Mobile and Web are the key point in teaching computer graphics

This year I have experienced a really difference in my Computer Graphics course. I'm still using processing in my laboratory work, but I have introduced a new unit called 'From Desktop to Mobile and Web'. You can check it out, with my all slides and materials of the course, at http://processing.tk

Any difference from my previous courses ? Many. Students were really more motivated and I have received a brilliant collection of good little projects: games, augmented reality examples, image viewers and so on. Why were my students so motivated ? Because they were able to port their processing application to Android and the Web, using android.processing.org and processing.js.

World is changing, and mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) are going to be the items everybody will desire and buy this year. It is really interesting to offer our students the opportunity of working with these new hardware, and processing allows it. We can make the most of their sensors (accelerometers, magnetometers, camera etc.) when creating a game or app.

Do you want to learn processing ?

Very nice set of 5 tutorials with which you can follow an introduction to processing.
In the last one, a final little demo is generated using input audio and displaying the different band levels in an interesting fading effect.

Created by switchboard (Andy Best).

Processing Tutorial #1 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #2 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #3 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #4 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #5 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

The continuous evolution of processing

From the very beginning, processing was created as a development platform with one objective in mind: generative/procedural art. And this objective is a reality not only because of the tools this language offers, but because some additional libraries some developers are providing to this open community.

People from toxiclibs and their incredible set of libraries for processing is an example.

In the following video you can see a showreel of some of the works created using processing and toxiclibs libraries:

toxiclibs showreel from postspectacular on Vimeo.

An introductory course to processing at Lahti

This February, from the 5th to the 12th, I have had the wonderful opportunity of being in a awesome country, Finland. In particular, I was invited to teach a short course in Processing, at the Lahti University of Applied Sciences.

It was a very good chance to see what a student is able to learn about processing in just 10 hours. My finish students didn't have any computer graphics background, but all had previous knowledge in programming.

The result has been very satisfactory, actually, I am now correcting an exam they had to solve after the course. Good marks.

It's clear now that processing is a very interesting alternative in any introductory course in computer graphics.

Kodu: a new game programming environment for kids

Game programming has always been considered one of the most difficult programming fields. As a computer graphics lecturer and a former game programmer, when I was a teenager actually, I can not say the opposite.

Processing is an excellent framework for those interested in developing games without having to use more low-level API's or development environments.

XNA, visit this and this, is perhaps the perfect choice if you want to use a specific API for computer game development. It is based on .NET and has the additional advantage of letting the game to be deployed directly into a Xbox console.

Thinking basically in new developers, beginners and those who do not want to know anything about programming, Microsoft is about to launch Kodu.

Kodu is not just a game, is a game generator. Using a graphical language, it offers the opportunity to develop computer games without a single line of code.

It is better to see it in action:




Kodu has been created by Microsoft. The project web site can be found here.

QuickHandNote - A note-taking application

I'm a digital tablet user and I love tablet PC's. When I was a Windows user, OneNote was my tool of choice. Now, using mainly Linux and Mac OS, I have to say I have not found something similar. So, I decided to develop my own tool: QuickHandNote.

QuickHandNote is a project which objective is the creation of a notetaking application especially designed for teaching purposes, thinking overall in electronic whiteboards, digital tablets and tablet pcs.

I have developed it using processing with Eclipse. Actually, this project is an experiment about the real possibilities of processing in the development of real applications.

You are invited to test and cooperate: http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickhandnote/

It will be fantastic to receive suggestions or bugs. At the sourceforge site of the project, you can find a tracker, called 'Bugs', where you can post any suggestion or bug of yours.

I have tested it in Mac OS, Linux and Windows. The only drawing tool is a handwriting one, but I'm preparing now much more. The results can be saved in a XML format file and can be also exported to PDF.

An introductory course to processing.org

I've been teaching an introductory course to computer graphics for some years. The subject lectures are taught in one semester (2 hours per week) and with fifteen laboratory sessions of one hour.

From this year on, I have decided to use processing as the framework for the laboratory sessions.

The experience has demonstrated the many advantages of processing in this field. Students are able to work from the very beginning and the introduction to the different topics is seamless. Students do not spend too much time in learning development environments, initial code templates, languages or tools that are only interesting for educational purposes.

Everything that students develop can be reused, improved and is able to be part of a final application. The level of complexity is gradual, from just writing some sentences of code to C-like programs (a collection of functions) to complete object-oriented applications.

Based on Java, with a comprehensive graphic library, inspired in PostScript and OpenGL, and thousands of users, processing is a serious alternative to other approaches. With its use, I have managed to cover more computer graphics topics in our laboratory sessions, to help our lectures at the classroom and to capture student interest in a more effective way.

You have the complete slides of the laboratory sessions I have prepared in this website.