Journal

The Good

As it’s been requested by many users and I’ve found a little time to spare, I’m releasing the 64-bit version of Atlas today. I’ve also included a new simple tone mapping operator based on John Hable’s discussion of filmic tone mapping in games.

Atlas is a collection of tone-mapping operators for Adobe After Effects based on the open source PFStmo library. The plug-in is free software licensed under the GPL.

The Bad

Now before everyone gets all excited I also have some bad news: The tables have turned. Since the initial release of Atlas (which was Windows-only) I’ve gotten rid of all my Windows systems. That unfortunately means that I cannot develop for the platform and I can’t release any Windows software at the moment.

So this time around Atlas is available in binary form for Mac OS X only.

(At this point I could go on about how it’s free, open source, yadda yadda, and how someone else should step up and compile it for Windows, but it’s become rather clear that there is no real interest in open-source software in the AE community.)

… and the Ugly

With that said, I really do wish there was a better way to handle cross-platform development. I simply can’t be bothered to keep around and maintain multiple development environments just to compile and test free software on platforms I have no personal use for.
Sure, I could use Parallels/BootCamp on my Mac but even then it’s an inordinate amount of work for what at the end of the day results in the very little personal reward.

It looks like Adobe’s Pixel Bender might be a step in the right direction, but unfortunately the technology comes with its own set of issues… I’ll probably post about that another time.

Download

Anyway. Go ahead and grab the latest version of Atlas for CS5 on Mac OS X! Oh, and please donate if you do.

Right… yes, I know, I said in the past it simply wasn’t going to happen. Well, whatever. Finally here’s what a lot of users have been waiting for ever since Adobe released the latest version of After Effects: Normality for CS5 in its full 64-bit glory.

Thanks to a kind and very generous donation from the Troika Design Group I was able to compile the plug-in for the latest version of After Effects.

Download the new version and enjoy… and please donate if you do.

I have updated my free After Effects plug-in Normality 3 and fixed a couple of bugs relating to blend modes.

There’s also one new feature: I am including my mental ray shader minMatcap directly in Normality, making it possible to render images like below in After Effects.

Red apple material preset

Based on users’ requests I have added some new features to my free minMatcap shader.

The latest version features support for bump mapping and lets the user choose between camera-space, object-space and world-space shading. It is also possible to offset the texturing and control  the shading of backsided faces.

You can also use minMatcap as light shader. This may be useful to get a little ambiance into a scene.

After two long years of internal use and continued development I’m finally making a new version of my popular Normality software publicly available.

Normality is a free plug-in for Adobe After Effects that uses normal passes to accomplish various lighting effects such as diffuse and specular lighting, toon shading, reflections and refractions and more in real-time directly in After Effects.

In the meantime the software has matured while being in constant development and seeing heavy use over at Studio Lampion and a couple of other production houses, but I’ve been holding back on the public release for various reasons.

Mac OS X Support

And now, thanks to kind and generous donations from Christopher Wiedswang and James Redmond, there’s finally a version for Mac OS X as well as Windows!

What’s New

Normality 3 integrates all previously separate effects into a single plug-in to reduce clutter and the overhead of running several instances of the software at the same time.

Then there’s the new Normality 3 User Guide which should get you started with the in’s and out’s of the software and its numerous functions.
Other new features include full floating-point (32-bit) support, toon shading, rim lighting and support for depth passes besides the obligatory normal pass.

Please head over to download the free Normality 3 and let me know how it’s working for you.

Here’s a little treat for everyone looking to play with some new shaders in mental ray tonight.

I had a little spare time and I decided to finally begin releasing some of my minShaders for mental ray. I’ll start out with the minMatcap material that can simulate the look of ZBrush’s Matcap material.

This is without a doubt the most simple shader in my library and as such I guess it doesn’t need much documentation, so it’s a candidate for a quick no-frills release.

Download

Download minMatcap (Windows x86, x64 and Mac OS X, works in Maya and 3ds max)

The great thing about the shader is that it makes it really simple to achieve a specific look which might otherwise require a complex shading and lighting setup. I don’t know how useful this is in everyday production, but for showing off your models it is perfect.
The library comes with a couple of texture samples that should get you started.

It is however a trade-off between flexibility and speed… this shader has no parameters and gathers all it’s data from the texture sample. I have been working on a more advanced version of the shader that offers some more options but for now this is all you’re getting… ;)

I wasn’t intending to release another update of my Normality plug-ins for free… the software is being used intensely over at Studio Lampion, but we’re about 2 versions ahead of what’s publicly available.
The latest internal build includes cool features like subsurface scattering, image-based illumination, screenspace ambient occlusion and the toon-shading technology from Celulight.
Best of all, rotating and translating layers in 3D now results in accurate lighting, so it’s really possible to get away with much more in post than ever before.

But I’m rambling… our internal builds of Normality are unfortunately currently not available to the public for various reasons.

I have however fixed a number of bugs in the public version, in particular the one which broke pre-comping – if that kept you from implementing the software in your After Effects workflow, try the latest update to Normality.