Bring Quartz Composer back

How much would you be willing to pay for it?

(If the answer is "nothing", then it isn't coming back.)

This is extremely confusing to me, I have a project that uses this technique.

If it meant that I could use my old qtz files and that the once thriving community of plugin developers would come back, then I would gladly pay. Apple motion costs $50 and it probably has a smaller user base than the one Quartz Composer once had. Vuo, the Quartz composer alternative created after its deprecation costs $300. Quartz Composer was better than Vuo, had better integration with the OS, a bigger community and was supported by many apps.

I don't see that the question is how much one would be willing to pay. If Apple worked on that basis they would have an OS that worked like Windows. Apple usually works by supporting fringe communities because they sometimes lead to attractive products Apple can then promote as part of its system functionality. I just wonder why it was necessary to drop support for .qtz files? What did Apple really gain by that? Would it really have been so hard to continue the support?

I miss it, and would be willing to pay for it.

Especially since it offered an easy way to creat FX plugins for motion and so much more.

Quartz was unique… and it was always one of those things that made Mac stand out as a not just a computer but a manifest of incredible tools that you could use to creat without limits. Quartz was special… and the projects built on quartz were incredible.

I would be willing to pay a yearly subscription if it meant they would keep updating it, and listen to the community to change for the better to integrate new and exciting teck into the system, AI, meta verse, VR, More real time FX. Bridges to applications like unreal engine, and blender, motion, FCP.

I think Apple has a sleeping giant, and it’s called Quart Composer

I miss it and would pay for it similar to how you pay for Logic Pro.

Companies like cranq.io are just now starting to use the same GUI style Quartz had years ago.

Again, I'm looking through old projects, and Quartz Composer is a fantastic tool. It's worth paying for such amazing and unique software. I tried to run QC files through VDM5, which is natively supported on Apple silicon, and some simple files run very well.

I hope we will get back QC with all modern features built-in

I would be far from trivial to simply keep Quartz Composer running on modern macOS, mostly for its foundations in the now-ancient OpenGL 1.x APIs, its support for OpenCL, its ghastly inclusion of JavaScript and a scene graph centered around the fixed functionality pipeline. With that in mind, a rewrite in Metal was always the only sensible option, even if it meant abandoning any hope of backward compatibility with existing QTZ files. Which is exactly what some companies ended up doing to preserve everything that was truly great about QC, while maybe tailoring it to slightly different goals. Once you experience how wonderful it is to prototype effects through node-based compositing (no code environments in modern lingo) it’s hard to go back. Take a look here:

https://fxfactory.com/fxcore/

Been using QC since 2008 (majorly in conjunction with VDMX5 and Kineme3D) and sorely miss it. I learned so much about programming from using it. It was so much more immediate and fun to explore than having to write and compile code. Was majorly using its OpenGL capacities in live settings, warping 3D meshes and shaders to live audio / midi sources; what an eye opening tool! It's integration within macOS was killer, and being able to roll compositions to Motion fx/templates or plugins within other applications was incredible. I always knew it was a special program, ahead of its time. Years after QC had been deprecated, when Facebook built their Origami app on top of it (or just completely ripped QC), and subsequently Spark AR, it seemed like everyone else was finally catching on. There are a ton of node based programming suites these days, but I have to pour one out for the OG king of node based graphics programming! BRING IT BACK APPLE!!

Btw, you can still find QC on here bundled in the "Additional Tools for Xcode 11.4.dmg". I think they stopped including it in versions past 11.4, but I could be wrong. Not sure how well it works (or even if at all?) on newer macOS builds, as I keep an oldskool box running macOS Mojave 10.14 for 32 bit and older stuff

Hi folks, since QC is the core technology of mimoLive, we've had to come up with a replacement. Not wanting to throw away the thousands of Quartz Compositions, we decided we wanted a replacement that can open QCs pretty much as they are. So we developed mimoComposer. It's based on Metal, so it will (eventually) run not only on Mac but all the Apple platforms. It's current in beta.

If you want to take a look, here is how:

Download the current beta: https://cdn.boinx.com/software/mimocomposer/mimoComposer-1.0b6-Boinx-(10573).app.zip Get a free license: https://boinx.onfastspring.com/mimocomposer-free-monthly (it is a free subscription for the purpose of knowing who is using it) Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/vHfnYg7Yeq

We're also hosting a mimoComposer Getting Started lab on After Hours this Thursday (April 25th) at 11am PT. To join, sign up here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIocuqsqT8pHNHE6mRQ5gMvhUAwnAd5-I2s

(It will be in the mimoLive Lab breakout room)

Looking forward to hearing what you think.

I'm a part of that QC userbase, being more of a newbie, but still knowing how to do interesting things with the software. I wish QC had an actual userbase too.