This is [sketch], an abstraction which lets you draw custom polygons and Bezier curves, useful for designing envelopes and custom waveforms. Unlike other similar objects, [sketch] draws directly into a PD array, so playback is cheap and easy.

This object is very easy to use and very powerful! I hope you enjoy it. Available now in the Context library: https://github.com/LGoodacre/context-sequencer. It needs a few externals, listed in the readme file. Unfortunately, I think it only works in Vanilla for now...

Thanks @Balwyn and @ingox for your help along the way.

@LiamG Wow!, I've just downloaded Context and got it all working, What huge project and really well presented. You must be immensely proud. And then as foray into data structures you go for bezier curves, phew!, I'm impressed.
Cheers
Balwyn

Thanks @Balwyn! Yes, a large chunk of my soul went into Context, and it means a lot to know that someone else is using it. I really want to make it accessible for others to use, so please let me know if you spot any bugs, typos or bits of documentation that are unclear. I'm putting video tutorials up regularly--aiming for one a week--which should help others approach it.

To anyone who downloaded [sketch] already: There was a problem with the first upload which prevented the abstraction from saving. This has been fixed now (it was just a wrong number somewhere), but unfortunately you'll have to re-download the patch. Downloading "sketch.pd" should be enough if you don't want to download the whole library again.

When it's working, [sketch] should be able to save its state by pressing Ctrl+s.

I've made some updates to [sketch]. A couple of bug fixes, plus a nifty new feature: you can now shift a point in only the x- or y- axis, by holding down the arrow keys. This makes it easy to fine-tune envelopes and such.

If you haven't done so already, check out the examples inside "custom formulas" in the help patch. The latter example shows how to draw an array inside an array, which is pretty crazy!

The download link is still the same:

https://github.com/LGoodacre/context-sequencer

@LiamG Hi, I downloaded context from deken (on mac) but I can't find [sketch] anywhere and it won't create. There is ctxfiles/sketch-properties, maybe there is a way to use that with just any array?

Hi @weightless, I have this obsession of giving everything in the Context library names that begin with "con", so I renamed it to [contour]. Sorry for the trouble.

@LiamG Fair enough, it seemed too useful to have just disappeared. I wanted to try it for phase distortion and now I can.

Thanks again for this beautiful library, very deep indeed.

My pleasure! I'm glad that others find it useful.

You can now embed [contour] inside the Context timeline for automatic playback! This is a great feature if you want to use [contour] as an envelope over some larger array, as you can use it in conjunction with [content]. See this video for a demonstration.

Another new feature is that the points now all shift when you resize the canvas, maintaining the original curve.

Get it at https://github.com/LGoodacre/context-sequencer