5 Free Apps to create Motion Graphics

Satya Meka posted 5 Free/Open Source Apps to create Mind Blowing Motion Graphics to his gutsblow blog:

"there are many other applications that are professionally used and they produce mind blowing visuals. Some of them, might not be as easy to use as regular applications like After Effects/Motion, but there are many resources to get started. With the help of these applications, you can produce really unique and robust visuals. Along with the details of the Applications, I also included some of the famous works done by various artists using them."

Here's the first five; details and movies are at gutsblow:

1. Processing (like a fusion of AE and Flash)
2. Quartz Composer (more ease of use from Apple)
3. VVVV (realtime video synthesis for Windows, similar to Quartz Composer)
4. eMotion (force-based physics simulations)
5. Nodebox (similar to Processing but based on Python)

Conduit for Flash Pixel Bender

Lacquer has extended their Conduit compositing plug-in for After Effects and Photoshop to Pixel Bender (via). Conduit for Flash Pixel Bender is in beta but you can buy in now; see the samples. Training movies and more about Conduit can be found at DV Garage; previous notes on Pixel Bender are here.

Update: This version probably will only export .PBJ (Pixel Bender Bytecode) files for Flash, not .PBK (Pixel Bender Kernels) and .PBG (Pixel Bender Graphs, networks of kernels), which are supposed to be the only formats supported in After Effects CS4 and the forthcoming Photoshop Pixel Bender filter extension.

Update 2: There are similar products that work with FxPlug technology on Mac OS X and allow modifciation and filter export of work done in the node-based Apple Quartz Composer. For example, FxFactory Pro allows you to create visual effects plug-ins starting from Quartz compositions. Previous notes here also mentioned Effect Builder AE from Pixlock and QC Integration FX.

Update 3: a Pixel Bender filter based on the ‘Droste effect’ (via) might be fun. There's actual animations available at Leiden University's Escher and the Droste effect; see the frames below from an animation from A logarithmic image transformation by Jos Leys.

Update 4: and of course a Pixel Bender did come 6 weeks later; see free 'Droste Effect' Pixel Bender filter.

Quartz Composer in Leopard

Create Digital Motion runs down the latest in Quartz Composer in Leopard Visual Magic: What’s New in Free Quartz Composer Tool.

You can stay in AE with some of this; see 'Effect Builder AE' makes filters from Core Image.

Update: QC Integration FX offers something similar, letting you make Quartz Composer projects into FxPlug filters.

Update 2: Quartz Composer Tutorial by DVCreators.net via Create Digital Motion

'Effect Builder AE' makes filters from Core Image

Toolfarm mentioned a new Mac-only product, Effect Builder AE. Pixlock explains:
"Effect Builder AE is our development kit for building Adobe After Effects™ plug-ins from Quartz Compositions. With Effect Builder AE and Quartz Composer you can quickly create your own effects like generators, filters, and transitions without programming knowledge. With Core Image enabled graphics hardware, effects are rendered hardware accelerated."

Now someone should be doing something similar with Adobe's Hydra/AIF, which could possibly cover AE, Premiere, Photoshop, and Flash.

Update: QC Integration FX offers something similar -- an ability to integrate any Quartz Composer composition as a plugin directly into Final Cut Pro and Motion. QC Integration already includes 52 Quartz Composer compositions, all fully usable as high quality visual effects plugins for Final Cut Pro and Motion.

VJ image processing & Quartz

Create Digital Motion is a webzine and community site for VJs and other producers of moving images, with articles even for those thinking of plunging into learning image processing.

They even started a blog on Apple's Quartz Composer, Quartz Composer Journal, and link to a Quartz Composer Wiki that I missed.
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What Is Quartz (or Why Can't Windows Do That)

O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter has an article on MacOS X Quartz by Matthew Russell. Here's an excerpt:

Quartz is the heart and soul of Mac OS X's graphics layer, which directly supports the defining features of the Aqua desktop experience. Quartz is largely based upon Adobe's PDF specification, but it has roots tracing all the way back to PostScript. The two defining components of Quartz are Quartz Compositor and Quartz 2D. Quartz Compositor is OS X's powerful window server, and Quartz 2D is the two-dimensional drawing engine that's often referred to as Core Graphics. Although Quartz 2D is accessible through the Application Services umbrella framework, Tiger introduced Quartz Composer: an alternative way to explore the power of Quartz through a powerful visual programming environment.

Core Image in Avid filters and Edo compositing app

Core Image apps are gaining traction. The latest version of Edo apparently has support for playback of Quartz Compositions as clips.

Also, Noise Industries' Reactor plug-ins are based on Core Image. Factory Floor lets you make your own AVX plug-ins based on any Core Image Unit in just a few clicks. Reactor plug-ins can also be based on Quartz Compositions.

Quartz Composer & Core Image Funhouse

Among the new graphics technologies in OSX/Tiger is “Quartz Composer” in the /DeveloperTools/Applications/Graphics Tools folder at the root of your hard drive. There seems to be some amazing stuff brewing that we can adjust and save as screensavers and movies. For support and inspiration, check out the Quartz Composer Programming Guide at Apple, and the Quartz Compositions forum.

Some developers have already leveraged this stuff it seems, like LiveQuartz and iMaginator.

And, via heyblog:
"By the way, the “Core Image Funhouse” also in the Applications>Graphics Tools folder is a neat example application, too. On my Powerbook, most of the Photoshop-like effects it can demo (like Gaussian blurs) are wicked fast."
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