What is Quartz Composer?
Quartz Composer is a node-based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode developer tools from Apple. It allows users to create interactive graphical content, compositions, prototypes and effects by connecting together simple processing modules into complex graphical workflows.
Some of the key features and capabilities of Quartz Composer include:
- A large library of built-in processing modules for things like images, movies, particles, math, I/O, text, etc.
- Support for custom plug-ins and extensions to expand functionality
- Real-time interactive graphical processing and rendering
- Ability to publish and integrate Quartz Compositions into apps
- Visual programing interface for quickly building up complex effects
- Useful for things like interactive media, VJ content, prototyping apps/interfaces, data visualization, animation
While not a full development environment, Quartz Composer provides Apple developers, designers and artists with a powerful way to experiment with graphics, animation, interactivity and video processing in a flexible visual programming system. Compositions can be saved and reused across multiple projects.