nannou-org/nannou
Nannou
Nannou is a creative coding framework for Rust designed for building interactive visual and audio sketches. It provides a loop-based API with hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D rendering, serving as a toolkit for generative art production and multimedia installation design.
The framework is distinguished by its comprehensive hardware communication interface, which bridges software with physical devices via MIDI, OSC, DMX, serial, and laser DAC protocols. It also includes specialized projection mapping tools for warping visual output to fit non-standard physical surfaces and a dedicated GPU shader pipeline for executing WGSL compute, fragment, and vertex shaders.
The project covers a broad range of multimedia capabilities, including digital audio synthesis and signal processing, webcam and video capture, and high-performance text rendering. It integrates immediate-mode GUI widgets for real-time parameter adjustment and supports multi-window coordination for complex visual layouts.
The project provides project scaffolding to generate starter structures and boilerplate for new sketches.
Features
- Creative Coding Frameworks - Provides a comprehensive framework for building interactive visual and audio sketches using Rust.
- Creative Coding Frameworks - A Rust-based framework for building interactive visual and audio sketches with hardware-accelerated rendering.
- 2D and 3D Graphics Rendering - Provides hardware-accelerated rendering for 2D and 3D shapes, meshes, and text.
- Audio Digital Signal Processing - Provides digital signal processing for audio input and output, including synthesis and multi-channel streaming.
- Audio Processing - Manages audio input and output streams with support for various sample formats and hardware backends.
- Builder-Pattern Drawing Interfaces - Ships a chainable builder-pattern API for constructing geometry and transformations before GPU batching.
- Generative Art Toolkits - Offers specialized toolkits for programmatically creating generative digital art through geometry and color.
- GPU-Accelerated Shaders - Enables the writing and execution of custom GPU shaders for real-time graphics effects.
- Shape Drawing - Offers a simple API for drawing geometric shapes and meshes in 2D and 3D space.
- Custom Material Definitions - Implements a shader model abstraction to define custom rendering materials and GPU shaders.
- Vertex Shaders - Executes GPU vertex programs to transform vertex positions and attributes for real-time rendering.
- Polygon Mapping & Warping - Implements quad-warping techniques to align visual output with non-standard physical projection surfaces.
- Hardware Protocol Bridging - Implements a unified bridge for communicating with external hardware via MIDI, OSC, DMX, serial, and laser DAC protocols.
- Hardware Protocol Interaction - Exchanges data via industry standards including MIDI, DMX, and Serial to control external hardware.
- OSC Message Exchanges - Exchanges Open Sound Control messages over a network to synchronize data with other creative software.
- MIDI Output Controls - Sends and receives MIDI messages to interact with external musical instruments and digital controllers.
- Physical Hardware Control - Bridges software with physical devices by sending digital signals to lasers and other controllers.
- Unified Hardware Communication Interfaces - Provides a unified bridge for exchanging data via MIDI, OSC, DMX, serial, and laser DAC protocols.
- Central Event Loop Managers - Manages window creation, input events, and multi-window layouts through a central event loop.
- Application Loops - Controls the primary application update rate using modes like event-waiting or continuous refreshing.
- Model-View-Update Loop Implementations - Uses a model-view-update architecture to separate state updates from rendering for predictable frame-by-frame control.
- Application Window Managers - Manages the creation and event processing of cross-platform windows for interactive sketches.
- Audio Spectral Visualizations - Renders graphics that react in real time to audio amplitude and frequency data using spectral analysis.
- Random Number Generation - Produces random numbers and characters for procedural generation and stochastic visual behavior.
- 3D Primitive Generation - Programmatically generates standard 3D geometric primitives using vertices and indices.
- Audio Graph Routing - Implements a real-time audio capture and playback graph for modular routing of audio sources and processors.
- Audio Input Capture - Captures raw audio signals from microphones and other hardware input devices to use within sketches.
- Audio Playback - Decodes and plays back pre-recorded audio files within a creative coding context.
- Custom Material Definitions - Allows the definition of custom materials and compute shaders for specialized visual effects.
- Fragment Shader Rendering - Executes GPU fragment programs to apply per-pixel visual effects to geometry.
- Shader Injection Pipelines - Implements an Interactive Shader Format (ISF) pipeline for real-time graphics effects.
- DMX Interfaces - Provides interfaces to map lighting patterns to DMX channels for controlling stage lights and LEDs.
- Network Lighting Controllers - Sends lighting instructions over a network using the sACN protocol to manage stage lighting.
- 3D Scene Renderers - Implements a 3D scene rendering pipeline with support for cameras and lighting.
- Vector Graphics Renderers - Draws paths, polygons, and primitives using tessellation to support complex vector shapes and curves.
- Compute Shader Pipelines - Provides an architectural pipeline for executing WGSL compute shaders on the GPU.
- High-Performance Text Rendering - Renders multi-line and styled text using cached glyph atlases for high-performance display.
- Audio Synthesis - Generates artificial sound programmatically using oscillators and other signal generators.
- Perspective Warping - Implements geometric perspective warping to fit visual output to non-standard physical surfaces.
- Projection Mapping - Ships specialized tools for warping visual output to fit non-standard physical projection surfaces.
- Quad Warping - The project distorts a rectangular image to align precisely with a physical projection surface.
- Shape Animations - Animates geometric shape properties over time to create motion and visual effects.
- Vertex and Index Buffer Rendering - Provides capabilities to render custom vertex and index buffers as 3D meshes.
- Serial Port Interfaces - Establishes and manages data connections over USB serial ports in a cross-platform manner.
- Network DAC Communication - Discovers and communicates with laser digital-to-analog converters over the network.
- Vector Path Streaming - Controls laser projection hardware by streaming vector paths to DACs in real time.
- Laser Projector Control - Drives laser display hardware with vector graphics output for physical light shows.
- Multimedia Installations - Supports the design of physical art installations by integrating audio, video, and projection mapping.
- GPU-Accelerated Computation - Executes GPU compute shaders for high-performance, data-parallel processing within sketches.
- Animation Easing Functions - Transforms numeric ranges and applies mathematical easing functions for smooth visual animations.
- Immediate Mode GUI Toolkits - Integrates an immediate-mode GUI toolkit for adding interactive widgets like sliders and buttons to visual sketches.
- Window Configuration - Allows the creation and positioning of windows with custom sizes and display modes.
- Window Event Handling - Manages application windows and responds to keyboard, mouse, and resizing events.
- Multi-Window Controllers - Provides APIs for managing multiple independent window instances and their associated graphics contexts.
