The problem I kept having with this footage, is that the track looked perfect in PFHoe, but then when I exported to AE, something was off. The track lined up perfectly with the shot on frame one, but then got gradually worse, until it was totally off. I discovered that the problem is with how PFHoe exports .ma files. Apparently for 24fps footage, it defaults to exporting the .ma file tagged as if it were 29.97 NTSC footage.

Here’s how to manually fix the .ma file:

Open the .ma file in notepad, and look at the top few lines:

//Maya ASCII 4.0 scene
// Generated by PFHoe-Pro 2.2r2-100325

requires maya “4.0″;
currentUnit -l m -a deg -t ntsc;

Change the above bold line to this:

currentUnit -l m -a deg -t 24;

Now import your footage to AE again. You should see the track sync up perfectly with your footage now. Please let me know in the comments below if this has helped any of you get your 24fps footage exported from PFHoe to After Effects.

What the Heck is HTML5?

Incase you don’t know what HTML5 is, here’s the nutshell definition: HTML5 is a revised version of HTML, which is the programming language that websites use to structure and display content in a web browser. This update is meant to add several new features, and in some situations may eliminate the need for plugins like Adobe Flash. One of the much-hyped facets of HTML5 is that is will run on iOS devices like your iPhone, iPod or iPad. Since Apple doesn’t allow Flash Player to run on iOS (Although it has been developed and is apparently ready to go)

What is it Really?

HTML5 is really just a new set of tags, like <canvas> and <video>. To create animation and styling for these new tags, HTML5 still relies on good ol’ CSS and Javascript, both of which have been around since the late 90s, just like Flash. The problem with using Javascript and CSS is the same problem that has always plagued web developers – browser differences.

They’re all Different

Think about how you create a site today in CSS and HTML. You design your site in Photoshop or whatever, then you build your HTML markup, or WordPress/Drupal theme. Then you pull all your hair out because you have to tweak your CSS and markup to work in all the major browsers. I always use jQuery for my Javascript work, because it handles all the browser differences automatically. I couldn’t imagine not using jQuery when writing Javascript, and having to get my scripts to work in all browsers manually. The whole problem is that all major browsers will never implement CSS and Javascript the exact same way. You’ll always need some browser-specific CSS and JS. With Flash, you can rest assured that your presentation will be the same on all major browsers, because regardless of browser, your content will run in, and rely only on the Flash Player plugin.

Right now, the thought of HTML5 dethroning Flash is not a reality, because building HTML5 content is fairly inaccessible to a designer. Adobe has released a new product named Edge that will hopefully bridge the gap between Dreamweaver-level web folks, and the elite code-heads. My hope is that they will integrate HTML5 with their Flash or Dreamweaver IDE as an ‘export for HTML5′ utility. I hope they don’t develop yet another tool, just for HTML5, seems like overkill to me.

Almost Everyone has Flash

Flash market saturation is something to consider as well. How long do you think it will be before 99% of all browsers support HTML5? Some say we’ll still have pre-HTML5 browsers hanging around as late as 2015, especially in corporate settings. Keeping up with the constant demand for new and better features is something that Flash has always done well in my opinion. It’s also easier to update Flash player – It’s far easier to update a plugin in your browser, as opposed to updating your entire browser.

Timing is Everything

Work on the HTML5 standard was begun in 2007, and is set to become the official HTML recommendation in 2014. By comparison, Flash releases a new major version about every year, usually packed with new features, such as hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in the latest release (11.0.1.152, code name Serrano).

What about iOS?

Ok, Tim Cook, now that Apple devices are packed with dual-core processors, I think it’s time to finally allow Flash player onto iPhones and iPads. I believe that would allow Apple to reclaim some of the ground lost to Android devices. I’ve also heard mixed reports of HTML5 being slow and choppy on iOS devices, so there’s probably room for improvement there, as well. Think about it, Apple…

My Prediction

My Prediction is that Flash won’t be phased out any time soon, but will coexist with HTML5, at least while “HTML5″ is such a buzzword.  At this point, you simply can’t do everything that Flash can do using HTML5, at least not as reliably and quickly. For HTML5 to take off in a big way, it’s going to take 2 things: first, an amazing authoring tool that can match the development speed of Flash, and second, the world must update their browsers to be fully HTML5 compatible. HTML5 will probably replace Flash in some areas, especially on sites that are heavily database-driven, and don’t need super-elaborate animations. Flash will, however, continue to drive advanced data visualizations, 3D content and games, and as long as Adobe can keep it updated, Flash will continue to be a standard part of the web experience.

This week, I was working with text, and I was looking for a way to put a thick outline around each letter. Initially when I added a stroke to the text, and cranked up it’s thickness, the stroke appeared on top of the text. This just looked bad, and I wanted the stroke to go behind the text. I clicked on the stroke options in the text, thinking I could set the stroke to be behind the text. No dice. On text elements, for some reason this option is grayed out. After some fiddling around, I found that the effect I wanted could easily be achieved by using the appearance panel.

Here’s how to add a stroke to text, and have it appear behind the fill.

1: Add your text

2: In the Appearance panel, click the ‘Add Stroke’ button

3: Move the stroke so that it appears under the ‘Characters’ in the stack

4: Now your stroke will appear behind the fill, and you can crank up it’s width without choking out your text.

This is a great way to give text some very complex strokes, while keeping the text editable.

My new favorite Illustrator effect is now multiple strokes on text. I like the retro look you can achieve, I just hope I don’t wear it out like lens flares in the early 2000s.

This past weekend, after finding the tablet and plugging it in, I immediately found it difficult to use. I had to ‘walk’ the mouse across the screen, and it was really frustrating when the pen would constantly hit the edge of the active area of the tablet and stop tracking. I was just about to unplug it and then I thought ‘hmm, maybe I’ll install the driver and see if that helps. Once I downloaded and installed the Wacom software, it was a world of difference.

With the software installed, the active area becomes a direct representation of the screen area. Putting the pen in the lower left of the tablet will put the cursor near the Start menu. Wacom software has come a long long way since I last looked at it. There’s a floating multi-function toolbar that lets you write characters, or have access to an onscreen keyboard. It’s still not really effective as a keyboard replacement though, but it does work well for what it is.

So today I used my old Wacom Tablet pretty much all day. I’m still getting used to it, but I found it comfortable to use all day for After Effects, Photoshop and Flash work. It’s just as accurate as any mouse, and I think with a little practice, it should be faster than using a mouse as well. It had been so long since I looked into tablets – now that I’ve seen the Cintiq line of tablets, I want one!

I’ve been there, and felt the panic of not knowing if I’ll ever get my files back. I’ve cursed at hard drives that have my data eternally trapped in useless, cold metal discs. Years ago, I decided this would never happen to me again, and I developed this somewhat-simple backup strategy that has served me well ever since. It’s made up of two parts, which I’ll go over separately.

This setup protects against

• HDD Failure
• Fire
• Theft
• Power Surge
• Accidental File Deletion

Software Required

• BurnAware (free)
• Second Copy 8 ($ 29.95)

Working Files vs. Archive Files

I have two general groups of files that each get handled differently. The first is my ‘working files’, which consists of active projects I’m working on, my music, photos, and videos, and any other kind of file that I keep on my computer all the time. For me, these files usually total around 100GB.

The second group of files, Archive files, are those files that I don’t need to have immediate access to, but still need to be permanently stored somewhere secure. Some examples of archive files can be files for completed projects, camera RAW images that have been converted to JPEG already, or just files that you want to keep around, but don’t want or need them on your computer all the time.

Backups of Working Files

Working files are extremely important, especially if you do client work. If you miss a deadline because of a crashed or stolen hard drive, it’s not just your neck on the line, it’s probably going to affect your client as well, which is never a good thing. Here’s my strategy for backing up my working files.

Internal Nightly Mirror

I have three hard drives in my workstation. Two are configured in a RAID0 array for speed since I do a lot of video and motion graphics work. The third is a dedicated hard drive for automatically mirroring all my working files each night. The key word here is automatically. I don’t know about you, but I would never remember to manually back up every day, so this is a fully automated process that happens at 4 a.m. every day. The software I use is Second Copy, and what makes is so great is that it detects and backs up only the files that have been changed or created since the last backup, so it doesn’t wear out my drives by copying 100GB every single time.

Weekly External Mirror

The second part to backing up my working files is a weekly external mirror. This does the exact same thing, except this time it’s an external HDD that I mirror my working files to. I use Second Copy for this as well, and I have a separate profile set up for it to make it quick and easy. So now you’re asking ‘why would I need a backup of my backup?’ Here’s why… The internal nightly mirror will protect you against HDD failure, but what if you get a power surge that fries the whole comp? What if your whole computer is stolen, or the house burns down? I know these are somewhat rare and extreme situations, but they happen every single day. Having an external backup lets you put it in a safe place at work, or a safety deposit box, or at least in a fire safe.

Another benefit of having both a nightly mirror, and a weekly external mirror is that if you need to get yesterdays version of a file, or if you accidentally delete a file, you can get it back. This is why I prefer this setup to a RAID1 array, because you can go back and get yesterday’s files easily. With RAID1, if you overwrite or delete something, you don’t have any options except the weekly external mirror.

Archives – HDD and Disc

For my archive files, I keep a folder where I dump files to archive. Once that folder reaches the size of a DVD (about 4.7 GB), I’ll start a new folder, and start filling it up. When I get time, I’ll take each of these folders and copy them to an external hard drive, as well as put the contents of each folder onto a DVD.

I do this for a couple of reasons. First, it gives me two copies of my archive files so I can put one copy in a different physical location to protect against fire, theft, etc. The reason I make DVD’s is so that I’ll have 2 different formats, so that I have some options if I need to go back to my archives. I could probably go with another external HDD, but with Blu-ray writers becoming more and more affordable, I’ll just transition to them when the time comes, and put 25 or 50GB on each disc.

What about RAID?

RAID offers some great options for data protection, and if you’re comfortable with RAID setups, then I think they’re a good option. I prefer having access to yesterday’s version of my files, and I can also use the extra space on my backup drive for scratch discs, virtual machine images, or just extra temp space if I need it.

What about those online backup services like Mozy?

I’m not against these at all, and if you don’t create huge files on a daily basis, I think they’re a good option. The only thing I don’t like about them is that your data is being transmitted and stored somewhere in ‘the cloud’. I like the security of knowing exactly where my backups physically exist, and exactly how to access them without relying on any service. I guess I’m too much of a do-it-yourself person to rely on an online solution.

About Second Copy

First thing: I’m not getting paid by anybody to write this. I have just found that Second Copy is an essential tool for me. I’ve used it for 5 or 6 years, and it’s just a simple, solid, stable backup utility. I’m not going to go into detail about how to use it, but here are a couple of tips.

If you want to see exactly what files are going to be backed up in a certain profile, you can right click on the profile and choose ‘Show Preview’. Also, to keep your mirror clean and free of empty folders, go into the ‘How?’ tab, and click the advanced properties option, and check the ‘Delete empty folders after copy’ option.

So there’s my solution for protecting my files. I know there are lots of other ways to do it, so please feel free to comment and let me know how this method could be improved even further. Thanks for reading!

UPDATE – I forgot to mention one other option, which is Network Accessible Storage, or NAS. I’ve not used one myself, but my friend Sean pointed out this one made by Synology  that looks like it’s a wonderful option. A NAS is basically an advanced hard drive enclosure that you can plug into your router so you can access it through your local network.

This is a really nice option for handling large files, especially if you have a gigabit network. It gives you some security against theft, because you could hide this device somewhere out of sight yet still have access to it. This is also be a great option if you don’t feel comfortable opening up your PC to add new drives, or if you work on a laptop that doesn’t have space for another drive.

See the Demos of Flare

Visit Media.GraceJohnsonCity.com

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Copyright Disclaimer: All HBO characters, logos and original imagery are copyrighted by Home Box Office (HBO). Adam Bowman does not claim the rights to any of these original materials.

Each department has a separate, yet consistent theme, which gives each one a unique look while keeping them all somewhat consistent. This was a very custom, turnkey solution for the city, and t the group I worked with to produce this provided a series of training sessions on how to use the content management system that drives the sites.

Click here to visit KingsportTN.gov

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3dsMAX

I used 3dsMAX for about 4 years after I graduated, building visualizations of tradeshow exhibits and business environments. The shop I worked in used vRay for rendering, and I found it to be a very powerful rendering engine, although it is a bit complicated. Later, I started just using Mental Ray and found it to be almost as good at calculating realistic GI, but far easier and more intuitive to set up than vRay, plus, it’s included with 3dsMAX. The best thing I liked about 3dsMAX, and perhaps the thing I miss the most is the modifier stack.

For those who don’t know, in 3dsMAX, you can start with a primitive object, and apply various modifiers like warps, twists, meshsmooths, etc., and they’re added as modifiers, instead of affecting your original geometry directly. You are free to go back at any time, and change parameters down in the stack, to affect the final object. For example, let’s say you wanted to build crown molding for a room environment, but there was a good chance your client wanted to change the molding profile 17 times before they found one they liked. By using the modifier stack, you could set this up in such a ways so you could modify the path and profile of the molding any time.

The Good

• Modifier Stack
• Object Instances
• UV Mapping Tools
• Mental Ray Included
• Single Application for Modeling and Layout
• Large User Base
• Frequently Updated

The Bad

• Stability Issues with complex scenes
• Expensive $$$$

Lightwave

Making the switch from 3dsMAX to Lightwave (9.6) was a challenge for sure. The overall workflow is quite a bit different in LW due it’s having two applications, one for modeling, and one for layout and rendering. Once I was accustomed to the workflow, and found the LW equivalents of the modeling tools I was used to, I felt like I could do most things with the same speed and quality. The modeling actually felt a little faster, and maybe a little bit more intuitive (once you learn some keyboard shortcuts). The price is probably what makes it so interesting. For around a thousand bucks, you get a solid 3d package, with great rendering engine, and v10 has the new VPR feature which helps drastically with texturing and lighting.

The Good

• Relatively Inexpensive
• Large following in TV Industry
• Super-fast modeling tools
• Included Renderer produces great GI results
• v10 has a cool real-time preview feature (VPR)

The Bad

• Text interface looks dated
• Infrequent updates
• Small user base
• Two separate Apps for Modeling and Layout
• UV Mapping is tricky
• No real modifier stack
• Integration with After Effects is difficult at best

My Verdict

If money were no consideration, I’d definitely go with 3dsMAX, hands down. However, if I had to spend my own money for a 3d package, I’d most likely go with LW. At one-third the cost of MAX, it is much more suited to a small shop / hobbyist. I think this may be the reason that LW is used for TV so much. For the same price, you can either have 1 or 2 people on MAX, or have a small team of 3 to 6 on LW. If you’re wanting to learn one or the other for the purposes of finding a job as a 3d artist, I’d recommend 3dsMAX over LW, because it’s has a much larger share of the market than LW.

Hope this has been useful!

UPDATE: I’m writing an article that will soon be posted on The Photo Argus. When it’s up, I’ll post a link in this article.

If you have an old pair of red / cyan glasses lying around, take a look. There are some cheap places to get glasses online, and you can pick them up for really cheap on ebay too.

If you’re into photography, you might want to also check out The Photo Argus too, they have some amazing articles and fresh content all the time.

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These are some of the 3D anaglyphic photos I’ve cooked up using nothing more than a Nikon D90, a couple of lenses, and Photoshop. No fancy rigs, no tripod, just an easy technique that I’ve found works very well. In the next couple of weeks, I plan on writing a more detailed how-to, but here’s basically how it works…

Taking the Pictures

Find a good composition with good foreground, middle-ground and background to provide some good depth to the photo. Find a point that you can focus on that’s directly in the center of your composition so you’ll have a good reference point. Square your shoulders with this center point, look directly at your reference point, and without moving your head, bring your camera to your left eye, aim at your reference point and snap a picture. Trying not to move your head, move your camera to your right eye and do the same thing – aim at your center point, and take the other picture.

Photoshop

In photoshop, put the right channel on top of the left, and turn it’s opacity to 50% to help you align and straighten the images. Once you’ve done that, crop the image so that both left and right channels give you coverage all the way to the edges, then turn the right channel’s opacity back up to 100%. In the layers panel, double click on the right channel, and find the Advanced Blending options. Simply uncheck the Red channel, and that’s it! You should be able to see your 3D image with red/cyan glasses now.

For Flash projects, I’ve found this AS3 library to be particularly useful for interacting with an LMS. It basically wraps the Javascript commands inside ExternalInterface calls so you don’t have to write a whole bunch of Javascript to handle your SCORM calls. You can essentially talk to the LMS directly from Actionscript.

Pipwerks SCORM
http://pipwerks.com/laboratory/scorm/

This is also a great reference for the run-time data model…

http://scorm.com/scorm-explained/technical-scorm/run-time/run-time-reference/

A couple of recent projects where I’ve needed to loop through each movieclip on the stage, and do something with it based on it’s instance name.The Flash file I was working with was going to be handed off to a designer who didn’t know AS3, and this was a handy way to pull info about each movieclip on the stage. Originally from Actionscript.org

var i:int = this.numChildren, child:DisplayObject;
while(i--){
child = this.getChildAt(i);
trace(child);
}

Basically, the loop looks at the instance name of each object on the stage to see which group of objects it belongs to. The advantage to this is that you don’t even need to know how many items are in each group, giving the designer the ability to add as many as they want, as long as they give each one an instance name accordingly – myItem1, myItem2, myItem3, etc.

Copyright Disclaimer: All HBO characters, logos and original imagery are copyrighted by Home Box Office (HBO). Adam Bowman does not claim the rights to any of these original materials.

christfellowship.me

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WelcomeToECU.com

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The challenge with this piece was getting the characters cut out of the individual graphic, and put into a 3D environment in a way that makes visual sense.

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Copyright Disclaimer: All HBO characters, logos and original imagery are copyrighted by Home Box Office (HBO). Adam Bowman does not claim the rights to any of these materials.

This is one of my favorite projects – I love the blend of live-action and 3D, and the transition  to the see-through characters is great for showing the muscle groups that are stretched during each exercise. The 3D work is all done in 3dsMAX, and the green-screen character compositing was done in After Effects. One of the main challenges on this project was matching the camera angle of the live-action shots with the virtual set.

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The 3D work was done using 3dsMAX, and the interactive CD-Rom was programmed in Flash. This piece involved a hierarchy of null objects to achieve the mechanical motion and exploded views used in the animation. The CD-Rom was professionally duplicated and screen printed for distribution at the tradeshow.

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I really liked working on this one, because I really dig 3D environments, and I enjoyed the process of getting the floor texture just right. Rendering the animation itself was a little challenging, because the moving objects.I had to crank up my global illumination settings to avoid flicker, and GI had to be calculated on each frame, as caching doesn’t work with animated geometry.

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I always like to have the actual object on hand that I’m re-creating in 3D. It’s the best reference for textures, colors and dimensions. One remote or receiver would typically take me around a day or two to complete from scratch, and I built about 3 dozen models of equipment.

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The person playing the game has to type at a faster rate than the level indicates. As they type,  text is highlighted red or green depending on whether they correctly typed each word. The levels get progressively more difficult due to a faster wpm requirement, as well as fewer allowed errors.

The age group we were targeting with this game is someone in their mid-20s, so we decided to go with a look similar to two popular games  with a hand-drawn look: Doodle Jump, and Angry Birds. I hand-drew all the game graphic using a Wacom tablet and Flash, because not only did it suit the look and feel we were going for, it was also the fastest way to get graphics for the game since we were in kind of a time crunch.

This game was built in Flash CS5 / Actionscript 3, and it makes use of the GAIA flash framework. The text for each level is pulled from an xml file, and each level pulls a random paragraph to use for the source text. I don’t get to build many Flash games, so I was glad to have the chance to do something this fun. I was also excited to get to do some hand drawing as well!

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Importing camera data from Lightwave into After Effects was done by means of a couple of plugins, which allowed me to precisely match up the videos with the 3d screens. The plugins generate null objects and cameras in AE that match up with objects and cams in LW. All you have to do is render from LW, and drop in some 3D layers in AE, and it all just works!

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Copyright Disclaimer: All NFL logos and original imagery and video are copyrighted by the NFL. Adam Bowman does not claim the rights to any of these original materials.