There are many tools for visual patching, but the real gems come along only so often. One of those sets of gems was the Auvi objects for Max/MSP/Jitter, developed in the early years of the last decade. The objects were assumed to be abandonware, until just this week, they resurfaced – entirely free to download. (Free as in beer for non-commercial uses; they remain closed source. US$200 had been the previous pricing, so that’s some serious savings.)
Why does this make people excited? Auvi is one of the few sets of objects that processes video in ways visualists would expect, applying feedback, alpha channel operations, and effects in self-contained, pluggable virtual devices. You get LFOs internal to each object, so that modulation is possible everywhere. You get variable feedback with some 46 blend modes, and can use those same blend modes to adjust your wet/dry effects mix. Alpha channels can be applied … everywhere.
The effects themselves cover the gamut, from allowing you to create your own Jitter-based video mixer and conventional effects (color adjustment, motion blur, scale and rotate), to further-out effects with time, distortion, and feedback. The range of effects, incorporating utilities and effects alike, is astounding.
Full download and details:
http://auvi-software.com/
More information on the Cycling ’74 forums:
http://cycling74.com/forums/topic.php?id=27204
From the author’s mouth (and note the call for community help):
Auvi for Jitter is a collection of 83 objects for Jitter. They are well-suited for live video performance. The were designed to be very simple to use, and are optimized to deliver very good frame rates.
The features of Auvi I personally find most useful are:
— compositing (same blending modes as Adobe software)
— internal LFOs, for automatic dynamic control of all parameters
— wet/dry mix of effected image
— objects do something interesting right out-of-the-boxAuvi was formerly sold commercially.
It languished for a few years, but now it is back for anyone who is interested.I have very limited time to offer for support and upgrades for this software; perhaps the community can contribute its help.
Mac-only (hmmm, someone needs to build for Windows), Max 5 required. If you’re a Max-based visualist, these are must-downloads. Now, I wonder if it’s possible to do a port to Pd/GEM or other environments. Even if you use another environment, though, there are some ideas worth stealing here in your own work – check out the documentation.
Thanks to Joshua Goldberg and Anton Marini for pointing us this way.