Tom Hall

This question in Facebook land was recently asked, "Why Gen~ ? Is it magical?"

While not magical, it won’t do the dishes for you but it might help you get the dishes done faster if you catch my drift.

The community answered with some really good points I’d like to highlight. Luca Scappellato highlighted almost every reference to gen~ docs and video tutorials. I really enjoyed Robin Parmar’s breakdown, here it is;

You want to create processes that can’t be efficiently achieved with ordinary Max/MSP/Jitter objects

You want to program visually at a low level while getting the performance of compiled C or GLSL code

You want to use a concise text based expression language (codebox) rather than visual programming or coding in GLSL

You want to avoid having to compile separate windows and Macintosh versions (and in the future, 64-bit application binaries)

You want to design new algorithms and see or hear them immediately

You want to design an algorithm that can run on the CPU or GPU, on Windows and Mac

Arbitrary new oscillator and filter designs using single-sample feedback loops with gen~

Reverbs and physical models using networks of short feedback delays with gen~

Sample-accurate buffer~ processing such as wave set distortions with gen~

Efficient frequency-domain processing such as spectral delays using gen~ inside pfft~

Custom video processing filters as fast as C compiled externals with jit.pix, and graphics card accelerated with jit.gl.pix

Goometry manipulation and generation with jit.gen

Iso-surface generation with distance fields in jit.gen

Consolidation of chained MSP operators or jit.ops and other MSP/Jitter objects that can be combined into one meta-object

Replacement for jit.expr with performance and interface improvements

You want to be able to have a simple way to make use of the GPU for image processing both in visual and textual form

recommended-uses-for-gen

digging into gen~ developed my understanding of algorithmic and extended my use of max/msp and discovering codebox, inside of gen~, especially programming with if loops, extended my knowledge, and my ability to program things as close to what I what I wanted to do as possible.

it takes some time and patience to go into it, but you get the reward.

digging into gen~ developed my understanding of algorithmic and extended my use of max/msp and discovering codebox, inside of gen~, especially programming with if loops, extended my knowledge, and my ability to program things as close to what I what I wanted to do as possible.
it takes some time and patience to go into it, but you get the reward.


Maybe offtopic, but, could you tell us more about the image used in the newsletter - associated with this post… the blue-green blury shape? Made with Gen perhaps? I'd like to explore how to make images like this…

Good ideas but they don't do much to help the beginner who might want to know HOW to do those things. Compared to those for Max, MSP and Jitter there is a distinct lack of tutorials from C74 about how to use Gen. I hope this is something you will consider providing in future so more of your customers / users can get more benefit from using it.

@foldh if you click the image at the top with the initial question it takes you to the original post on Facebook where a number of sources for learning Gen are listed.

Additionally, you can find the 30-days of Gen series on our website and a host of various video tutorials made by Gregory Taylor. There's also some great jit.gen tutorials coming out of the Jitter group on Facebook at the moment.

@foldh if you click the image at the top with the initial question it takes you to the original post on Facebook where a number of sources for learning Gen are listed. 

Additionally, you can find the 30-days of Gen series on our website and a host of various video tutorials made by Gregory Taylor. There's also some great jit.gen tutorials coming out of the Jitter group on Facebook at the moment.


So, a year later I see I've been quoted extensively on cycling74.com.

I especially like the bit about "Goometry manipulation".

So, a year later I see I've been quoted extensively on cycling74.com. 

Recommended Uses for Gen~