Category - Utility

This patch gives access to output values of current macro patch. At t=0 or when "Initialize" is true, it returns the initialization values, otherwise the output values of the parent patch. more...

This patch returns labelled indices of the available OpenCL compute devices on the system. This patch can be used together with the OpenCL Device Info patch to adjust the execution of OpenCL kernels to the machines they are run on. For instance, one can detect if multiple compute GPUs are available and load balance OpenCL kernel execution accordingly or detect if only the CPU is available. more...

This patch returns the current absolute time expressed in seconds since the reference date of January 1st 2001 GMT ("system time"). Use the Date Formatter patch to convert a system time to a formatted string. more...

This patch simply returns the time it receives from Quartz Composer as a number. This patch is typically used to retrieve the current time at a given place in the composition's patch hierarchy and perform some actions based on it. Note that Quartz Composer times are guaranteed to be positive or null. more...

This patch returns the current rendering destination's dimensions, in Quartz Composer coordinates system units or pixels and with its aspect ratio. The Quartz Composer coordinates system is defined so that (0,0,0) is at the center, the x axis is horizontal and the y axis is vertical. The z axis is orthogonal to the x and y axes, so that it comes out towards the viewer. The width of the rendering destination is always 2 units wide and the left and right borders have coordinates -1.0 and +1.0, respectivel... more...

This patch retrieves information about the current OpenGL renderer and checks for the support of arbitrary OpenGL extensions. By combining OpenGL Info with the "Enable" inputs of consumer patches and the Multiplexer patch, one can design compositions that perform differently depending on the hardware. For example, if the current OpenGL renderer does not have a lot of video memory (which likely means a low or average performance video card), smaller versions of images could be used or even entire parts o... more...

This patch returns the current state of its parent Iterator patch. Iterator Variables is a special patch to be used inside an Iterator macro patch. It returns the current iteration index (either as an integer or normalized to a [0,1] range) and the total number of iterations. more...

This patch retrieves information about the current Quartz Composer environment. This patch can be used by the composition to know if it's running on an older Quartz Composer implementation with unsupported features, and act accordingly. more...

This patch retrieves information about the computer like its name, IP address, system version, CPU type... along with the current load on each processor. This patch also retrieves the short and long names of the currently logged-in user. more...

Displays the estimated rendering frame rate in frames per second in the lower-left corner of the rendering destination. The frame rate can either be calculated as continously averaged, as the average over the last second only, or as the minimum reached during the last second. more...