Since more and more people were asking me how I was putting my face onto my desktop and broadcast that I thought it would be really cool, if I had a webcam panel for my After Effects. I used a different technique for my LIVE broadcasts, however I finally got around to do a proper panel, so now I can even do regular tutorials with my lovely face in them.
I provide the Webcam Panel as a free download for all you tutorial guys out there. If you want to use it please remember to shut down all other webcam applications that might be “linked” to your default camera. Also – you will need to go into the Flash Player Settings (accessible by right clicking on any flash content and choosing “Settings”) and set the Global Settings for the “local” website to “always allow”. Once that is done simply extract the contents of the ZIP file into the “Scripts/ScriptUI Panels” directory. Enjoy.

Download: malty_Webcam (After Effects CS4)

Download: UI Controls Demo (After Effects CS4)

Basic controls
Here’s a list of basic user interface controls that look pretty much the same as expression controls.

• Angle Control
  You don’t need to set up minValue and maxValue attributes, because they are ignored in this case. Besides it wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

  parameter float myAngle
<
defaultValue: 0.0;
aeDisplayName: "My Angle";
aeUIControl:"aeAngle";
>;

• Checkbox Control
  Checkbox only returns true or false values (on and off), so it also does not need minValue and maxValue attributes.

  parameter bool myCheckbox
<
defaultValue: false;
aeUIControl: "aeCheckbox";
aeDisplayName: "My Checkbox";
>;

• Color Control
  This is valid as a float3 and float4 variable type, however After Effects uses float4data type (RGBA). Even though the color picker dialog does not allow you to define the alpha value of the color you’re defining it makes much sense to use the float4 instead of float3. Defining minValue and maxValue also makes no sense in here.

  parameter float4 myColor
<
defaultValue: float4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
aeUIControl: "aeColor";
aeDisplayName: "My Color";
>;

• Point Control
  This is one out of two very specific controls. As you see in the code below it does not have minValue and maxValue attributes just like the examples above, but it’s also missing the defaultValue attribute. Instead theres aePointRelativeDefaultValue attribute. The key word here is “relative” because the the values are not pixel coordinates. They represent a point that is relative to the image size. For instance, value of float2(0.5, 0.5) would set the default position at the middle of the layer. However – this relative position is converted to pixel coordinates in After Effects and then those values are being used by your Pixel Bender code.

  parameter float2 myPoint
<
aePointRelativeDefaultValue: float2(0.0, 0.0);
aeUIControl: "aePoint";
aeDisplayName: "My Point";
>;

• Slider Control
  This is the most basic control you can have. No need to explain how it works. Just look at the code below. Explains itself.

  parameter float mySlider
<
minValue: 0.0;
maxValue: 100.0;
defaultValue: 0.0;
aeDisplayName: "My Slider";
>;

Additional controls
There are also some things that you can’t do with expression controls.

• Percent Slider Control
  It works exactly the same as the regular slider, but the display format of the value is in percentage.

  parameter float myPercent
<
minValue: 0.0;
maxValue: 300.0;
defaultValue: 0.0;
aeUIControl:"aePercentSlider";
aeDisplayName: "My Percent";
>;

• Popup Control
  This you won’t find in the Expression Controls group. It creates a dropdown menu with the predefined values. String values are held in the aePopupString attribute, but if you want to create an if statement in your Pixel Bender code than treat it as a regular array and check against index values. In this example Red is 0, Green is 1, and Blue is 2. Remember to define minValue and maxValue.

  parameter int myPopup
<
defaultValue: 0;
minValue:0;
maxValue:2;
aeUIControl: "aePopup";
aePopupString: "Red|Green|Blue";
aeDisplayName: "My Popup";
>;

• One Channel Color Color
  I guess this one could be handy in some cases, but so far I had no use for it. This works and looks just like a slider with one difference: if you do not provide minValue and maxValue attributes then they will be based on the bit depth of your project. I guess it could be used as a threshold parameter, but if you ask me it makes no sense. For 8bpc the minValue would be 0, and maxValue would be 255. Ok. But in 32bpc I’d expect to be able to go beyond 1.0 on the slider (unlimited maxValue), however in order to do that I’d have to define the minValue and maxValue on my own, and this defeats the purpose.

  parameter float mySingleColor
<
defaultValue: 0.0;
aeUIControl:"aeOneChannelColor";
aeDisplayName: "My Simgle Color";
>;

What about Layer Control?
Basically there isn’t one. In order to be able to pick another layer you need to create an additional source in the kernel. After Effects will allow you to use as many additional sources as you like, however Pixel Bender Toolkit only allows two sources, so you will only be able to test your code in After Effects. The big downside is that you can’t add any metadata for this additional source, so it will always show up in the user interface as “Input 2″, “Input 3″ and so on.

input image4 src1;
input image4 src2; // layer control - sort of...
output pixel4 dst;

How does it translate to graphs?
It’s all very similar, although it takes some time to figure out. Instead of listing all the parameters again in this post I’ve decided to give you two Pixel Bender files to look at. One is a simple kernel, and the other is a simple graph. Both of the files to exactly the same thing… nothing.

Download: UI Controls Demo (After Effects CS4)

Check this tutorial out and learn more about Adobe Pixel Bender technology and start making your own plugins.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

This tutorial is a bit different from all the others here, however I’m placing it in the After Effects category, because it’s very closely related to After Effects. In this tutorial I’ll show you what a Pixel Bender plugin is, how it works, and we’ll finish off by creating our own, very simple cropping plugin for After Effects CS4.

Sure we can crop any layer with a Mask tool, but on the other hand animating mask points might be painful sometimes, especially when you try to animate it using expressions or some tracking data for example, so having a nice and simple cropping plugin in After Effects is not a bad idea after all.

If you’ll find this tutorial interesting make sure to visit Adobe Labs for the latest version of Pixel Bender Toolkit. You’ll get a full documentation and a few examples with your download to get you started. Good luck!

Side note
If you like the article graphics (click on the thumbnail to view full size) then know that it was created with my CE Screenify and ChromAberration plugins. Make sure to check them out.

Update
If you got interested with Pixel Bender then you probably would like to read Pixel Bender and aeUIControls post.

Download: Simple cropping Pixel Bender plugin (After Effects CS4)

We’ve all been through this. Creating channel separation effect by hand is a pain. You have to duplicate the layers and use channel mixer and blend modes to get what you want. Not anymore. Now with new After Effects CS4 we can script a simple Pixel Bender to do just that.

Finally I got my hands on this amazing new tool from Adobe called Pixel Bender Toolkit. It allows you to script very powerful effects in a very simple way. What’s best is that scripts you create may be used as plugins and shaders in Photoshop, Flash, and After Effects.

Unfortunatelly I haven’t found a nice way to create user friendly interfaces for After Effects users. All Pixel Bender allows you to create as a parameter is a slider. But hey – I’m just starting. And besides – it’s still the first official release. I think there are many great things to come from Pixel Bender technology in the near future.

After writing your code and adding parameters you can simply put the PBK file into your plugins folder in After Effects CS4 and open the application. Your newly created shader will be available under the PixelBender group in the Effects & Presets pallette.

I’m currently working on a CustomEffect as a wrapper for the Pixel Bender code for your convinience. Here is the preview of the interface that I’m working on. I hope you’ll find this useful.

In the meanwhile grab the Pixel Bender plugin that will help you with simple RGB channel separation.

Download: Maltaannon's RGB Splitter PBK (After Effects CS4)

Happy AfterEffecting.

I’m currently working on a long term project. It’s a feature animation film called “Jeż Jerzy” (“George the hedgehog”) that should be out mid 2010. I’ve been ask by a group of animators to develop a set of tools for them to help out in animating the characters and other things.

Expressions are fine, but for few of the things I knew I’d need to use ExtendScript Toolkit. So thats how I started my adventure with scripting After Effects. The problem is unfortunatelly designing the GUI for the scripts. ExtendScript Toolkit doesn’t come with any GUI designer, so everything needs to be hard coded in the script. For example to add a simple button:

someObject.add('button', [10,10,80,30], 'Click me');

It seems simple, but is really a pain in the back to do the whole GUI that way. So I thought I’ll build a tool for designing GUI for ExtendScript Toolkit using Adobe AIR. It’s a great idea and I’m sure that all you script developers out there would be grateful for a tool like that, but it would take a lot of work to do it, and since I needed a tool like that right away, I figured out something else.

Before Adobe AIR came along I was a hard core VisualBasic6 developer (stop laughing – it’s the best programming language out there) so I figured out a way, to use VB6 IDE to design my forms, windows, buttons and other elements, and then convert it to ExtendScript.

Since I’m a nice guy I will share this little piece of code with you. Please note that you need to have VisualBasic6 for it to work.

Download: VB6 ExtendScript GUI Designer (Visual Basic 6)

Usage instructions:

1. Open up VB6 and start a new project
2. Design your form
3. Make sure you set ScaleMode of your form to Pixels
4. Add downloaded module to your project
5. Add this code for Form_Click

Private Sub Form_Click()
GenerateExtendScriptGUI Me
End Sub

Now run your project, and simply click on your form. The generated ExtendScript code will be placed in your clipboard ready to be pasted into your script.

The way I’m using it is that I have one project file for all of my forms for all of my scripts. To generate code for a specyfic form I simply change the Startup Form in the project properties.

By the way – I will develop Adobe AIR version for this as well… eventually.

Hope you’ll find this useful. Enjoy.

I created some functions for preprocessing the posts before they are being displayed on the site. Most of the work was around the Shadowbox engine. Among other stuff I made the Shadowboxer and Shadowbox Gallery Generator.

Shadowboxer scans the post for all links and adds a Shadowbox to them, except some specyfic file types (like ZIP) and the links that already have Shadowbox applied to them.

Shadowbox Gallery Generator introduced a new tag that can be used to automatically generate code for making a shadowbox gallery. Now all that is required to create a gallery is simply uploading the files to a specyfied directory and then using [jdGallery:Name] to create the gallery.

Both functions work great and I’m sure I’ll use them as well when my new site is up.

You can find all the information about CE Installer on the What CustomEffects are page. Remember to read the description and follow the instructions. There is some preparation required before actually installing any of my CustomEffects, but you only need to do it once.

I hope that now you’ll enjoy them even more.

Enjoy this exclusive sneak-peak at a cool plugin that is coming out in the next few weeks. Grab this tasty tool while it’s still free to download.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

MotionGrabber is a plugin developed by Avidion Media in cooperation with my own company – Polygon Studio. It is meant to help you with uncommon motion tracking tasks that are hard or even impossible to handle with AE build in pixel tracker. I welcome you to download this plugin and give it a try.

MotionGrabber 0.0.1 is a early prerelease that was tested only with AE CS3. and for the time being works only on Windows. Good news is that now it works on Mac and Windows. I decided to share this little piece of software with you because I already find it very useful. Please remember that the official release will work on Mac’s as well and be loaded with extra features, therefore it will probably no longer be free.

Generally speaking MotionGrabber expands the spectrum of trackable data. This prerelease is only able to track the alpha channel of a given layer, but the final release is going to have a lot of extra features and hopefully it will be your second most commonly used tracking tool.

Please note!
This prerelease is provided as-is with no official support. You may download and use it for free at your own risk. Polygon Studio, Avidion Media, nor anyone else but you alone can be held responsible for any damage that might caused by this software.

To install the plugin simply copy it into your AE Plug-ins directory. Please let me know what you think. I know I find it useful and I wonder what your opinion might be. Also let me know of any bugs you might find. Thanks in advance. Enjoy!

Download: MotionGrabber PreRelease (Windows)

Download: MotionGrabber PreRelease (Macintosh)

The footage used in this tutorial is a property of uberstock.com. Check out the site for some amazing stock footage. Make sure to check out Uberstock’s iStockPhoto profile as well.

I can’t let you know on any details yet, but I can tell you this. For the time being our plans are to develop a bunch of small and probably freeware plugins that just make our work as motiongraphics and vfx artists easier by simply saving us some time on tasks that could be automated or simply handled better by AE. But thats not all. Big plugins are also coming soon.

So far there are two plugins that are pretty close to finish so make sure to visit me from time to time for some more updates.

We are planning to put one of the plugins for free on the upcoming Making It Look Great 5 training DVD, but it’s nothing certain just yet, so I can’t promise you anything.

In a nutshell I just wanted to say that great things are coming your way. Stay with me!