PMPD Physical Modelling for Pure Data

pmpd is a collection of objects for Pd (Pure Data), enabling real-time simulations of physical phenomena. These objects facilitate the creation of dynamic natural systems such as bouncing balls, string oscillations, Brownian motion, chaos theory models, fluid dynamics, sand simulations, gravitational interactions and more. Additionally, pmpd allows displacements of physical entities, thus offering a completely dynamic approach of Pd computing.

Utilizing pmpd, users can model physical dynamics without the necessity of knowing the comprehensive equation of motions. Simulations require only an understanding of the movement's causality and the structure involved. pmpd supplies the foundational objects needed for such simulations and their combination allows the creation of a vast variety of dynamic systems.

These object are designed to be used within Pd, a real-time graphical programming environment dedicated to audio signal processing. Pd facilitates the creation of objects, making it particularly suitable for physical modeling. The GEM library focuses on image processing and is employed in pmpd examples for visualizing the behavior of physical models. Simulations can be conducted in 1d, 2d or 3d, depending on the objects utilized:

• mass, link and interactor objects are crafted to function cohesively
• pmpd, pmpd2d and pmpd3d are designed to run simulations as singular entities
• pmpd~, pmpd2d~ and pmpd3d~ are intended for audio synthesis applications

Cyrille Henry 2003-2024

Build instructions

To build, you need cmake and a compiler toolchain. Run the following commands in the repo folder:

cmake -S . -B build 
cmake --build build
cmake --build build --target install

You'll find the pmpd package folder under build/package/pmpd.