Hey there!
I’m a new user of VDMX and I’m really enjoying exploring everything it can do.
I’m curious if there’s an official plugin SDK that I can utilize to engineer my own VDMX plugins at the native level. I know there’s Vuo and OSC query plugins but I’m looking for a way to integrate a bit more deeply into the program if possible.
I searched the docs and didn’t see anything related to this topic. Any pointers would be great. Thanks!
-Digit
FFGL plugins are supported by VDMX and are just dynamic libraries with a C style function entry point
I don’t think you can access VDMX internals that way though, its just a general purpose VJ fx/source interface
Currently we do not have an SDK for writing plugins / etc for VDMX that run natively, but it is something we have discussed as a possibility for the future! Good to know there would be interest in it.
Sadly we did drop support for FFGL in VDMX6, it is something we’d consider bringing back if the updated spec ever gets properly published.
Thanks for the reply!
That’s cool to see there’s been some discussion internally 
Personally because I’m engineering brained (with a dash of art/visual creative brain) I tend to enjoy extending my tools with any form of programming I can to make the tool fit even more snuggly into my workflow. (VDMX is already really scratching an itch I’ve had for a while as is!)
Even a “Plugin” that could receive messages and run a program (Lua, Python, etc) would be amazing, since it would provide a huge extension point for developers to make some really cool systems/installations. As of right now I’m working with MIDI a lot as a simple “bridge” between my own processes and VDMX, this works, but feels limited once you get to a certain level of complexity.
Thanks again! I’ll keep my eyes open if the team decided to expose anything like this.
There is ISF for doing shader programming for generators and effects. Or you could go the touch designer way opening up similar programatic avenues. I think there is another one too,
Sure I’m aware of that, but I cannot output messages or data from an ISF shader, just fragment/vertex data. Basically I’m looking for a way I can receive a message, and do more complex decision making about that message, and then send a message in reply. I’ll stick with my MIDI hacks for now.
This lead me to look into the Control Surface and OSCQuery.
Thankfully the language I use in my hobby projects (Elixir) has a library to parse OSC messages already!
I think I can cook something up with this, thanks for all the tips!
Wanted to just share that I’ve managed to hack up something that fits my needs, and open sourced the code for those interested:
https://github.com/doawoo/vdmex
The general idea is my code will automatically query OSCQuery for control surfaces that match my “scripts” which will take over automating the surface’s UI elements.
Here’s a basic_counter as a proof of concept…
Really basic now of course and not very impressive looking but, I think I can do quite a lot with this setup
This is very cool, thanks for sharing!
We have also talked about the idea of having something for using a scripting language like Python / Lua / JavaScript for creating data-source generators. Like with ISF, it would be great for people to be able to just write a bit of code without having to learn how to deal with SDKs and compilers. Feel free to drop us an email if you want to talk more about this, we’d love to hear more about some of the specific use cases you have in mind that we can keep in mind as actual user stories.
Oh man, let me cast my vote for this as well. I think taking the time to expose deeper access to the runtime & UI via an SDK will greatly speed up development of useful tools. VDMX is already a Swiss Army knife but I would kill to fill the gaps in my own workflow with my own plugins.
For example, I use multiple control surfaces (one for each layer) that are used as “macros”. I’d love to be able to pre-define fx chains so that e.g. “wet/dry of effect 1 maps to macro 1 of the current layer” — so basically I want to build a “plugin” that lets me link a control surface to a specific layer, and add definitions to fx chains for auto-mapping to the “layer control surface”.
Being able to build tools like these and share it with others would be amazing.