We are happy to announce two upcoming Nodekit Events in Germany.

Breakpoint 2008, world’s biggest pure demoscene event. For the 6th time, up to 1000 creative participants from more than 30 nations are once again expected to gather in the beautiful town of Bingen am Rhein, Germany, from the 21st to the 24th of March 2008, enjoying 4 days of round-the-clock activities in arts, technology and international socializing.

Richard and Markus will give an introduction to the Nodekit, which is a node-based programming environment for interactive graphics that runs the Tagtool program. Richard, as the lead programmer, will explain the software architecture of the Nodekit and demonstrate how to program your own nodes. Markus, as the application designer, will talk about how the project evolved so far, the implications of offering the software under an Open Source licence and about the future roadmap of the project.

Saturday, 22. April 2008, 14:45
Seminar: Introducing the Nodekit - An Open-source Node-based Programming Environment for Interactive Graphics

NODE08 provides an event to the ever growing vvvv community, to get to know each other, to present, to exchange and share with a curious and interested audience. NODE08 is also part of the Luminale light art festival, which takes place at the same time in Frankfurt and will be supported by lighting art and lighting installations created by our participants.

The goal of the workshop is to communicate between vvvv and the Nodekit. We will send the data collected by drawing onto the Tagtool to vvvv to create parallel visual remixes.

Attention! Date has been changed to Thursday, 10th of April
UPDATE: The workshops take place on Wednesday, 9th of April
10am-1pm: Tagtool & Nodekit Workshop
2:30-5:30pm: Nodekit talks to VVVV over OSC Workshop

When Kate visited us to build herself a Tagtool Mini, we took pictures and wrote up a tutorial.

Enjoy, and send us pictures if you make one!

We’re pleased to announce a new version of the Tagtool software.

Previously we’ve been referring to it as the Tagtool Kit. We’ve decided to disassociate its name from the Tagtool, to emphasize that it is in fact a versatile toolkit for interactive graphics, rather than a specialized program. The Tagtool is just its most prominent application to date.

So let’s call it…

What’s new in Version 0.7:

• A new look
• Easier installation/removal
• New nodes
• Some major under-the-hood improvements

Here’s a guide to the Tagtool Controls in Version 0.7.

You can download Nodekit 0.7 and the sourcecode here.

For more details check the release notes!

This image demonstrates two new features in the works - brushes (Richard made a brush that draws Koch curves), and the new screenshot function - which can save screenshots at about 8000×6000 pixels. This could be an interesting feature for saving images for print. Of course saving out vector images is also on the roadmap, but this will probably still be a while.

I guess it will be quite important not to make the user interface of the Tagtool more complex when adding the brushes functionality… the plan right now is to connect a brush to the pen ID, so using a different brush means physically taking a different pen. The basic brushes we wanna implement are standard, calligraphic and a “paintbrush”, that can be used quite painterly, with more texture, without trying to emulate analogue paintbrushes. We got some inspiration from Caligraft.

We published a step-by-step guide on how to build your own Tagtool Suitcase on Instructables.com - check it out.

Workshop @ Planet Prozess, Berlin

Workshop @ Planet Prozess 2007

Development of the Version 2 of the Tagtool Flightcase is progressing… here are some schematics:

Read the rest of this entry »

Total Cost: around 60 Euros. Get yourself a used Wacom and you’re ready to roll.