How to draw anything into a BitmapData properly
Looks like Eric has a little problem with getting a sprite with an non 0/0 registration point correctly drawn into a BitmapData object. Here's help. The problem is that by default the draw() command works in such a way that the registration point will line up with the upper left corner of the bitmapData. So what has to be done is to offset the sprite by the amount it's off from that point using the second argument which is a drawing matrix. You can retrieve a clips "real" registration point by using the getBounds() method. Feed the negative of the
Free Flash Conference Anybody (yes, as in free beer)?
Yes, you read correctly. Free. Multi-Mania 08 is a one day, five(!) track Flash + multimedia conference taking place in the beautiful small town Kortrijk, Belgium on Friday, May 23rd 2008. Koen De Weggheleire has once more managed to gather a hot lineup of more than 30 top-notch presenters - among them Aral Balkan, Peter Elst, Dave Schroeder, Ralph Hauwert, Rob Chiu and Hoss Gifford, just to name a few. I, too, have the big pleasure to speak there for the second year in a row and I'm really looking forward to it, especially after Koen told me that my
Next big thing: Source Binder
Yesterday at the 10th flashconference in Stuttgart I was amongst the lucky ones who could witness the first public presentation of Source Binder by Visual Minds from Hungary and I can say that I was deeply impressed. What is Source Binder? In short: it is a lightweight framework for node based editing built in Flash. Oh yes - somehow it looks like this is the year of the node for Flash. Node based editing means that instead of writing code you assemble a set of building blocks each with a specialized functionality on a canvas and "draw" the control flow
Flash Nostalgia: 5K PONG
Searching for an old experiment of mine I just rediscovered a piece from 2001/2002 which I thought I had lost - it's a implementation of PONG in Flash 5 with a file size of 5K. Back then it was an submission for the 5K award - a site which featured some amazing entries all under 5K which is unfortunately not online anymore. There have been some impressive examples in recent time of PONG made in 510 bytes or even in 349 bytes - so 5k is not really world record anymore. On the other hand - this file is from
The Pixel Whisperer at FITC
I am very excited that once more I have the honor to talk at this year's FITC conference in Toronto. Looking at the program I can see that the next days will not allow for a lot of sleep - Shawn Pucknell has once again invited an outstanding mixture of the best designers and creative developers out there. I'm looking forward to meeting lots of friends and of course to the legendary great parties at night - oh my and I will finally get to drink a Ceasar again! In case I make it to my talk The Pixel Whisperer
The Dirty Secrets of Premultiplied Alpha
Okay, I'm exaggerating. Several years after BitmapData was introduced to the Flash player it's not really a secret anymore that Flash uses a feature called premultiplied alpha when it stores transparent pixels. But it is a bit dirty after all. In case you want to skip the following nerd talk you can check out the demo right away - but don't cry if you don't understand what it is telling you. "Premultiplied" alpha means that the alpha information of a pixel is not only stored in the alpha channel itself, but it is already "multiplied" into the red, green and
Thank you Toca Me!
The Toca Me conference that took place this saturday in my hometown Munich was a blast. And it felt a very big honor for me to be among such an outstanding group of presenters. My personal highlights were Andy Cameron who gave me a lot of new ideas in his talk and also afterwards and James Patterson who's sicko genius mind and talent doesn't cease to impress me. Seeing Andreas Müller's beautiful installation "Hana" next to mine made me feel a bit like a caveman rubbing sticks together, but hey - Anaskop 1 has now been running for 2 days
See Peacock in Action
If you wonder why I haven't posted anything during the last months it's because I'm involved with some very exciting projects which unfortunately take all my attention so the blog currently suffers quite severely. But at least the time has come that I can show you one of the objects of my affection and since the beta invites are going out now you even might get the chance to try it yourself. Here is Peacock (together with Phoenix) in action: Peacock comes disguised as a "Pattern Generator" but in reality it's an experimental visual playground. I prefer to call it
John, You Rock!
When there is one thing I really fear than it's high expectations. Since the more you expect something to become the best and the greatest the bigger will be your disappointment when reality cannot deliver. So I must admit that I saw all the upfront excitement everywhere about Flash on the Beach with a bit of sorrow. The more happy I am now to say that my fears were totally unneccesary. No question - Flash on the Beach 2007 was absolutely fabulous and has surpassed all my expectations. If I had to live on a desert island and could
Off to the Beach!
What a wonderful way to conclude the yearly conference circuit: I'm almost on my way to Brighton for Flash on the Beach which - looking at the lineup - seems to assemble almost all awesomeness the Flash world has to offer. My biggest pain is that I can only spend three days together with such a lot of people that I respect, admire or love. In an attack of mild madness and as a little thank you to John for making this unique event possible I decided to prepare a completely new talk titled 2D or not 2D that is
The Blind Sketchmaker - Lecture Notes
The lecture notes for my talk "The Blind Sketchmaker - exploring generative and evolutionary art with Flash" are now available on lectures.quasimondo.com. The AIR tools I demoed - Image Analyzer, Art Critque and Sketchmaker are not available yet. The visuals evolved by Sketchmaker can be seen in this flickr set. Many people have asked me where in China I had the images painted in oil on canvas that were created by Sketchmaker - the company is called Promising Arts & Crafts - please send my greetings to Mr Weigang Tan in case you want something painted. As you know from
Aviary Review on ZDNet
Ryan Steward has written a very positive review about a the different Aviary tools Phoenix, Peacock and Hummingbird he was given an early preview. I'm very happy to read that he especially likes Peacock, the pattern generator which is my little baby that I currently hatch.
Hydra: Noise
I mentioned the Hydra limitations before - especially if you aim for the use of your filters in Flash there are a lot of them. One feature that is entirely missing for example is a random number generator in form of a rnd() function. This wouldn't be such a bad thing, if there were at least some binary operators available. Since with the help of a little bitshifting, xor and bitmasking you can build your own random number generator pretty easily - here is a typical C# example: function Noise(int x, int y) { int n = x + y
Hydra: Spirals and Gradients
Finally I could get my hands a little bit dirty with Hydra when my beloved spouse entrusted me her MacBook for a few hours. All my other machines don't support OpenGL 2.0 yet and thus I could just sit and watch Joa having all the fun. What can I say after my first attempts? I definitely love it. The calculation speed is awesome. The language is really simple, especially if you have done bitmap manipulation with other tools or languages before. There are some nifty object types and overloaded operators which I wish that they would exist in Actionscript. Multiplying
Hydra on Adobe Labs
Finally the AIF Toolkit codename Hydra is available on Adobe Labs. Wow I'm totally excited to see what can be done with this! Building native filters and pixel shaders in Flash whohoo!