verse protocol.

[kollatt]

i'm not sure if anybody has come across this yet, but there's a really intriguing open source project being developed by a consortium of groups that includes blender foundation called uni-verse. it's a protocol that they're setting up that allows users to use various softwares in real-time together to create things in tandem, rather than transferring files around to various apps. here's the homepage http://www.uni-verse.org/Uni-verse-Home.72.0.html . i thought it would be interesting to see alchemy somehow get involved with the project. just passing the word around.

[Karl DD]

Thanks for posting that.
I had a good look now and like the idea of opening up to such possibilities - not just for better workflows but also to see what weird stuff people would do creatively.

However unfortunately it is not so simple to implement
Firstly it is for 3d, altho I see that there is a plugin for GIMP letting you work on bitmaps.
And secondly I am not sure it is possible to work with this in Java - the language Alchemy uses.

I think if we have a clear idea about what we want to use it for, then it would be worth the time to look at implementing this or some other external communication platform. For example having multiple people drawing on the same canvas, or having a server that saves the shapes to a database then spits them out to you randomly - this way you have a huge repository of forms to draw from.

[Sycren]

Could we not extend verse to be able to deal with 2d applications as well. I would be interested in working with this as a project in my dissertation for university this year. Would you be able to offer me any help to developing with Alchemy?

[tobias]

I don't want to stop you here, but it looks like Verse is a dead project. The last releases are from 02.2007 and the last entries in the wiki from 07.2007.

[Karl DD]

Sycren,
What did you have in mind?

[Sycren]

Well generally for my dissertation I wanted to do something with open source applications where I help develop a feature. I haven't looked at all the alchemy plugins yet but maybe using something like a webcam or some other sound input to draw the shapes. Depending on how quickly I finished this, I then wanted to go into 3d with blender.. http://www.blender.org I have already talked to the person behind verse, he has been working on a game by himself called 'love' where a lot of the scenery is generated from the computer where no 2 worlds are the same. A tool that procedurally does this would be the end goal of my project depending on time restraints.

So Verse is alive but its only 1 person working on it, I have been offered help from him if I took a project with it. If it did work with Alchemy, would it actually be useful? I see this more of an artists tool but verse could branch it out so that more people could use it ie. school children could try and make an image together or a large amount of source inputs could be used ie. crowd moving/dancing in the massive attack alchemy demo..

Im 3rd year Computer Science student at University of Newcastle upon Tyne specialising this year in graphics and networks.

[Karl DD]

Sounds great.
We would love help!
Alchemy, while only a baby project, has gathered a lot of interest so far.
More than we expected. For example, Alpha 007 is closing in on 20,000 downloads. Which for a program of this size is great.

It is true that the audience is mainly artists and designers. But there are other aspects to it, for example we do workshops with kids:
http://al.chemy.org/workshops/
In October we will also be presenting a research paper/demo at the Creativity & Cognition conference, which is a more academic venue.

The blessing and the curse is that artists/designers have a lot of ideas, but don't have the skills to implement them.
So if you look in the Ideas forum there are so many things that would be worthwhile doing, but no large development team to do them

You are most welcome to come up with some ideas and bounce them around here. I for one will give you feedback and help with how to work them into an Alchemy module.

We also have a whole stack of ideas, one that might be of interest involves creating and managing a database of shapes.
It would be very useful to have some way to estimate if a submitted shape is 'novel' or not, and furthermore how 'different' it is from
another given shape. This would foremost enable us to build up a database of non-similar shapes, and also allow the user to somehow define the amount of novelty or chaos they require.

Another idea is doing more with sound. There is a handy sound library here that I was hoping to hack into Alchemy to return the microphone pitch. Then use that to draw lines and shapes.

Let me know what you think.

Karl

[Sycren]

I think that I would be interested in the sound idea. I'm not sure how you would see if shapes are similar to each other, I mean would you look at all the angles and lengths, opacity of each shape and do it that way?

Anyway, I have to pitch my idea to the professors at university to get it accepted, I should know in 2 weeks time. I'm just trying to organise myself early

About the Android application, I may be able to find someone else to do that as their dissertation depending on the complexity of it. (It has to last the year to be regarded as a project), But if it was ported then you have motion sensors, audio, capacitive touch, video input and so on which could be really cool...

Are you the only developer working on this? I don't really mind, I just only really see you replying on the forum. Also Im in the UK at the moment and the time is almost 10 in the morning, whats the time difference for you?

[Karl DD]

I think that I would be interested in the sound idea.

Yeah there is a lot of cool stuff you could do with that.
I just this week saw a presentation by Golan Levin, who did a great pitch based drawing installation some years ago.
Some nice inspiration for you!

I'm not sure how you would see if shapes are similar to each other, I mean would you look at all the angles and lengths, opacity of each shape and do it that way?

Well the way to approach it is to convert the shape to a small bitmap, then begin to train a sort of 'neural network' to recognise shapes that are different from the others. It is not something I have done, but can point you in the right direction of some research papers detailing the process. It might be a bit easier to get a 'defined result' out of as opposed to the sound idea which is quite subjective.

About the Android application, I may be able to find someone else to do that as their dissertation depending on the complexity of it. (It has to last the year to be regarded as a project), But if it was ported then you have motion sensors, audio, capacitive touch, video input and so on which could be really cool...

Yeah you could definitely use those sort of inputs, it would be a shame not to infact.
Having done quite a bit of mobile phone development in Java I should be able to help out a little.

Are you the only developer working on this? I don't really mind, I just only really see you replying on the forum. Also Im in the UK at the moment and the time is almost 10 in the morning, whats the time difference for you?

Writing the code is only me at present, but the project is a collaboration. I am now on east coast time in the US.

[Sycren]

Just wondering, but have you heard of a program called context free? As you could use this to generate all the shapes.. and if implemented simply in java we could add it to the sound idea. context free is where the user programs an algorithm to draw something randomly, the pitch, frequency could be used as variables in the algorithm to draw a shape possibly.. http://www.contextfreeart.org/ It would enable more complex shapes to be drawn dynamically with sound input