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Tutorial 43: Graphics in a Patcher
Animation in a Patcher Window
In order for this Tutorial patch to function correctly you need to make sure QuickTime is installed
in your system. You should also disable Max’s Overdrive option to give more of the computer’s
attention to screen drawing activities.
In Tutorial 19 it was pointed out that you can customize the user interface of your patch by
importing pictures from other programs. In this chapter we demonstrate various ways you can
change the contents of a Patcher window dynamically, and even include animation right in the
Patcher window.
In the patch 43. Graphics in a Patcher you see two new large object boxes in the bottom of the
screen. One is the object imovie for playing a QuickTime movie in a Patcher window, and the other
is lcd for drawing lines, shapes, and text. The patcher objects contain subpatches that control these
objects.
There are a few other objects that are invisible to you in this patch, not because they have been hidden with the Hide On Lock command, but because they have no visible borders. These objects
are bpatcher and menu (in Label mode), which are discussed later in this chapter.
Playing a QuickTime Movie
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Move the modulation wheel on your synth to a non-zero position.
While the mod wheel is in a non-zero position, the movie in imovie plays in a loop. This particular
movie is only fourteen frames long, so it lasts a little less than half a second. In those fourteen
frames there are only four different frames, so the effective frame rate is only about eight frames per
second, which explains why the motion is rather jerky.
By selecting the object and choosing Get Info… from the Object menu, then choosing a QuickTime movie file from the dialog box, you tell imovie what movie to read in when the patch is
loaded. imovie responds to various control messages, most notably start and stop, which are the
only messages we use in this example.
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