This plugin allows users of FireBug to load images into the plugin and overlay them atop developed HTML.  This is proving to be very useful for me, as a developer to get a perfect match to the designer’s comps.

I highly recommend checking it out at http://www.pixelperfectplugin.com/ .  Good work guys !

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Last night (and a little over lunch today) I threw a couple quick experiments together to see what it would look like, and I think that I might try this out with the video when I got home tonight.

The first example comes in the form of a basic color picker that lets you select the color of a pixel from within the image (on the top left). Once you have selected a color, use the slider on the right to control the threshold.

The second example is very similar to the first, it just uses a different sampling method for the color that it is going to use with the threshold. To try this tool, draw a box (from top left to bottom right) over the region of the image where you would like to get your sampling from.

This was a very quick and dirty experiment to see what I could get out of a bitmap with some basic functions, so please forgive my source. I will post more once I get it cleaned up tonight and start trying to work it into my motion detection application.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

You may have seen the video of head tracking using the Nintendo Wii. That video inspired me to try my hand at the same concept using Flash, Papervision 3d, and my newly discovered love for trying to get motion tracking / facial recognition into Flash.

As such, I have created this example which is my first step in creating some sort of tracking interaction with a 3d scene. if you would care to see a little bit more detail about what is going on, hit X to see the video and W to see the framerate. Stay tuned for more updates as I update the tracking code. Once again, I will post the source when it is a little further along.

** please note that you require a webcam to take advantage of the motion tracking, if you do not have a camera the scene’s camera is simply controlled by the mouse.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I started out in the industry as a graphic designer and web developer but quickly came to realize that the more code I wrote, the less design prowess I had.  The trend in the industry to find a hybrid developer / designer is a good idea on the surface but has many flaws.  I have always been a fan of the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none”.   While it is a great asset to know a little bit about what is happening on the other side of the fence, it should stay on the other side of the fence.

Both designers and developers are creative and skillful in their own ways so why should they try to do it all?  I have worked on countless projects where I have been put on a project that was “almost completed” by a designer.  Upon getting the files, I am told that I just have to do a little bit of optimization and get the files delivered ASAP.  More often than not, once I take a look at the files it is obvious that they need a LOT of work.  The designers that I work with are spectacular at what they do, but when they try writing code I am given files that take hours just to understand.

If you would like to be a developer, take a course or two and practice.  I didn’t learn to write code over night, nor do I try and create complex designs expecting a designer to pick it up and think it was a job well done.  There is a lot more than just being able to write a frame script in Flash that goes into being a good developer, especially when you are creating international pieces.

When I am busy and on a tight deadline, I don’t want to (nor do I have the time to) spend hour after hour ripping apart a project just to re-write 90% of the code that went into the “almost completed” version.

An ideal situation for me is to be able to sit down with a designer as they are starting to work on a project and come up with boundaries and share ideas.  I respect their skills and would like to utilize them as much as possible.  Just as it isn’t efficient for me to rewrite an application from them, it isn’t efficient for them to spend days creating things that could have been automated with a little bit of code.  It is also inefficient for them to realize that it can be done with code and try to do it on their own.

So next time you are thinking about becoming a hybrid or hiring one, take into account the fact that it isn’t as easy or productive as you might think.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I have a couple of uses planned for this and will post them when they are done but here is the first iteration.

With the help of a diff equation from Forrest Briggs, I managed to capture the specific area of movement within the webcam frame. I will continue working and post source once it is complete. This little project is helping me understand the workings of the bitmap data objects in as3.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Yesterday, Grant Skinner talked about his inspirations that drive his work.  It was great to see what others do to keep their interests up when they are held back by corporate site limitations.   I also managed to catch Keith Peters‘ talk about Chaos which showed how crazy the world of math is.

It seemed as though the focus of many developers in the conference was randomness, with a side of Perlin Noise.  It was interesting to see the different methods that everyone uses to generate their work, and it was especially interesting to see just how much randomness their is in the works that look so precise and structured.

If you are interested in some info about the conference and what was talked about, the new FITC blog is a good resource.  Most of the presenters also mentioned putting their slides online so keep an eye on their blogs.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

He then moved on to talk about Flex Builder 3 and it’s capabilities, one thing that I didn’t know about was the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3. It is a toolkit that lets you create content in the Flash CS3 IDE and use it in Flex as a Flex component.  I am not very well versed in Flex but I was definitely curious about the options that I had as a Flash IDE user.

Now they are showing us a demonstration of the features of  Kuler and all of its strengths.  This part of the presentation seems to not fit in very well with the flow of all the presentation content.   The only real tie-in is that they are showing an Air app.

Flash Diesel is up !  They are starting off with the showing the new object based animation engine that does not use a timeline.  It is the same thing that was shown at MAX and Flash on the Beach last year (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_wRMswNLiU), but impressive just the same.  They just unveiled a new track-view feature which allows for much greater/easier control of animations.

Up next is the IK part of the demo where they are using a bones tool to add bone structure to movieclips.  This is something that I haven’t seen before, they have a quick option to enable bone manipulation at runtime…. very slick.

The ability to manipulate items on the stage in a 3D style has been added to the Flash IDE.  There are going to be new controls and capabilities to work with items in a 3D style, the new controls are able to manipulate images and apply things such as tweens to them.

They are now onto Hydra (AIF Toolkit) which is an image processing language, if you would like more information you can check out the info at the Adobe Labs AIF Toolkit site, it can give you much more information that I can.  One new things that they are talking about right now is the ability to work with files in the browser without having to send anything through the server.  They have added the ability to take something at runtime and save it to your system without having to do a round trip to the server.

Well, that is all for the keynote.  I was hoping to see something about Thermo but I didn’t catch anything about it.  I did show up 10 minutes late and may have missed it.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

You can see Colin’s notes from his presentation at the following address:
http://moock.org/lectures/newInECMAScript4/

Here is a summary of what he covered in his talk, this is all covered in the link above but I thought that I would just post the items that interested me the most:

Structure Types
- record type
easier way to create custom object types, instead of using classes
- array type
ability to apply types to elements within arrays
- union types
gives the option of assigning one of several datatypes to a variable
ie: var x:(int|string) // x must be either an int or a string

Type changes:
It looks like byte, uint, int are being removed from ECMAScript but they will most likely stay in AS for the time being.
There are a series of new lower case types including string, number, and boolean
There are going to be non-nullable types that cannot be assigned the value of null, the idea is to save time in type catching.

Lexical block scoping lets you create variables without var, it allows you to create assign values to variables within code blocks.  Check the lecture for an example, it looks like it would be useful if you have a temporary variable.

You will have the power to create single line functions in the same way that you can currently create a single like conditional statement.

!!= can be used to shorten variable assignment, can turn myVar = myVar || “default” to myVar !!= “default”

Type casting can be done using the operator “cast” ie: food cast Apple

Switch type can be used to test the type of variable in a switch statement to allow for multiple types and custom functionality for each

String indexing looks like it may be a little useful, you can access characters in a string the same way that you would access items in an array “test”[2] would produce “s”.  Similarly you can use slice on a string to get a range of characters quickly.

Thats all for now.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I can’t say that I was blown away by what I saw and learned because it was a very low-level session but I believe that I am taking away a good base to start on my own projects with Papervision.  I recommend similar workshops to anyone who doesn’t know much about Papervision and would like to see what it is about and get a good understanding of what it is and how to use it.

Following the full day workshop, I attended a little function in Kensington Market with a presenter from Graffiti Research Lab (graffitiresearchlab.com)  that showed some of what they are all about and some of their latest works.  It was quite inspiring to see what they have been up to and their methods.

To top off the night, the FITC kickoff party at the Burroughs was a lot of fun.  The venue had a unique style that I am not used to seeing in Calgary.  I had a good time talking with people from around the industry and meeting as many people as possible.  It also gave me a chance to catch up with some old friends and co-workers that I don’t get to see since I moved to Calgary.

I am now sitting here on the official Day 1 of the conference waiting to hear what Colin Moock (www.moock.org) has to say about Actionscript 4.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I am forever in debt to the authors of such books and forever in awe of the knowledge that certain people have. This book showed me just how much I am behind the world of Actionscript and how much I have to learn.

I can only hope that with what I know now about coding and what I am learning over the next little while I can really learn to harness the power of Flash and start creating things that are exciting. This book has given me a very strong AS3 foundation to work from and I hope to be able to work on as many AS3 projects as possible so that I don’t lose any of what I have learned from reading through it.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites