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The main tools of trade when using Quartz Composer are patches. Each of these modular objects has a particular function when plugged together to create flows of information. For example a patch may import or download an image, calculate a mathematical operation, affect an image or function as a switch, selecting between other patches and signals. This flow ends up rendered on screen by a renderer patch.

While you can plug these patches together in almost any way, until recently you could only play with the patches Apple has included in the program by default. You could not create your own. This meant that while QC talks directly to the graphics card and renders all images as OpenGL surfaces, users were limited to rendering onto flat surfaces, spheres, cubes and a teapot shape.

Recently ClockSkew worked out how to enable disabled patches and write your own custom patch. With this information ?? at Quartzcomposer.jp developed a custom patch which allows you to load 3D Studio Max objects into Quartz Composer and render images onto their surfaces.

Via Roger Bolton: Quartonian » Custom patches for Quartz Composer now a reality. Follow the above links for all the downloads how-tos.

I’ve been playing with rendering onto 3D Studio Max .3ds objects in QC for the past week or so but have had mixed results. The fighter jet model included by ?? works well but most other objects I’ve found online have either crashed QC or rendered incorrectly. I’m sure these issues will be worked out down the track.

Here is a quick demo Quicktime movie showing the fighter jet model in QC with cloud effects generated via particle systems based on this smoke effect by Noise Industries.

Click image to play (1.9Mb, 30sec Quicktime).

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