What is Processing? Processing is an environment for programming graphics that was designed to be friendly to non programmers, yet still offer power to advanced users. It was originally created by Ben Fry and Casey Reas but has been contributed to by hundreds of users world wide. Under the hood, Processing is based on Java and any Java code can be implemented along with Processing code. In fact, Processing handles wrapping a ton of Java to make it super easy for you to get up and running without a lot of hassle. For this reason Processing files are called sketches, to relay the ideology of a quick coding attempt at a problem or idea. Don't let the term sketch fool you, a Processing sketch can be a full fledged application written in thousands of lines of code, but it can also only be one line.
What are we going to cover today:
Get to know the Processing Website and all it has to offer.
After we review the website we will get to know the Processing development environment. This is where you will create your Processing sketches.
Then we will get our hands wet with Processing by going over the examples that I have loaded to your Documents/Processing/Class_1 folder.
These images correspond to the sketches that we will be reviewing. The orange notes were included using illustrator and will not reflect in the sketch when you run it.
- ellipse(250, 250, 200, 200);
- rect(200, 200, 100, 100);
- point(50, 50);
- line(100, 50, 200, 50);
- curve(200, 50, 300, 50, 450, 100, 450, 300);
- rect(50, 100, 200, 300);
- ellipse(350, 150, 100, 100);
- triangle(300, 400, 300, 250, 450, 325);
- quad(38, 431, 486, 420, 469, 463, 30, 476);
- olive/mint green
For further learning I highly recommend the book that was written by the creators, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists.
For homework, please post at least one sketch to the class group on OpenProcessing.org. The requirements are to make a self portrait or a monster. Here is the class group.