Passing multiple inputs to a FFGL plugin

[davidemania]

Hi friends,
while working with the FFGL code I noticed that plugins can accept multiple input textures, and that the minimum and maximum number of inputs it is capable to deal with is given to the host during setup.

My question is: is Arena capable of passing more than one video input to the plugin at the same time, and if yes how should I do it? I already programmed a sample plugin to stack multiple images on a single screen but can't figure out how to set up Arena to feed it. I tried putting sources in differente layers but I can only choose between a single one or the whole composition (that gets passed as a unique texture to the plugin).

Any help? This could be very useful to create interesting video effects.

Davide

[flux]

in resolume you can use FFGL plugins with one input (effect) or two inputs (mixmode). more than 2 doesn't work - or at least i wouldn't know where to get those inputs from

feature request: it would be great to be able to use the multiple texture input FFGL plugins not only with 2 inputs showing up in the layers mixmode section, but in the same way as effects, but with 2+ inputs - and have the option in resolume to choose between the active layers as input textures.

[Joris]

That is indeed a nice idea. We'll see what we can do.

[tecuni]

maybe a FFGL router?

[voskull]

Any news on that ?

Is this now possible in resolume 6 ? Sketching a plugin that would require 2 inputs [content + uv Map]

cheers.

[Joris]

This is not possible, but you can fumble it using blend modes in a group

[Foresight]

Why the limitation ? FFGL supports it.. it would be an extremely powerful feature. Not to mention mixing multiple inputs in a layer router...

[Joris]

I posted a whole ranty text here about the lack of community development in FFGL, but you're right, there's no real reason. Hopefully soon

[leadedge]

This problem of multiple inputs has been discussed before. But there is a way to do it, at least for Windows, by embedding images in the plugin itself.

I have just finished a plugin generator that embeds the shader and images in the plugin. So you can save an effect plugin, for example, that has images other than that supplied by the host. In particular this is useful for shaders that depend on a noise image. You can save up to four images and three of those can be saved with an effect.

Here's the announcement about it.

http://spout.zeal.co/forums/topic/shade ... er-update/

I also set up a template for programmers to use ( https://github.com/leadedge/FreeframeMaker ). It's more general purpose than the original ShaderMaker project and does require a bit more work as a result. But it's not limited to the ShaderToy specification and I hope it works for the various ideas that people have and you can get some use out of it.

Cheers to all.