Using the Tweak Processing Library

A few weeks ago, I worked with Teague Labs to create a library for Processing that allows you to easily tweak variables while your Processing sketch is running. Tweak is pretty straight-forward, but I though an instructable might help to overcome the hurdles of setting it up and getting started.

Tweak is intended for rapid prototyping and fast-paced software development.  Beginning programmers often "hard code" values into their sketches as they tinker with how things are drawn on screen or handled behind the scenes, while expert developers usually build numerous classes, data types, and specifications to allow for scale and robustness.  Tweak is a friendly middle ground where beginners and experts alike can enable programs to be modified on-the-fly without having to worry about the details behind the scenes.

Step 1: Running Tweak for the first time

Tweak is easy to setup.  To get started, just download one of the examples, open it with Processing, and hit Run.  We'll go over how it works (and how you can add Tweak to your own projects) next.

There are two examples you can start from:
Tweak Simple Demo
Tweak Complex Demo

To change variable values, just click and drag your mouse over the variable's name in the Tweak Panel.