Planting a Seed… for 4.20
Adobe After Effects, Adobe Flash, ExtendScript', Flash Component Add comments
In 2006, it was tricky to become immersed in video online because it had a difficult time – due to technological limitations – playing smooth without frame dropouts and artifacts. As I work around, I decided to merge the best of After Effects and Flash together to get that immersive experience by writing some code to connect the dots between the two. After an enlightening conversation with Chris Prosser from the After Effects team, I wrote a script for After Effects and a Flash Component called After Effects 2 Flash: Transform Properties. The former exports keyframe data out of After Effects as an XML file and the latter allows the Flash developer to import the XML data into Flash and in order to replicate the Transform Properties in Flash without having to manually recreate all of the keyframes in Flash. When a person experiences the SWF, the XML data is loaded and the motions are precisely synchronized to the keyframe data. On a side note, there’s a clever hack that enables you to export Motion Tracking data as well.
So I received a paypal email notification recently that a gentleman, Alex Tarrant, purchased the plug-in and – to make a long story short – he told me to take a peak at Snoop420 on Tuesday, 4/20.
I love it. I would have never, ever imagined the code could take on a life of its own with a branch ending up as a small contribution to the great execution of code, design and video on Snoop’s site.
The point in all of this is that… once you release your code / plug-ins / applications into the world wild web – whether it’s for a commercial product or, especially if it’s open-source – you lose complete control over how it will be used. As long as it’s unmalicious or does not cause one to be unhappy, when these seeds bloom, they’re beautiful.
Happy 4.20.
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