An environment for creative systems.
gantz is inspired by a desire for a more flexible, high-performance, open-source alternative to graphical programming environments such as Max/MSP, Touch Designer, Houdini and others. Named after gantz graf.
Goals include:
- The zen of the empty graph. A feeling of endless creative possibility when you open gantz.
- Interactive programming, realtime feedback. Modify the graph while it runs and immediately feel the results.
- Functions as values. Inspired by functional programming, explore how higher-order functions can enable higher-order patterns.
NOTE: gantz is currently a research project and is not ready for any kind of real-world use.
The following gantz crates are included in this repo.
| Crate | Release | Description |
|---|---|---|
gantz_core |
 |
The core node and graph abstractions. |
gantz_std |
 |
A standard library of commonly useful nodes. |
gantz_egui |
 |
UI traits and widgets that make up the gantz GUI. |
bevy_gantz |
 |
TODO A bevy plugin for gantz. |
gantz |
 |
TODO The top-level gantz app. |
gantz allows for constructing executable directed graphs by composing together Nodes.
Nodes are a way to allow users to abstract and encapsulate logic into smaller, re-usable components, similar to a function in a coded programming language.
Every Node is made up of a number of inputs, a number of outputs, and an expression that takes the inputs as arguments and returns the outputs in a list. Values can be anything including numbers, strings, lists, maps, functions and more.
Nodes can opt-in to state, branching on their outputs, and acting as entrypoints to the graph.
Graphs describe the composition of one or more nodes. A graph may contain one or more nested graphs represented as nodes, forming the main method of abstraction within gantz.
Graphs are compiled to steel, an embeddable scheme written in Rust designed for embedding in Rust applications. This allows for fast dynamic evaluation, while providing the option to specialise node implementations using native Rust functions where necessary.
The generated steel code is designed solely for interaction from the main GUI thread. For realtime audio DSP, GPU shaders, and other domains with unique constraints, a specialised subgraph will be derived from the top-level gantz graph.
See the gantz_core/tests directory for some very basic, early proof-of-concept
tests.
