Quartz Composer Release Notes for OS X v10.6

Contents:

Introduction

This document summarizes the major changes to Quartz Composer in Snow Leopard since the previous version released in OS X v10.5.

Performance Improvements

Geometry Pipeline

Quartz Composer now has a fully integrated geometry pipeline. This pipeline centers around the opaque QCMesh type, which contains information such as vertex locations, vertex colors, normals, texture coordinates and indices. The geometry pipeline integrates seamlessly with the rest of Quartz Composer. For example, geometry can be created and modified directly on the GPU using OpenCL.

Interaction

The creation of compositions that leverage user interaction has been greatly improved in Snow Leopard. Interaction information such as position and hit detection are provided for the Billboard, Sprite and Mesh Renderer patches using the new Interaction patch. You can route interaction information to control which objects are interactive as well as modify interaction data to create novel interaction experiences.

Workflow Improvements

Quartz Composer APIs

To take advantage of Idle State Optimizations made to the Quartz Composer engine, you can implement the following APIs.

New Patches

Updated Patches

Security