Today sees the release on the App Store of version 1.3 of my Nodality application for iPad. Version 1.3 includes plenty of performance improvements and bugs fixes but, maybe more excitingly, also includes new nodes for image synthesis and processing.
When creating a new node with a long press on the workspace background, I've added a new node type, Image Filter. Under this type, there's a category spinner that allows the user to select between generators (e.g. checkerboards, gradients and Perlin noise), filters (e.g. Gaussian blur and pixellate), composite (e.g mask blend and difference composite), tile effects and distortion (e.g. twirl and vortex).
The outputs of image filter nodes can plug into the inputs of others. For example, a checkerboard can feed into a blur which, in turn, feeds into a distortion. The compositing nodes accept two image inputs. Some image filters require numeric inputs (e.g the size of a checkerboard) or RGB inputs (e.g. the colour of a false colour filter).
Nodality is smart enough to only enable the correct inputs when in 'relationship creation mode', which is entered into with a long press on a node. The example below shows Nodality in 'relationship creation mode' after a long press on the RGB node with the blue border. The only suitable targets are RGB inputs, all other targets are disabled:
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I've also added support to zoom in and out of the workspace. By default, the background grid lines are gray and with a double tap of the background, Nodality zooms out to the project extents and turns the grid lines black. A second double tap zooms Nodality back in, centred on the double tap position. This makes zooming back into a specific node a breeze.
The counter nodes - which increment themselves over time - can be plugged into the inputs of image filters. So you can, for example, animate a blur amount or checkerboard size over time. However, because I'm rendering every step of an image filter chain over time, this can get terribly slow.
Finally for left handed users, the detail panel can be moved from the right side to the left side and back again with a simple swipe.
On the technical side, Nodality is written using Apache Flex and Adobe AIR and the image filters are from Vitapoly. Unfortunately, the image filters library is only available for iOS, so, for the moment, this is an iPad only release.
There was some great news yesterday from Adobe as AIR installations hits the one billion mark. Adobe's development on the AIR runtime moves from strength to strength with some exciting development in the works especially with Stage3D.
