Quick Start

When you start fluxus, you will see the welcome text and a prompt – this is called the repl (read evaluate print loop), or console. Generally fluxus scripts are written in text buffers, which can be switched to with ctrl and the numbers keys. Switch to the first one of these by pressing ctrl-1 (ctrl-0 switched you back to the fluxus console).

Now try entering the following command.

(build-cube)

Now press F5 (or ctrl-e) – the script will be executed, and a white cube should appear in the centre of the screen. Use the mouse and to move around the cube, pressing the buttons to get different movement controls.

To animate a cube using audio, try this:

; buffersize and samplerate need to match jack’s
(start-audio “jack-port-to-read-sound-from” 256 44100)

(define (render)
   (colour (vector (gh 1) (gh 2) (gh 3)))
   (draw-cube))

(every-frame (render))  

To briefly explain, the (every-frame) function takes a function which is called once per frame by fluxus’s internal engine. In this case it calls a function that sets the current colour using harmonics from the incoming sound with the (gh) - get harmonic function; and draws a cube. Note that this time we use (draw-cube) not (build-cube). The difference will be explained below.

If everything goes as planned, and the audio is connected with some input – the cube will flash in a colourful manner along with the sound.

Now go and have a play with the examples. Load them by pressing ctrl-l or on the commandline, by entering the examples directory and typing fluxus followed by the script filename.