omino pixel blog

AE: Scripting Notes

david van brink — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:40:32 +0000

Just a quick note about a bug and an optimization when scripting After Effects CS4 (and probably earlier versions, too). addProperty() bug When adding several effects, each addition invalidates the object variable references to earlier ones. Here’s a code fragment which shows the problem and the solution. var comp = app.project.activeItem; var layer = comp.layers.addNull(); layer.name = "null_layer"; var slider1 = [...]

AE: Feature Wishes

david van brink — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:00:11 +0000

After Effects is just about my favorite software application. Very elegant model, and a clean & responsive UI. But I think I can articulate two well-considered features that would boost its utility quite generally. Feature Request 1: Foldering

AE: Projecting a Movie Onto a Complex Surface

david van brink — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:31:11 +0000

This is a rendering simulating an image projected onto a simple 3d scene. There’s nothing too exotic about it, except that the projection was done in 2d, in After Effects. And… here’s a moving sequence of the same scene. With old family movies. [...]

AE: Fake Spotlights

david van brink — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:04:23 +0000

Here’s another variation on additive lighting tricks… This one is a little experiment using After Effects’ spotlights on still images which have been rendered with similarly-located light sources. Here’s one of the several still images. And here’s a short movie showin a little more of the procedure, and some results. [...]

Snagging Video from Home Dvd’s

david van brink — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:05:35 +0000

My dad recently transferred all his (our!) old 8mm movie reels to dvd. We’re talking 1957 to 1972 for this first batch. He sent me copies, three dvd’s worth. It was pretty painless; he used yesvideo.com, which distributes through Costco. I think the pickup and delivery was at Costco. Quality seems a bit blurry, but maybe [...]

houdini

david van brink — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:49:33 +0000

Lately been trying 3d apps, looking for my next toy. Quick recap of 3d software that I’ve used or recently tried: LightWave. Fluent. This app has everything except proper instancing. Crufty bizarro-world interface… and yet, gets the job done. Expressions and scripting available. modo. Fluent. Smooth as silk. Clean and modern UI. Like lightwave, but from this universe, [...]

AE: Compositing Lights

david van brink — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:21:55 +0000

Long, long ago I saw an article or talk by Paul Haeberli, of SGI. Oh, he covered many interesting and clever graphics tricks. One of them was the idea of “synthetic lighting”, or, “doing lighting in post”. He has a page about it, here. The idea is pretty simple. If you have images (or animations) of individual [...]

AE: A Stupid Text-Control Trick

david van brink — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:27:57 +0000

Here’s a little movie that demonstrates a text track being used to “trigger” the opacity of another track. one-part.mov [...]

AE CS4: Pixel Bender Quick Notes

david van brink — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:20:01 +0000

Here are some super short notes about using Pixel Bender inside of After Effects CS4. This post is just another dicing of the available info culled from the After Effects help, and the Pixel Bender Developer Guide. But it’s the stuff that I most needed to get started, as well as a handy copy-and-paste source for [...]

After Effects CS4: Ultrabrief First Impressions

david van brink — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:15:16 +0000

Joy! I finally have returned from several months away, back into the usual routine. My fresh copy of After Effects CS4 was waiting! (Thanks so much, you know who you are!) Verrrry brief first impressions. Darker, Darker I love how each successive version is a bit darker, more mysterious looking. It’s just like Luke Skywalker, remember how in the [...]