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vCam.v2 keeps on trucking

Trucking is a way of adding depth to an animated scene. It is also a long and difficult process to get right when you are using manual tweening, which is why we have decided to automate the process...

Trucking (also known as parallax for the non-animator dummies in the house... um... that’s me that is) is something that Phillips will be using in his latest animation blockbuster. Anyway, he asked me if I could save some time by doing it through ActionScript, and as usual I said 'Lemmee see what I can do'.

I’m told trucking is a real pain for animators to emulate in Flash so we (well, Adam) thought it would be a good idea to add it to the original vCam (virtual camera).

Here's a scene without trucking. It is a simple pan, created via the original vCam. Click the image to see the animation... oh, and if you can only see a blank space, it is probably because you need to download the Flash 8 player.

Here's the same scene with trucking, courtesy of the vCam in progress. Click the image to see the effect.

I think you'll agree that this one looks much more interesting - and it was knocked up in no time, using the first animation as the input into the vCam.v2.

Anyway, Phillips is happy, although he still keeps mentioning a depth of focus blur effect (using Flash 8 filters) that he also wants me to add to the vCam 'because then the vCam will have everything - panning, zooming, rotation, trucking and depth of field blur'... but I think he just wants it so that he can win another zillion animation awards as part of his ongoing devious plan for world domination.

Added 27 October
Bad terminology alert: I've had my wrists slapped over my bad use of animation terms. Adam writes:

Trucking is an old animation term, but the modern professional filmmaking terms are 'tracking' and 'dolly'.

A truck is a trolley that the camera sits on
A track is a mini-railway track that the camera rolls on
A dolly is a rubber-wheeled trolley that the camera rolls on

Therefore, the vCam v2 has track/dolly capabilities now. On researching the terms, I also found that the vCam is capable of 'craning' as well, which is an airborne version of tracking that goes in 3 dimensions.. I'll provide examples for all of these using the vCam in chapter 6 [of the O'Reilly Flash animation/scripting book myself and Adam have been writing together, watch this space for release date].

Anyways, just letting you know, so that you can change the words on your blog :D

I don't think I'll change the title of this blog entry though. It will take me weeks to come up with something even remotely as cheesy as vCam.v2 keeps on trucking.

Added 19 November
For the Flash 5 and 6 users who have been filling my inbox with requests for versions of the vCam for them, a Flash MX (Flash 6) version is available here and the Flash 5 version is here.
For those who want to extend the original vCam themselves, have a look at this article.

Posted by motiongraphics at 09:12 PM | Comments (26)

Flash games

For many, Flash's graphic capabilities and cool programming environment make it the perfect choice for creatng simple interactive games... except that some of the more recent examples I have seen are far from simple...

No doubt many of you will have seen the Flash 8 WolfenFlash game, written by previous co-collaborator Glen Rhodes.

That is an amazing use of Flash, but something equally impressive that I found a while ago is a two level Sonic the Hedgehog game (complete with pixel perfect levels, and many of the cheats!) done in Flash.

Unfortunately, this game is not available on the web, and the email and URL seen on the exe go nowhere, so I've made it available here (2.3Mb Windows exe file) if like me, you love retro games.

Be warned though, I have lost literally hours of my time playing this gem (as well as wondering how Glen's engine works)!

Another favorite waste of time (especially during dinner breaks at work is teagames.com. My current addiction is Top Dog II.

Posted by motiongraphics at 04:10 PM | Comments (6)

Macromedia Labs goes online

Macromedia Labs, the source for early looks at emerging products and technologies from Macromedia (read: alpha versions of upcoming software releases) goes online.

Macromedia Labs is one of the many results of Macromedia's new policy of involving the design community more. Worth looking at, because not only can you download the Flash 8.5 player (that supports ActionScript 3.0 alpha) here, you can also look at surprisingly detailed early information about ActionScript 3.0 here, here and here.

There is also an overview of ActionScript 3.0 here.

Posted by motiongraphics at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

Stuff in progress

Here's a list of stuff I currently have in progress as of this month. (I'll do one of these entries every month)

Author work:
Co-authoring a book with Adam Phillips for O'Reilly.

Freelance:
Doing some design work for Creative Commons, plus some hush-hush web application work that I can't talk about because of non-disclosure.

Work in the shop:
Web application for Harcourt Education, Flash front end for a reporting system, to be used by all teachers in the UK. Also helped out on some design work for submissions for Flash front ends for the BBC.

Personal
Finishing up the vCam and trying to finish BIA2. Trying to find time to update the design of the blog you are currently reading so that it stops looking like a vanilla Movable Type weblog. Getting a 6 ft high wall put up around the back of our garden so whoever keeps stealing Karen's lingerie quits doing it.

Oh, and finding time to sleep every other day ;)

Posted by motiongraphics at 11:16 PM | Comments (2)

Autodesk aquire Alias

It has just been announced that Autodesk will aquire Alias.

See the blurb here or here.

The 3D application industry has become very competitive in recent years as the market has reached saturation (and become unable to maintain the rather hefty price tags associated with most high end 3D applications). Thus, mergers and acquisitions are not unexpected.

However, This aquisition sounds like bad news for either 3ds Max or Maya, given that they are competing products. Lucky for me that I'm a SoftimageXSI fan then!

Posted by motiongraphics at 10:55 PM | Comments (1)

First Flash 8 book about to go to printers

My first Flash 8 book, Foundation Flash 8, is about to hit the printers.

It will be closely followed by one other book for O'Reilly, with Flash Hacks 2 and other books TBA.

I got the cover for Foundation Flash last week, and here it is. As you can see, they've stopped putting famous cinemas on the front of the books...

Here's the other books in the same series...

Don't worry, the spines are still FoEd pink :)

The artist for the covers is Corne van Dooren. He comes in two flavors: personal site and commercial site.

Posted by motiongraphics at 01:10 AM | Comments (2)