NodeBox 2

In this year's NodeBox workshop in Finland we beta-tested the upcoming release of NodeBox 2 (workname Gravital) which, as you may or may not know, has a graphical user-interface and is no longer Mac-only. It's almost ready to ship!

Here are some screenshots of a work by Rokas Cicenas, a graphic designer from Lithuania:

Play movie: sneak preview | the knight of NodeBox

You can check out all of the workshop projects at http://workshops.nodebox.net

congratulations!
(eagerly waiting for the release date)

one question: will it be *also* possible to write script in the old fashion?

Yes, you can make a setup with any combination of panels (output/code/nodes/sliders/...) you need. When you enable the code editor you will get syntax coloring and even a treeview of all the files/folders powering the node (e.g. TextMate-style).

Then in the future you'll also be able to package your code (or network of nodes) as a new node and publish it... and that's of course where all the community fun and chaos kicks in!

wow, great work! Very exciting.

love this node packaging thing. I feel it will impact in a great way the community side of NB.

not being anymore mac-only... which rendering engine have you used? QT?

and.. will the old script still work in the new version?

Wow. Looks very cool. Can't wait to play with it.

Fantastic, can't wait! Have been enjoying nodebox for almost a year now, great to hear of a 2.0

Woa fantastic news! I am curious about this graphic/script mixed interface!
Cheers

fantastic news!

does this "node packaging" take advantage of setuptools? I've been longing for better package management of simple python packages with nodebox.

What a pity...i was in Finland al the time, now must wait official release to play with it...:)

What about graphics performance? i have made one interactive piece with current version, and while working on it realized that this is not the best tool for real-time animation and graphical applications tool, it is quite slow...but i like it very much, i hope new version will be better in this terms...Thank you!

Any news on a release date for version 2?

To answer a few more questions, the new version uses Java under the hood (although users will continue to work with Python code). This means performance increases (10x is not too exaggerated I think). Old scripts might break - we are doing our best to keep as much as possible backwards compatible but we will deviate from the old NodeBox where we feel that is was not working in the right way, or where we have come up with better solutions in the past years.

Animation is not ready yet, we still need to think about how to integrate it with the new node-based interface. Also, any ideas or volunteers for a cross-platform replacement for Core Image are appreciated.

We haven't considered setuptools yet, please mail Frederik your ideas about this.

The language parser will become a webservice, a toolset with Perception and other modules that can be accessed with a GUI in a browser. This will allow you to customize the natural language component from the ground up. In the coming months and years it will be expanded with powerful tools for semantic association, analogy, brainstorming, trend discovery, ...

We'll release as soon as we feel we have a stable groundwork. I can't make any promises but our goal is to still have a first release this spring/summer.

Tom

Awesome!

Will NodeBox 2 still stay as elegant and easy-to-use as the current version from a user's perspective? I understand NodeBox 2 might want to expand to a larger audience including Windows users, but is it necessary? I hope it still stay simple and clean but refined.