No I’m not suggesting that you try to sneak into MAX. More power to you if you can but that’s not the point of this post. I’ll be doing a presentation tomorrow at 1:00pm at the FITC Un-Conference event at MAX. This will cover the basics of decompiling Flash content as well as some things you can do to protect your content. Below is an excerpt from an upcoming documentary on the subject.

Hope to see you there tomorrow!
Lee

I just uploaded the new tutorial that shows how to take some green screen video footage and key out the background in After Effects. From there I export the video and integrate it into Flash. Finally I turn it into an AIR application so you can see the video transparency over the desktop. If you want to use the clip shown in the tutorial you can download it here. Check it out at http://www.gotoandlearn.com.

I just uploaded the new tutorial that shows you how to make the click and zoom 3D carousel that I showed in a previous post. This is a long tutorial and teaches quite a few different things throughout the 35 minutes. First and foremost I show you how to use the SimpleZSorter class that I talked about in this post. This is a must if you need your 3D objects to be sorted correctly in Flash Player 10.

One thing to point out here is that this is an advanced tutorial. So if you are just getting started with ActionScript 3, you may want to hold off on this until you’re more comfortable. Basically if you don’t know how to make Flash go to a new URL when an image is clicked, then carousels shouldn’t be your priority at this point .

Lee

A couple of days ago I picked up a $40 children’s microscope from an electronics store. The goal was to try to hook it up to my HD video camera to generate some cool abstract backgrounds. I’m still very early in the experimentation phase with this but I made a mock opening credits sequence using some of the shots. You can take a look at my ghetto setup by clicking here. Click below to see the video.

If you’re wondering, Morgan Freeman’s credit is over velcro, Brad Pitt’s is over a raisin, the title is over a termite, and mine is over a paper towel.

Lee

As I mentioned in my last post, we now have a great z-sorting class thanks to Ralph. Tomorrow I’m planning on recording a tutorial showing how to use it and the example below will be the finished product. This is a basic 3D carousel that allows you to spin it based on mouse position. When you click on an image, you zoom to a close-up of the photo. From there you can click on other images to spin them into focus. To zoom back out simply click on the stage. All of the photos are loaded in via XML. Click on the image below to see the example.

Lee

I’m excited to announce that we now have a Z-sorting class for Flash Player 10. I had mentioned several times that I was having someone who really knows about 3D write this class. Well that person was none other than Ralph Hauwert who is one of the geniuses behind Papervision3D. You can’t get better than that!

I am hosting this class on my Google Code repository so you can download it via Subversion. For those not on SVN you can download a ZIP file of the classes. Using them is extremely easy. You simply call the SimpleZSorter.sortClips() static method and pass in the container clip that holds your 3D objects. This will need to be called repetitively inside an enter frame event if doing animation. Click on the image below to check out a simple carousel example.

For those who want to build something similar to the above example, I plan on doing a tutorial on building it tonight. Please join me in thanking Ralph for writing this for the community!

Lee

I just uploaded the new tutorial that shows you how to make the 3D video flip application that I showed in a previous post. Now there are probably much better ways of doing Z sorting. But for only two objects you can get away with something basic like I show in the tutorial. I’m working on getting a general purpose Z sort class written by someone with low-level 3D knowledge. Stay tuned on that.

Lee

Last month I had the pleasure of presenting in Singapore at The ActionScript Conference. This was the first of hopefully many for this new regional conference. Like flashPitt, these smaller events are often just as good as the larger, more expensive conferences. My fellow speakers included Peter Elst, Marco Casario, Michael Plank, Stefan Wessels, Aleksandar Gvozden, Prayank Swaroop, and Mohammed Khan.

Like always, I decided to make a short video with some of the stuff I saw. In this video I tried to learn the Ronin’s style of editing with quick, frenetic cuts. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I am flattering the hell out of Rob Chiu here.

Lee

This application could be taken a lot further so feel free to grab the source files and use it as the base for something bigger.

Below you can check out the subject for my next tutorial. It shows you how to create a simple 3D flip effect using the new 3D features in Flash Player 10. After the video starts playing you can click the rotate button to flip it 180 degrees. On the back is a description of the video including some links which are fully clickable. You can even see the video still playing in reverse. The video controls remain regardless of position. Click on the image below to check it out.

Lee

I just finished uploading a new tutorial that shows you the basics of using the new ZendAMF framework. As you’ll see, the workflow is almost identical to the workflow for AMFPHP so it shouldn’t take long to make the switch. In this example I show how to retrieve database content and read it into Flash using the NetConnection class. Check it out at http://www.gotoandlearn.com.

Lee

Lee

Today I headed up to the Adobe SF office to interview Justin Everett-Church about the recent controversial changes to the FileReference class. Justin is the Senior Product Manager for Flash Player and in the interview he talks about the reasons for the change as well as ways that we could have possibly handled things better.

I found out a few things today that make things much clearer to me. First, this wasn’t based on a theoretical security threat but instead on actual security reports that we received. Unfortunately we cannot divulge the specifics of the attacks, but they are real. As for communication, the main issue was that we didn’t spend enough time communicating to the AJAX community who are primarily the ones affected by this change. Anyway, listen to the interview for more details.

Please also read this article for more details on the changes. Feel free to leave your opinions in the comments but I’m moving on. The reasoning makes sense to me and the workarounds are actually quite easy. Now on to those other complaints .

Lee

As promised, I just finished uploading a new tutorial that shows you how to export ActionScript-based animations from Flash as QuickTime video as well as how to composite them in After Effects. This work flow allows you to create some really cool motion graphics that would be extremely hard to do without using Flash. Below is the finished product from the tutorial. The music is by HECQ, who works a lot with the Ronin. Check out the tutorial at gotoAndLearn().

Lee

I remember sitting at my first Flash Forward years ago watching Erik Natzke’s Black and White video and being blown away. Well thanks to how far Flash has come since then, it is much easier to do those kinds of effects. The video below is something I did in about half an hour using the animation from this post. How did I do it? Well that is the topic for my next tutorial at gotoAndLearn().

PS - Does anyone have a link to Erik’s Black and White video?

Lee

This is another little experiment I whipped up using Fermat’s spiral formula. It takes the the Acrobat logo and uses it to create some flower effects. Click on the image below to download a ZIP file including the FLA and SWF file. It chugs a little in the browser so it’s better to view it in the standalone player.

Lee

I’ve gotten quite a few people asking why the Z key was mapped to the Bind tool in Flash CS4. The Z key is reserved for the Zoom tool in most other Creative Suite applications. Well the Zoom tool is now known as the Magnify tool in Flash CS4. Still doesn’t make much sense does it?

Well luckily it is very easy to modify your keyboard shortcuts to suit your own tastes. First select Keyboard Shortcuts from the Flash menu. Click the Duplicate Set button to copy the default shortcuts into a new set. From there you can modify them to your heart’s content. I chose to swap the keys for the Magnify and Bind tools. This puts the Z key back where it should be, controlling the zoom of your document.

Lee

The images above are just a sampling of the graphics I was able to create. You can download a ZIP file containing both the FLA and SWF files. By modifying the symbols used to draw the shapes you can create some really wild effects. The example below is one of my favorites and is an example of a daisy using Fermat’s spiral formula. Click on the image below to see an animated version.

This is definitely a nice book if you want to get more into generative math art. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more books like this.

Lee

One thing the Flash community doesn’t have a problem with is speaking up when they think Adobe is doing something stupid. In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I’m going to try to get some more detailed answers from within Adobe to some of the tough questions that I hear quite often from the community. To be completely honest, I know about as much as you do on a lot of these so I’m just as curious as you are.

I’m not going to render my opinion on any of these but rather give you the reasoning behind some of the decisions we make. Sometimes the factors that lead to our decisions cannot be made public for one reason or another. But more often than not, we just simply haven’t done a good job communicating why we do certain things. Below are a sample of some of the most asked questions in no particular order.

1. Why did you change the FileReference class in Flash Player 10, effectively breaking a lot of existing Flash content? The security reasoning doesn’t really make sense.
2. What’s up with the CS4 launch? First you have an announce date that doesn’t even give a release date. Then you release it without putting the trial versions up.
3. Why can’t Adobe afford to pay speaker expenses for MAX? If small conferences can do it, why can’t Adobe? Now you are paying expenses for some speakers and not others which is potentially even worse.
4. Why do you make changes to things without telling the community? An example would be the changes to the Sound APIs in Flash Player 10.

Now one thing I would ask is that you give us the benefit of the doubt on these until I can get more details. One thing you can be sure of is that Adobe is not filled with evil people who are sitting back twisting their mustaches, thinking of ways to make your life difficult. Remember that we are also users of our products so we want them to just as cool as you do.

While it might be tempting to leave a comment with other questions that you want answers to, I’m going to first try to deal with the ones above. After that we can look at the next set .

Lee