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Learn Computer Graphics with Processing

59 points by octopus 16y ago

schwabacher 16y ago
I found processing powerful and really easy to pick up. It is also very easy to port from processing to javascript (processingjs.org)!
mrcharles 16y ago
Processing is pretty cool, I messed around with it a while back. Problem is, once you start making complex enough sketches, you hit a point where it would be really useful to have a debugger, and last I checked processing didn't provide that. I expect you could probably debug it with java tools somehow, but given that I only learned java via processing on a lark, I didn't explore that path.
- twymer 16y ago
  You can do processing in Eclipse to get this. http://www.processing.org/learning/eclipse/ http://www.processing.org/learning/eclipse/
mcritz 16y ago
Processing is amazing. It’s the only “open” substitute for Flash as a cross-platform dynamic graphics generation tool. Learning Processing gave me the confidence to pursue C and Objective-C.
arctangent 16y ago
Processing is excellent and I have used it extensively. I have also used Nodebox, which is something similar but in Python: http://nodebox.net http://nodebox.net Most recently however I have switched to using Field. I'm not a huge fan of Java syntax, so being able to write Processing apps in Python/Jython via Field is a big win for me. http://openendedgroup.com/field http://openendedgroup.com/field There are lots of features I haven't even touched in Field yet...
- Vivtek 16y ago
  This is the kind of thing I read HNN for - stuff I never even knew I needed. Do I understand correctly that Field lets you build graphical representations of your code? Kind of like ... graphical literate programming? This is where my wife would say "Jézus Mária és minden szentek". It's ... full of stars ...
  - arctangent 16y ago
    You can attach code to visual elements and then "scrub" across them in real time, a bit like how a DJ would scratch a record. You can also embed sliders and colour-pickers etc. directly in your code to give you even more ways to modify things. Yes, this is as amazing as it sounds!
- wh-uws 16y ago
  Those things are utterly amazing. If only they were available for windows...
irfn 16y ago
processing is indeed my choice for graphics. I tend to use ruby & clojure processing libraries. https://github.com/rosado/clj-processing https://github.com/rosado/clj-processing https://github.com/jashkenas/ruby-processing https://github.com/jashkenas/ruby-processing
sipefree 16y ago
I had to do a Processing group project course as part of my CS degree. While it's a nice toolkit for doing very basic visualizations of data, it's a pain in the hole to do anything more advanced than that. They made us use it to develop a GUI application with text input, buttons, tables, and graphs, in order to visualize some IMDB-style movie ratings data. Unfortunately it's absolute crap for doing things like that. I basically ended up implementing GTK in it, with widgets rendering to buffers and having a hand-rolled DOM-style event system. I implemented scroll views on my own, and used them to create text input boxes and scrollbars. While I'm personally proud of making it actually work, it was a horrifying experience to do using the really basic tools provided. The IDE that's included with Processing is also really awful. It can't do indentation correctly, doesn't work at all in tiling window managers, and seems to make people write horrible code. Walking around the labs trying to help people, I found that the vast majority of people's bugs were missing curly braces and things indented wrong simply because of the awfulness of the text editor. If you want to do anything useful in it, you need to import core.jar into Eclipse (or do it on the command line) and do it in Java. It seems that the processing compiler is really just a small preprocessor over Java that wraps the whole thing in 'public class Main implements PApplet {' and '}' and replaces #FFFFFF with 0xFFFFFF. I also used processing to make a tetris game (https://github.com/sipefree/setris https://github.com/sipefree/setris), which was much easier than doing a GUI application, but I really didn't get any decent drawing performance on non state-of-the-art hardware. TL;DR it's nice but a pain in the hole.
winxordie 16y ago
I highly encourage playing with Processing.js: http://processingjs.org/ http://processingjs.org/ It's art on a web browser!

59 points by octopus 16y ago

I found processing powerful and really easy to pick up. It is also very easy to port from processing to javascript (processingjs.org)!

mrcharles 16y ago

Processing is pretty cool, I messed around with it a while back. Problem is, once you start making complex enough sketches, you hit a point where it would be really useful to have a debugger, and last I checked processing didn't provide that. I expect you could probably debug it with java tools somehow, but given that I only learned java via processing on a lark, I didn't explore that path.

twymer 16y ago
You can do processing in Eclipse to get this. http://www.processing.org/learning/eclipse/ http://www.processing.org/learning/eclipse/

mcritz 16y ago

Processing is amazing. It’s the only “open” substitute for Flash as a cross-platform dynamic graphics generation tool. Learning Processing gave me the confidence to pursue C and Objective-C.

arctangent 16y ago

Processing is excellent and I have used it extensively. I have also used Nodebox, which is something similar but in Python: http://nodebox.net http://nodebox.net Most recently however I have switched to using Field. I'm not a huge fan of Java syntax, so being able to write Processing apps in Python/Jython via Field is a big win for me. http://openendedgroup.com/field http://openendedgroup.com/field There are lots of features I haven't even touched in Field yet...

Vivtek 16y ago
This is the kind of thing I read HNN for - stuff I never even knew I needed. Do I understand correctly that Field lets you build graphical representations of your code? Kind of like ... graphical literate programming? This is where my wife would say "Jézus Mária és minden szentek". It's ... full of stars ...
- arctangent 16y ago
  You can attach code to visual elements and then "scrub" across them in real time, a bit like how a DJ would scratch a record. You can also embed sliders and colour-pickers etc. directly in your code to give you even more ways to modify things. Yes, this is as amazing as it sounds!
wh-uws 16y ago
Those things are utterly amazing. If only they were available for windows...

irfn 16y ago

processing is indeed my choice for graphics. I tend to use ruby & clojure processing libraries. https://github.com/rosado/clj-processing https://github.com/rosado/clj-processing https://github.com/jashkenas/ruby-processing https://github.com/jashkenas/ruby-processing

sipefree 16y ago

I had to do a Processing group project course as part of my CS degree. While it's a nice toolkit for doing very basic visualizations of data, it's a pain in the hole to do anything more advanced than that. They made us use it to develop a GUI application with text input, buttons, tables, and graphs, in order to visualize some IMDB-style movie ratings data. Unfortunately it's absolute crap for doing things like that. I basically ended up implementing GTK in it, with widgets rendering to buffers and having a hand-rolled DOM-style event system. I implemented scroll views on my own, and used them to create text input boxes and scrollbars. While I'm personally proud of making it actually work, it was a horrifying experience to do using the really basic tools provided. The IDE that's included with Processing is also really awful. It can't do indentation correctly, doesn't work at all in tiling window managers, and seems to make people write horrible code. Walking around the labs trying to help people, I found that the vast majority of people's bugs were missing curly braces and things indented wrong simply because of the awfulness of the text editor. If you want to do anything useful in it, you need to import core.jar into Eclipse (or do it on the command line) and do it in Java. It seems that the processing compiler is really just a small preprocessor over Java that wraps the whole thing in 'public class Main implements PApplet {' and '}' and replaces #FFFFFF with 0xFFFFFF. I also used processing to make a tetris game (https://github.com/sipefree/setris https://github.com/sipefree/setris), which was much easier than doing a GUI application, but I really didn't get any decent drawing performance on non state-of-the-art hardware. TL;DR it's nice but a pain in the hole.

winxordie 16y ago

I highly encourage playing with Processing.js: http://processingjs.org/ http://processingjs.org/ It's art on a web browser!