Field — Banner Features

Field is a development environment for making artists who make digital art by writing and interacting with code. It's underpinned most of the OpenEnded Group's artworks in the last 5 years, and in now being developed in tandem with a growing open-source community of artists and engineers.

Features

Designed for Mac OS X 10.5
Field is developed and tested on the most recent hardware and software from Apple.

Field is Open Source, licensed under the GPL v3
The source code for Field is open for everybody to see, modify and learn from with one main condition: if you distribute software that uses Field, you have to open your source too.

Interface with Java
Field is based on a large and long-developed set of Java libraries for making digital art. You'll find inside fundamental code for sophisticated 3d non-photorealistic renderers, video processing, motion analysis, AI and realtime interaction.

Render with OpenGL
Field and Field's underlying code-base are built using a reusable, high-performance OpenGL-based rendering system implemented using JOGL, the Java bindings for OpenGL.

Write in Python / Build in Jython
Field is a development environment for Python written using the Java implementation of this language — Jython. This means that your lightweight and nimble Python code can assemble and talk to any Java library you like, including, of course, your own. Even away from our main concern — digital art — Field provides an excellent Python text editor.

Work with Processing libraries
Field can work with any set of Java classes, but interoperability with Processing libraries has been given a little extra attention. In Field you can manipulate Processing-based libraries live, without stopping and restarting your applets, intermingling your code with time-lines, graphs, sliders and other graphical metaphors.

Import and Export with SVG
Field's 2d vector and image drawing libraries can export to, and manipulate, SVGs. Drawings can be "round-tripped" with Adobe Illustrator and CAD programs.

Export to PDF
Field's 2d vector and image drawing libraries can export to, and manipulate, PDFs

Integrate with Core Image
Fields comes with an image manipulation library, integrated with its vector drawing system, that's based on, and extends, Apple's Core Image filter system.

Integrate with something we haven't thought of
Field is resolutely polyvalent: use it to talk to Maya, MotionBuilder, or any runtime that can open an XML-RPC dialog or a telnet prompt; mix AppleScript and Python; and soon perhaps even Scala and Python.

Audience

At this moment, as we work towards a stable and feature complete release, Field is really only meant for the eyes of developers — people who can check Field out of the repository and build it in Eclipse and then perhaps use it to manipulate their own, existing, Java code-bases. This is straightforward, but if that last sentence didn't make any sense to you, you're going to be better of waiting a little bit. If you'd like to be notified when a stand-alone Field distribution becomes available, drop marc at openendedgroup.com a note.

Otherwise, welcome — and let's get on with installing and developing Field.