_...
  - kkaranth 7y ago
    Thanks!
anreekoh 7y ago
This looks really cool! Is it a coincidence that this has the same name as the Aphex Twin song?
- stefs 7y ago
  nah, it's named after the song (according to the docs - https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html)
cultofmetatron 7y ago
Learning rust while doing the raytracer challenge. this Looks amazing! does it work with wasm?
- kvark 7y ago
  It has moved to Vulkan, so unlikely...
  - mitchmindtree 7y ago
    Hey kvark, I really appreciate all the work you're putting into the Rust graphics ecosystem! Just fyi, we are closely watching both wgpu-rs and rendy and will continue to do so over the next couple of months. Vulkano has been a mission to use to say the least, maintainership is dwindling (most of the recent PRs are from us), and the Rust graphics landscape has changed quite a bit since we made the decision to use it almost a year ago. Both wgpu and rendy seem like strong contenders for the future of nannou's graphics, but we probably won't go down that road for a couple more nannou releases at least while we focus on some other areas. We're particularly interested in rendy's render graph [1] approach to a higher-level, near-zero-cost API. Are there plans for something similar in wgpu? Also, I realise that wgpu is web-first, but I'd be curious to get your thoughts on its potential for use in native applications for installations and projection mapping - e.g. will it be possible to spawn multiple swapchains for multiple windows? Or will it be purely focused on a single window web experience? Anyway, we'll do another post soon about our thoughts on the future of graphics in nannou, just wanted to let you know you're on our minds :) [1]: https://github.com/amethyst/rendy#rendergraph https://github.com/amethyst/rendy#rendergraph
    - kvark 7y ago
      Wow, thanks for such a detail response! Delaying with decision to adopt Rendy or wgpu-rs is reasonable: both are still maturing, and are in the early adopter phase. > We're particularly interested in rendy's render graph [1] approach to a higher-level, near-zero-cost API. Are there plans for something similar in wgpu? No, this would not ever be in wgpu (or feasible on top of WebGPU in general), since it's providing safety at lower level, and there is no way to get near-zero-cost there. Saying that, I'm not sure what the bottlenecks of your use-case are. Do you plan on submitting a lot of different work on GPU, i.e. heavily use command recording on CPU (as opposed to relying on GPU instances), to the point of being sensitive to CPU performance? My expectation from a creative coding framework would be that zero-cost is not the foremost priority. > will it be possible to spawn multiple swapchains for multiple windows? Or will it be purely focused on a single window web experience? Yes, I think this is already possible in wgpu-rs, although nobody tested multi-windows yet. In general, we put heavy focus on native usage. Looking forward to your post!
bjz_ 7y ago
Nannou was recently bumped to 0.9 - they had a nice blog post here, with some neat examples (some commercial) including laser projection: https://nannou.cc/posts/nannou_v0.9 https://nannou.cc/posts/nannou_v0.9 Being a big Processing fan, and a bit of an artist too, this kind of creative framework is something I have been hoping was available way back when I started playing around with Rust in late 2012. Thanks goes to the Nannou team for all their hard work over the years in making this possible!
- mitchmindtree 7y ago
  Thanks for the kind words bjz, it means a lot coming from yourself! I know you're busy with language design these days (and I would never stop you, I think what you are doing is some of the most important work there is right now!), but if you ever get the itch for some creative coding it'd be an honour to see you give nannou a shot and get your thoughts on what's missing, could be improved, etc :)
carlmr 7y ago
Very cool, especially considering UI is still somewhat underserved in Rust.
amelius 7y ago
Speaking of creative coding, does Rust have an official GUI package yet?
- nestorD 7y ago
  To my knowledge there is no clear dominant package but things are improving quickly : https://areweguiyet.com/ https://areweguiyet.com/
mwill 7y ago
What a coincidence, I've been using Clojure with Quil recently and bumping up on the limits of what it can do easily, so I've been thinking about my options. I was going to settle in tonight and take a look at using Common Lisp and OpenGL directly, but I'm interested in Cinder or openFrameworks but would rather play around in something other than C++. I'll add nannou to my list but does anyone have any other recommendations?
modernerd 7y ago
An Instagram user I follow has a bunch of Nannou demos (unsure if this is also the project's author): https://www.instagram.com/mactuitui/ https://www.instagram.com/mactuitui/ Nannou has a pretty long initial setup and build time (about 15 minutes on macOS for me) compared with Processing and similar, but it's worth exploring for the scope and goals it has: https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html#goals https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html#goals.
- MacTuitui 7y ago
  Thanks for the link! I'm not directly involved in the project (yet), but the team has been so nice to me over the last six months I've been using nannou daily that when they wanted to feature my dailies on the site, of course I said yes!
  - modernerd 7y ago
    Your art is beautiful! Thanks for making it.
  - yax_ 7y ago
    Here i am just browsing hacker news stumbling across one of my favorite art instagram accounts. cheers to u!
  - whytaka 7y ago
    Some of your art makes me think you've deciphered the genetic algorithm of certain species. Very inspiring!
- uglycoyote 7y ago
  This is really inspiring. If I wanted to try to create something like this, what would you recommend as a good starting point, is there an existing sample that you based all of these off? Do you release the source code for your art anywhere or just the final product?
  - MacTuitui 7y ago
num3ric 7y ago
Is it likely that Rust will have support for hot reloading? I love the language, but having a fast iteration cycle is essential for this type of work.
- whyever 7y ago
  Depending on what you mean, it does: https://github.com/phaazon/warmy https://github.com/phaazon/warmy

213 points by bpierre 7y ago

kkaranth 7y ago

It would be nice to see some examples with code. The showcases section is empty.

Karliss 7y ago
https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples
eskimobloood 7y ago
At least there are a bunch of example: https://docs.rs/crate/nannou/0.9.0/source/examples/ https://docs.rs/crate/nannou/0.9.0/source/examples/
- kkaranth 7y ago
  It would be nice if they had included images/gifs.
  - joshuabatty 7y ago
    That's a great idea. We will start to put together a table or pictures that shows the resulting window of each compiled example. Hopefully have this up in the next few days. Thanks for the suggestion!
  - joshuabatty 7y ago
    I just finished making some short gifs that show some of the compiled examples. Thanks again for the suggestion. https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples https://github.com/nannou-org/nannou/tree/master/examples
maccam94 7y ago
The author talks about some of their projects, with videos, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/byyu30/vulkan_lasers_and_more_in_the_biggest_update_yet/eqohiis https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/byyu30/vulkan_lasers_...
- kkaranth 7y ago
  Thanks!

anreekoh 7y ago

This looks really cool! Is it a coincidence that this has the same name as the Aphex Twin song?

stefs 7y ago
nah, it's named after the song (according to the docs - https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html)

cultofmetatron 7y ago

Learning rust while doing the raytracer challenge. this Looks amazing! does it work with wasm?

kvark 7y ago
It has moved to Vulkan, so unlikely...
- mitchmindtree 7y ago
  Hey kvark, I really appreciate all the work you're putting into the Rust graphics ecosystem! Just fyi, we are closely watching both wgpu-rs and rendy and will continue to do so over the next couple of months. Vulkano has been a mission to use to say the least, maintainership is dwindling (most of the recent PRs are from us), and the Rust graphics landscape has changed quite a bit since we made the decision to use it almost a year ago. Both wgpu and rendy seem like strong contenders for the future of nannou's graphics, but we probably won't go down that road for a couple more nannou releases at least while we focus on some other areas. We're particularly interested in rendy's render graph [1] approach to a higher-level, near-zero-cost API. Are there plans for something similar in wgpu? Also, I realise that wgpu is web-first, but I'd be curious to get your thoughts on its potential for use in native applications for installations and projection mapping - e.g. will it be possible to spawn multiple swapchains for multiple windows? Or will it be purely focused on a single window web experience? Anyway, we'll do another post soon about our thoughts on the future of graphics in nannou, just wanted to let you know you're on our minds :) [1]: https://github.com/amethyst/rendy#rendergraph https://github.com/amethyst/rendy#rendergraph
  - kvark 7y ago
    Wow, thanks for such a detail response! Delaying with decision to adopt Rendy or wgpu-rs is reasonable: both are still maturing, and are in the early adopter phase. > We're particularly interested in rendy's render graph [1] approach to a higher-level, near-zero-cost API. Are there plans for something similar in wgpu? No, this would not ever be in wgpu (or feasible on top of WebGPU in general), since it's providing safety at lower level, and there is no way to get near-zero-cost there. Saying that, I'm not sure what the bottlenecks of your use-case are. Do you plan on submitting a lot of different work on GPU, i.e. heavily use command recording on CPU (as opposed to relying on GPU instances), to the point of being sensitive to CPU performance? My expectation from a creative coding framework would be that zero-cost is not the foremost priority. > will it be possible to spawn multiple swapchains for multiple windows? Or will it be purely focused on a single window web experience? Yes, I think this is already possible in wgpu-rs, although nobody tested multi-windows yet. In general, we put heavy focus on native usage. Looking forward to your post!

bjz_ 7y ago

Nannou was recently bumped to 0.9 - they had a nice blog post here, with some neat examples (some commercial) including laser projection: https://nannou.cc/posts/nannou_v0.9 https://nannou.cc/posts/nannou_v0.9 Being a big Processing fan, and a bit of an artist too, this kind of creative framework is something I have been hoping was available way back when I started playing around with Rust in late 2012. Thanks goes to the Nannou team for all their hard work over the years in making this possible!

mitchmindtree 7y ago
Thanks for the kind words bjz, it means a lot coming from yourself! I know you're busy with language design these days (and I would never stop you, I think what you are doing is some of the most important work there is right now!), but if you ever get the itch for some creative coding it'd be an honour to see you give nannou a shot and get your thoughts on what's missing, could be improved, etc :)

carlmr 7y ago

Very cool, especially considering UI is still somewhat underserved in Rust.

amelius 7y ago

Speaking of creative coding, does Rust have an official GUI package yet?

nestorD 7y ago
To my knowledge there is no clear dominant package but things are improving quickly : https://areweguiyet.com/ https://areweguiyet.com/

mwill 7y ago

What a coincidence, I've been using Clojure with Quil recently and bumping up on the limits of what it can do easily, so I've been thinking about my options. I was going to settle in tonight and take a look at using Common Lisp and OpenGL directly, but I'm interested in Cinder or openFrameworks but would rather play around in something other than C++. I'll add nannou to my list but does anyone have any other recommendations?

modernerd 7y ago

An Instagram user I follow has a bunch of Nannou demos (unsure if this is also the project's author): https://www.instagram.com/mactuitui/ https://www.instagram.com/mactuitui/ Nannou has a pretty long initial setup and build time (about 15 minutes on macOS for me) compared with Processing and similar, but it's worth exploring for the scope and goals it has: https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html#goals https://guide.nannou.cc/why_nannou.html#goals.

MacTuitui 7y ago
Thanks for the link! I'm not directly involved in the project (yet), but the team has been so nice to me over the last six months I've been using nannou daily that when they wanted to feature my dailies on the site, of course I said yes!
- modernerd 7y ago
  Your art is beautiful! Thanks for making it.
- yax_ 7y ago
  Here i am just browsing hacker news stumbling across one of my favorite art instagram accounts. cheers to u!
- whytaka 7y ago
  Some of your art makes me think you've deciphered the genetic algorithm of certain species. Very inspiring!
uglycoyote 7y ago
This is really inspiring. If I wanted to try to create something like this, what would you recommend as a good starting point, is there an existing sample that you based all of these off? Do you release the source code for your art anywhere or just the final product?
- MacTuitui 7y ago

num3ric 7y ago

Is it likely that Rust will have support for hot reloading? I love the language, but having a fast iteration cycle is essential for this type of work.

whyever 7y ago
Depending on what you mean, it does: https://github.com/phaazon/warmy https://github.com/phaazon/warmy