Working with Isadora

Isadora is a visual programming environment which is mainly used for prototyping interactive set-ups used for theatre, performance, visuals and interactive installations.

Installation instruction Isadora 4 USB Key Version with USB key license

To be able to save your work in Isadora, the HKU lending and the Blackboxes have USB keys. Below is an instruction:

Download the “Isadora 4 USB key Version” for Windows or MacOS at

1. https://troikatronix.com/get-it/ under the Downloads heading.

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2. Under the heading “Related Downloads” click on “USB key Version” for Windows or MacOS. Another page appears.

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3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the correct USB key driver download link for your platform (Windows or MacOS). You will be redirected to the THALES website.

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4. Click on the “Sentinel® LDK and Sentinel HASP® Run-time Environment Installer GUI” download link.

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5. A pop-up screen appears with the “End User License Agreement”. Scroll down and click “I accept” 

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6. Install the Sentinel USB key for Windows or MacOS.

7. Install “Isadora 4 USB Key Version."

8. Insert the physical Isadora USB Key into the USB port and boot up Isadora.

9. In the Isadora menu bar, go to Help -> Register

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10. Copy the code that you receive from a teacher or workshop employee or can find in the lending environment and paste it in the empty registration field.

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11. You can now save Isadora patches with the USB key. Have fun!

Note!: If you use a USB (C) adapter, make sure that it stays in place properly. Connection to isadora and the dongle will be disconnected if the adapter moves or becomes loose. Then you cannot save your patch. So save your work regularly.


Knowledge subjects

In this chapter you will find pages diving deeper in a number of different subjects you will come across when learning and working with Isadora.

Knowledge subjects

Video Effects general

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Tutorial

About Video Effects

Isadora has many already buit-in video effect with which you can experiment. Do not be afraid to play with the different parameters and experiment as much as possible. At the Isadora site in the "Addons" section you can find many moore effects. Also the forum of the Isadora site is a good source for tips&tricks.

Tips&Tricks

Assignment

Make a tryptich using your own chosen theme. Use a single movieclip and create a composition using different video effects and movie players. Choose one clip form Pexels as inspiration.

Knowledge subjects

Layering and Masking

hq720.jpeg

Tutorials

What is this?

Just like in image editing programs such as Photoshop you can work in Isadora with layering and blend modes. Depending on where the actors are on the scene they will be renderd in different layers. You can also set the layers manually. And in th eprojector you can set the blending options.

Practice Assignment

Create a composition of different movies using the layers and blending modes. Use the underwater world as theme.

Knowledge subjects

Generative Visuals

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Tutorials

Generative Visuals

Whithing Isadora are already a lot of actors that can help you to generate visuals without using images or movies. Some of these actors are: Shapes actor, Lines actor, 3D ropes, Particles, Live drawing Actor. The generator actors also play an important role to generate numbers in diferent sequences and intervals.

Tips & Tricks

Practice Assignment

Make a small VJ patch that reacts to a favourite piece of music. Try to capture the atmosphere of the music in the visuals you create (disco, techno, lounge, country, blues).

Knowledge subjects

Particles

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Tutorials

Tips & Tricks

Practice Assignment

Make it snow with an appropriate soundtrack. Bonus points for interactivity or special effects.

Knowledge subjects

Text

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Tutorials

Kinectic type

Tips&Tricks:

Practice Assignment

Make a text animation based on the song Wonderwall. Don't forget the possibilities of the Tex/ure actor.

Knowledge subjects

Logics

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Tutorials

Using Logics

When you start understanding Isadora you will get more ideas of what you can do and how you can use Isadora in a interactive dynamic way. Then it is important to get to know the different actors that can better help you to "program" Isdora to do what you want. A good start is tale a look at this list of actor for creating logics:

Practice Assignment

Try to make a patch where the movie only plays when you move infront of the webcam. Try to make a patch where a movie or animation only moves when the mouse does NOT move.

Knowledge subjects

Projectionmapping

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Tutorials

What is projectionmapping?

Projection Mapping uses everyday video projectors, but instead of projecting on a flat screen (e.g. to display a PowerPoint), light is mapped onto any surface, turning common objects of any 3D shape into interactive displays. More formally, projection mapping is "the display of an image on a non-flat or non-white surface"

Tips&Tricks:

Practice Assignment

Choose a season as theme and:
Map a cube with a single movie
Map an object with a hole
Map a piece of cloth

Knowledge subjects

User Actors

useractor.png

Tutorials

What are User Actors?

User actors are important to bring order to your Isadora patch. They help organize your patch and think about your program in order of modules. You can compare it with function/object based programming. You can put user actors inside useract6ors but be careful.

Tips&Tricks:

Practie Assignment

Step 1:
Create a small visual interesting looping animation
Step 2:
Put this animation into a user actor.
Think about which inputs/outputs you need with the user actor
Step 3:
Create a scene with a couple instances of the user actor.

Knowledge subjects

Control panel

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Tutorials

What is Control Panel?

Isadora's Control Panel feature allows you to create a custom user interface, with buttons, sliders, knobs and more. Yhis enables you to build a patch with an interface that can be operatied by anyone.

Tips&Tricks:

Practice Assignment

Make a small VJ application with an interface using the controlpanel. You get Bonus points for design (thing backgroudn image, background colors and design of buttons). Make sure teh folowwing functionality is present:

Knowledge subjects

Serial OSC NDI

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Tutorials

Serial data / Arduino

OSC

NDI

Wat is Serial / OSC / NDI?

One of the many features of Isadora is that it can communicate using many protocols. Communication over the Serial port is handy for a wide range of devices (even DMX), bnut mostly it is used to communicate with Arduino or other micro controller boards. OSC (Open Sound Control) is a high bandwith foillouw protocol form MIDI. With this protocol you can send data between different devices and programs. this give you the possibility to use many different software together. (OSC background info, Wikipedia) NDI is a communication protocol for sending video over the network. Like OSC you can us eNDI to send a video stream form one computer to another computer or one program to another program (What is NDI?).

For serial/Arduino: 9 in 1 multi function expansion board

Tips & Tricks

Practice Assignment

Create visuals using images/movies and other elements that you control with your phone. Use the theme: "Walking A Storm"

Knowledge subjects

Midi

What_does_MIDI_do.webp

Tutorials

What is MIDI?

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music. wikipedia

Tips&Tricks

Assignment

Create a drummahine where you cmbine sound and visuals. Choose which sample to paly with which button and make a small animation for each button/sample. For inspiration look here

Knowledge subjects

Sound

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Tutorials

Tips & Tricks

Assignment

Make a simple story with sounds only. Hint, use timed triggers and audio speed. Make an audio sequencer? Make Horror story

Knowledge subjects

Motion Tracking

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Tutorials

Motion Tracking

Using a (web) camera as live video input in Isadora gives you a lot of possiblities for interaction. You can make reactive visuals that "listen" to what happens in front of the camera in many different ways. It is quite a complex and often unstable topic, but very interesting.

Tips & Tricks

Practic Assignment

Make viusuals that responds to a live video source.

Knowledge subjects

Working with 3D

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Tutorials

Working with 3D

In isadora you are not limited to working in 2D but can just as easily work in 3D. Either witn 3D particles or 3D models that can be displayed using the 3D player. You can also position 2D materials in 3D space using the 3D Projector actor.

Tips & Tricks

Practice Assignment

Either use the 3D model particles actor to create an 3D scene or download a 3D model and import this in Iadora.

Knowledge subjects

Shaders

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Tutorials

What are Shaders?

Shaders are computer programs programmed in the OpenGL Shader Language (GLSL). GLSL is a programming language, similar in style to the C programing language, that tells your graphics card (GPU) how to manipulate or generate images. The power of GLSL shader programs is that, unlike programs that run in your computer's main processor (CPU) they run in parallel for every pixel of the image. This means they are incredibly fast, even with very high resolution images. As of version 2.3, Isadora offers an actor called GLSL Shader that allows you to compile and run GLSL code. The GLSL Shader actor allows you to integrate stunning computer-generated imagery as well as new video effects into your projects

Practice Assignment

Create a new Isadora file with a couple of images and videos. Then try-out some of the shaders that can be found here or here. Then create a visual composition inspried by the words: Gold, Dawn, Human, Minority

General Resources

Here you will find a general list links to different Isadora resources.

Knowledge

Tutorials

Isadora Workshop/Resources of other people

Materials

Video codec information

(Video files with an H.264 codec might freeze when played in Isadora. You can convert your file to an AVI with a HAP codec to solve this issue by following the instruction below)

1: download video convertion software: Shutterencoder

2: download the codec on this Github page " HapQuickTimeCodec.Mac.v12.pkg " or " HapQuickTimeCodec.Windows.v12.msi " depending on what system you work with.

3: Install the codec by opening the file you just downloaded. This is a plugin that works within your video software. After installing this you can find the HAP codec in the list of video codecs in your video convertion software (Like Shutterencoder)

4: Tutorial encode to HAP

Receive data from Arduino in Isadora

(These are notes, still need to be converted into a nice report)

Arduino code for a push button:

#define BUTTON_PIN 2

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(BUTTON_PIN, INPUT_PULLUP);
}

void loop()
{
Serial.println(digitalRead(BUTTON_PIN));
delay(100);
}

source: https://roboticsbackend.com/arduino-push-button-tutorial/

Isadora settings

Communications:> Serial port setup
Port 1
Device: select -> usbmodem

Communications>
Enable serial ports

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Use serial in watcher actor
open the actor by double klikking it and fill in this code : value:int=eol
in actor put eom char on 10

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NB! If you have this on, close the serial monitor in Arduino,
If the serial monitor is on, Isadora cannot connect to the Arduino.
This also works the other way around. If you want to adjust your code in Arduino and you want to test the code, you must turn off the serial monitor in Isadora.

Open serial monitor in isadora:
windows > show monitor
Here you can see that the data is coming in from the Arduino. On the far right you can see that the value changes from 0 to 1 when you press the button. The serial monitor is for monitoring purposes only. You can turn it off when you see that the connection works.

In the Serial in watcher actor you see that the value changes from 0 to 1. You can use that output for your patch.

Example with a LDR light sensor + code

A sensor usually outputs a range of data so not just 1 or 0. In that case I use the Serial in watcher - Binary and fill in when i open the actor: value1 : integer = 3 digits

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you could folow this tutorial for connecting the LDR sensor

I used this arduino code voor LDR light sensor:

/*
 * Created by ArduinoGetStarted.com
 *
 * This example code is in the public domain
 *
 * Tutorial page: https://arduinogetstarted.com/tutorials/arduino-light-sensor
 */

void setup() {
  // initialize serial communication at 9600 bits per second:
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // reads the input on analog pin A0 (value between 0 and 1023)
  int analogValue = analogRead(A0);

  Serial.print("Analog reading: ");
  Serial.print(analogValue);   // the raw analog reading

  // We'll have a few threshholds, qualitatively determined
  if (analogValue < 10) {
    Serial.println(" - Dark");
  } else if (analogValue < 200) {
    Serial.println(" - Dim");
  } else if (analogValue < 500) {
    Serial.println(" - Light");
  } else if (analogValue < 800) {
    Serial.println(" - Bright");
  } else {
    Serial.println(" - Very bright");
  }

  delay(500);
}


Send information from Isadora to Arduino

Think of it as if you were building the circuit in Arduino and you use the message from Isadora to Arduino to turn the circuit on or off.

Work files for Arduino & Isadora are added to this book, screenshots just for show ;)

 

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Files not made by me, for more info contact me (Simone van Dordrecht) or Machiel Veltkamp <machiel.veltkamp@hku.nl>