Oscillare

A library for live programming of visual shaders. Inspired by Alex McLean's https://github.com/tidalcycles/Tidal.

Requires https://github.com/ulyssesp/oschader-cinder as a backend.

Installation

Prerequisites

• TouchDesigner
• Haskell (only tested with haskellstack)
• An editor (preferably emacs)

Editor configuration

Emacs

If you're using spacemacs, in dotspacemacs-configuration-layers add (haskell :variables haskell-completion-backend 'intero).

Add these lines to your configuration. If you're using spacemacs they should go into user-config. Replace the load path with where Oscillare is located.

(setq haskell-program-name "stack ghci")

(add-to-list 'load-path "c:/Users/Ulysses/Development/oscillare")
(require 'haskell-mode)
(require 'oscillare)

Other editors

You can probably try the instructions located at http://tidalcycles.org/getting_started.html, but they haven't been tested.

Running

1. Start TouchDesigner

You have to start with the correct project loaded. Open FunctionalDesigner.toe from the TD directory.

2. Load oscillare

1. Open scratch.osc
2. Run the command intero-mode
3. Run the command oscillare-start-haskell
4. Switch back to scratch.osc
5. Run the command oscillare-mode
6. Press C-Enter while the cursor is over the code directly below "Initialization check"

---

Note: This is really bad right now. It will be easier soon. Sorry for the hassle.

3. Check that it's working in TouchDesigner

The lambda COMP should have a TOP output of a bunch of triangles that move!

Usage

Now it's time to get started! Check out scratch.osc for some example programs. So long as everything is set up correctly and you have a .osc file open you can run individual lines by pressing Ctrl-c Ctrl-c. You can see the haskell buffer by pressing Ctrl-c Ctrl-s.

For example, to display a simple sine wave:

r $ sineT (float 0) (float 1) (float 1)

This creates a Sine program and places it in the "s" slot, which is the main slot you'll see displayed.

To get it moving:

r $ sineT seconds (float 1) (float 1)

Since the first input of sineT is the x position, that's the one we want to edit. Using seconds there maps the x position to absTime.seconds in TouchDesigner.

Let's make it scale too:

r $ sineT seconds (float 2 !+ (scycle 1 1 !* float 2)) (float 1)

scycle x y cycles the value y at seconds * x speed. Note that we can combine functions with !+ and !*.

But it's still jerky! We can make it slightly more smooth by using sincycle instead of scycle that oscilates between 0 and 1.

r $ sineT seconds (float 2 !+ (sincycle 1 1 !* float 2)) (float 1)

Now let's make it react to some audio!

r $ sineT seconds (float 2 !+ (sincycle 1 1 !* float 2)) (volc)

We can use float inputs like volc in place of any float value or function.

Adding an effect can be done with the & operator

r $ sineT seconds (float 2 !+ (sincycle 1 1 !* float 2)) (volc)
  & fade (float 0.95)

We can also use triggerops to switch between programs but keep them in memory, and apply effects to both programs:

r $ triggerops (constC [sincycle 1 1])
  [ sineT seconds (float 2 !+ (sincycle 1 1 !* float 2)) (volc)
  , adata (float 1)
  ]

If we want to combine them instead of switching between them, that's easy too.

r $ addops
  [ sineT seconds (float 2 !+ (sincycle 1 1 !* float 2)) (volc)
  , adata (float 1)
  ]

Tips and Tricks

• Alpha transparent emacs can be found at https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TransparentEmacs

  Copyright (C) 2017 Ulysses Popple