[PD] a flawed Gem (Was: Re: pdp/pidip on win32?)

[ben baker-smith]

I have really enjoyed using Gem, especially the particle systems but
also using it to manipulate live video feeds.  However, I also would
like to see it streamlined so that the gemlist actually travels from
top to bottom.  As it is now there are a lot of weird issues where
objects can be left out of a Gemlist chain but still affect it, or
where things just work in ways that are counter-intuitive to how PD
generally works.  Certain effects like [pix_motionblur] for example
will affect the Gemlist output even if their branch of the Gemlist
doesn't actually get sent to a texture.  For example, in the case of
[pix_motionblur] I had to rig my patch to set it to zero whenever I
didn't want it on, rather than simply bypass it like I do with most of
the effects patches I use.  This wasn't a terribly hard fix, but some
of these situations are very difficult to work around, and the
inconsistency is inconvenient.

I don't know any C code so I can't help figure out why this is or how
to fix it, but I hope some of these problems can be smoothed out
because Gem has great potential.  I've used it for a few live VJ
performances and really liked the results.
(sorry I can't provide more specific examples, but I'm not at my home
computer right now)

-Ben Baker-Smith
Chicago, IL