LX is a software library for real-time procedural animation, primarily designed for pixel-based LED lighting systems.
The modular engine design contains a variety of components:
- Generic parameter and time-based modulation APIs
- Geometric model and matrix transformations
- MIDI interactivity
- Real-time audio analysis
- Color composition and blending
Output via a variety of lighting protocols is supported, including:
LX differs from many other lighting/VJ software packages in that it is designed to support non-uniform 3D pixel layouts, rather than dense 2D screens. Whereas many applications are capable of video mapping LED pixel arrays, LX functions more like a sparse vertex shader. The rendering engine takes into account the discrete spatial position of each pixel.
A companion library, P3LX, makes it simple to embed LX in the Processing 3 environment with modular UI controls and simulation, the most typical use case. This core library is kept separate, free of any dependency on the Processing libraries or runtime.
LX is made available under the GPLv2 with special linking exceptions that permit the use of CoreMidi4J (which improves MIDI support on OSX - thanks Derek!) and google-gson. This means that you are free to distribute a project using LX so long as all the components of your project are open-source and GPL compatible. Specifically, this means you may not distribute software using LX if any portion of that software is proprietary closed-source or non-GPL compatible.
If this licensing is obstructive to your needs or you are unclear as to whether your desired use case is compliant, contact me to discuss licensing options: mark@heronarts.com.
Building a big cool project? I'm probably interested in hearing about it! Want to solicit some help, request new framework features, or just ask a random question? Drop me a line: mark@heronarts.com