Introduction to Processing

--D. Thiebaut (talk) 10:07, 2 October 2013 (EDT)

This is a tutorial introducing Processing, created by Ben Fry and Casey Reas,
originally of MIT.
This tutorial assumes no programming background.



Contents
[hide]
1 Introduction
2 How does Processing work?
o 2.1 General Block Diagram
o 2.2 Where does a Processing Program actually run?
o 2.3 Writing a Processing Sketch
o 2.4 Running and Stopping a Processing Program
3 Translating Assembly Examples into Processing
o 3.1 Example 1: Sum of 2 variables
o 3.2 Example 2
o 3.3 Example 3
4 A First Example Using Graphics
o 4.1 Some explanations
o 4.2 Some variations to play with
4.2.1 Variation #1
4.2.2 Variation #2
4.2.3 Variation #3
5 Resources
o 5.1 Best Online Resources
o 5.2 Searching by yourself
o 5.3 Good Examples
o 5.4 Misc. Videos
6 References

Introduction
Fry and Reas present a nice and concise introduction to Processing in
[1]
. Quoting from their paper:
Processing is a programming language and environment built for the media arts communities. It is created to teach
fundamentals of computer programming within the media arts context and to serve as a software sketchbook. It is used by
students, artists, designers, architects, and researchers for learning, prototyping, and production. This essay discusses the
ideas underlying the software and presents its relationship to open source software and the idea of software literacy.
Additionally, Processing is discussed in relation to education and online communities.
How does Processing work?
General Block Diagram



When a Processing program is started, two actions take place:
1. the setup() function is executed by the processor. This happens only once. This is always the first action taken,
and for this reason this function is a good place to put code that will define the shape of the applet, and anything
settings that will remain constant throughout the execution of the program
2. the draw() function is executed. And as soon as it is finished, it is restarted again. In general the repeat rate is
30 times per second, corresponding to a frame rate fast enough for our human eyes not to see the flickering.
Processing is a language that is built on top of another language: Java. Java is compatible with all three major operating
systems (Windows, OS X, or Linux), and is free. Java is also superior for its graphing abilities. All these properties made it
a good support language for Fry and Reas to pick when they wanted to create Processing.
Where does a Processing Program actually run?
The short answer: on your computer! If you are looking at a Processing applet that is running on a Web site, then the
applet is downloaded first by the browser, and run inside the browser. If you are running a Processing program that you
just created with the Processing editor, then it's also running on your computer. Because it is running on your computer, it
can easily perform many useful tasks for programmers:
Get characters typed at the keyboard
Listen to what the mouse is doing, including changing its position, or whether buttons are pushed, clicked, or
released.
Display graphic shapes on the display window
Play sound files (e.g. MP3 files)
Play video files
etc... (see the exhibition page on Processing for additional examples of interactions).
Writing a Processing Sketch
In Processing, programs are called sketches.
First we need to download and install Processing on our computer. See the Processing Download page for more
information.
Next we start the Integrated Development Environment tool (IDE), which is a fancy word for editor, and we enter
programs.



Running and Stopping a Processing Program
Starting a program is simple: just click on the round button with a triangle in it, at the top left of the IDE, and this should
start the program.



To stop the program you can either close the graphics window, or click on the round button with a black square in the IDE.
Translating Assembly Examples into Processing
We saw some very simple examples in assembly language for doing very simple operations. Never-the-less, these simple
problems required complex assembly language programs to solve them. We now look at a these same problems, but this
time using a "high-level" language: Processing.
Example 1: Sum of 2 variables
The following program adds the contents of two variables together and stores the resulting sum in a third variable.

void setup() {
int a = 10;
int b = 20;
int c = 0;

c = a + b;
println( "c = " + c );
}

Some explanations:
int a indicates that we are creating a variable in memory called a. We are also specifying that it will contain an
integer number, which in Processing is called an int. Also, we start the program by storing 10 in variable a.
Similarly, int b means that we have a variable called b that contains an int. The program starts by storing 20
into b.
int c, you will have guessed, means that c is also a variable and when the program starts c contains 0.
The program then adds a to b and stores the result into c.
Finally the program prints two pieces of information: a sentence "c =", followed by the actual value of c.
Example 2
This example program generates and prints all the numbers between 1 and 10. It is similar to a program we saw in
assembly.

void setup() {
int count = 10;
while ( true ) {
println( count );
count = count - 1;
if ( count == 0 ) break;
}
println( "done!" );
}

Some explanations:
The program uses a variable called count that is an integer and contains 10 at that start of the program.
The next statement is while (true) { ... } which means repeat forever whatever is inside the curly brackets.
Inside the curly bracket are 3 statements.
The first one prints the contents of count on the screen
The second one subtracts 1 from count
The third one is a tests. It tests if the contents of count are 0, and if so, it forces the program to break out
of the whileloop.
If count does not contain 0, then the loop is repeated again, once more.
If the program breaks out of the loop, it falls automatically on the next statement following the curly bracket of
the loop, which prints the sentence "done!" on the screen.

Here its output:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 done!

Example 3
This examples computes the sum of all the numbers from 0 to 10 (included) and stores the result in a variable
called sum.

void setup() {
int count = 10;
int sum = 0;
while ( true ) {
sum = sum + count;
count = count - 1;
if ( count == 0 ) break;
}
println( "sum = " + sum );
}

Hopefully by now you should have enough Processing language under your belt to figure out how the program
computes the sum of all the numbers.
By the way, here's the output of the program:

sum = 55

A First Example Using Graphics
Assuming that you have Processing installed on your computer, type in the following code in the IDE:
void setup() {
size(480, 480 );
smooth();
}

void draw() {
ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80);
}

Run your program.
Notice that the program draws circles (ellipses with the same horizontal radius as vertical radius) that overlap each
other, following the mouse around.
When the mouse is outside the window, the graphics window stops moving the circles. This is because the graphics
window is sensitive to the mouse only when the mouse is over the window.



Some explanations
Once again, a Processing program is called a sketch, and we'll use both terms here interchangeably.
The sketch contains our two functions: setup() and draw().
Setup() is executed first and sets the size of the graphics window to 480 pixels wide by 480 pixels high. You can
change these around to see how the new window is affected.
smooth() is called by setup() to make the display of graphics shape smoother to the eye. This will slow down the
program a tiny bit, but in most cases, this is something we'll want to do. You can try removing the smooth() call and
see how it affect your program.
The draw() function is listed next. This function is called 30 times a second. All it does is to draw an ellipse at
the x and ylocation of the mouse on the graphics window. Top-left is 0, 0. Bottom right is 479, 479 (since our window
size was set to 480, 480).
And that's it!



This is our first example of animation with Processing. It's easy to do. Just make the draw() function draw
something on the graphics window where the mouse is located, and do it 30 times a second. As the mouse moves,
the new shapes are drawn following the mouse.



Some variations to play with

Variation #1

Locate the rect() graphics function in Processing's reference section.
Notice how it should be used:



Change the ellipse to a rectangle in the sketch as follows:

void setup() {
size(480, 480 );
smooth();
}

void draw() {
// ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80);
rect( mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80 );
}

the two slashes in front of the line with the ellipse() function transforms this line into a comment. A comment is line
of code that does not contain any code, and contains textual information that is skipped by the processor when it runs
the program.
The rect() function is asked to use mouseX, and mouseY as the coordinates of where to put the rectangle. The width
and height of the rectangle are set to 80 pixels each.


Variation #2


Locate the background() graphics function in Processing's reference section.
Read the description of the background() function.
Add a call to the function background() in the draw() function. Pass it the value 200, which is light grey (you would
use 0 for full black, and 255 for full white).

void setup() {
size(480, 480 );
smooth();
}

void draw() {
background( 200 );
// ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80);
rect( mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80 );
}

Try the sketch.
What is happening? Why is there only one rectangle on the screen?
Comment out the rectangle function by putting two slashes in front of it, and uncomment the ellipse function by
removing the two slashes that prefix it. Try the sketch again!


Variation #3


Let's fill the ellipse with a color. This is accomplish with the fill() function.
Find the description for fill() in the reference section of Processing.org (you know where to go, by now!)
Add a call to fill() in the draw() function:

void setup() {
size(480, 480 );
smooth();
}

void draw() {
background( 200 );
fill( 150 );
ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80);
//rect( mouseX, mouseY, 80, 80 );
}

Try the sketch!
If you want to change the color for something more appealing, try this color
table: http://web.njit.edu/~kevin/rgb.txt.html
Pick a color that you like, and copy the three numbers in the third column from the left. Put these numbers in
the fill()function, separated by commas. For example, assume you want to use the GreenYellow color:



Change the fill() function call to read:

fill( 173, 255, 47 );

Try it!
Resources
Best Online Resources
Processing.org: the Web site for Processing is probably the best place to find information, and to find the
language environment which you can download for free.
Processing.org/learning: good place to start learning Processing, or reviewing concepts seen in class.
Processing.org/learning/overview: Just what the name says; it's an overview of the language with simple
examples.
Processing.org/reference: the main reference to Processing objects and constructs. The best place to
search for new features and find examples of how to use them.
Another great collection of sketches on openProcessing.org
Searching by yourself
There is a wealth of Web resources on processing. Unfortunately, when you search for processing on Google (or
your favorite search engine), you may get results unrelated to the language Processing, but to the word
processing. A good way to force Google to return results that are relevant to the language is to search
for processing.org, which is the Web site for Processing.
Good Examples
The Examples option in the Processing File menu is a good source of many examples illustrating different
concepts:




Misc. Videos

This is less about Processing than about data visualization, and how Ben Fry, one of the co-authors of
Processing uses the language to represent data. Several of his projects are presented.
The language Processing is presented around Time Marker 17min.

Jose Sanchez's list of video tutorials

References
1. C. Reas, B. Fry, Processing: programming for the media arts, AI & Soc (2006) 20: 526538 DOI
10.1007/s00146-006-0050-9, (http://hlt.media.mit.edu/dfe_readings/processing.pdf)