Programming Interactivity, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. openFrameworks

openFrameworks (oF) is the third and last tool you’ll learn about in this part of the book. As you may have guessed from its name, oF is a framework, which is a collection of code created to help you do something in particular. Some frameworks are designed for working with databases, and others are designed for working with Internet traffic. Frameworks don’t provide you with a prebuilt tool in the way that Processing and Arduino do, but they provide you with code that you can use to create your own programs.

Specifically, oF is a framework for artists and designers working with interactive design and media art. That sounds simple enough, right? It is written in C++ and expects that you write programs in C++. As mentioned in Chapter 2, C++ is a big, powerful, old, and (again for emphasis) powerful programming language. You can create features using oF that would not be possible in Processing because the underlying language is so much more flexible and low-level. Although this isn’t always ideal or necessary, when it is, you’ll appreciate it. It isn’t always necessary to use oF, though. Sometimes Processing will work just as well. Let’s take a quick look at some tasks you can do in Processing that aren’t as easy to do in oF, and vice versa:

Make a project visible on the Internet

Use Processing; this is much trickier to do with oF.

Make a project that renders a lot of 3-D graphics

Use oF; this is where C++ really shines.

Make a project that can run on many different ...