May 5 2010
Finally found a little time to port most of my After Effects plug-ins to the OpenFX format. So far I have Generator, Celulight, Occlusionist, Edgar, Floodgate and a couple more filters running in both 32-bit and 64-bit in Windows and Linux.
The port was fairly straightforward: Back when I was rewriting Normality for version 3.0 I’d designed a portable wrapper around the After Effects–specific parts of the code, so it would be easy to separate the graphics algorithms from the GUI side. My plug-ins also share many libraries with my 3D shaders, which were already designed to be cross-platform and 64-bit capable.
So this strict separation paid off for me as it made porting the software to the OpenFX format quite painless.
What's this OpenFX business?
The OpenFX (OFX) format is, as the name suggests, an open standard for visual effects plug-ins.
For me as a developer there are a number of technical benefits as the API is open, reasonably modern and far more accessible than the proprietary, aging and convoluted After Effects API my plug-ins were originally written for.
The really great thing for developers and users alike is that OFX is supported by a growing number of compositing applications including Nuke, Fusion, Shake and Toxic/Maya Compositor. (Notice a prominent compositor missing from that list…?)
Anyway, that means the next time a software developer decides to arbitrarily end support for your platform of choice, you can at least take your collection of plug-ins with you.
Normality for OpenFX?
Currently not, unfortunately… as much as I like the OFX API, it does have some limitations which make a faithful port of Normality impossible.
I do have a solution in mind but it’ll take some time to design and implement. Without revealing too much at this point, I’ve been considering freeing Normality from the shackles of a host application altogether for quite some time now…
November 15 2009
Generator is a simple and free plug-in for Adobe After Effects which can be used to create normal maps from alpha mattes, such as text and shape layers.
It is based on some of the same algorithms as my more versatile Celulight plug-ins, but is comparatively simple and offers none of the advanced customizations its more feature-rich brother offers.
Generator is designed to run in cooperation with the free Normality re-lighting solution to create shading and lighting effects for text and arbitrary shapes without the need for pre-rendered 3D normal passes.
Usage
When using Normality to add lighting and shading effects to motion graphics, sometimes you’d wish there was a quick and easy way to create a normal map from text or shapes instead of relying on a complex 3D renderer… that’s where Generator comes in!
Just drop this plug-in on your text, shape or any other layer with a clean alpha channel and you will instantly see a normal map based on the layer’s shape. Generator is kept intentionally simple with very few options and hence little room for error — in fact, there is only a single parameter to adjust.
The automatically generated normal map can be used by Normality to add shading and lighting effects even without a pre-rendered 3D normal pass.
Note: Due to a bug in Normality, you must pre-compose your generated normal map before applying Normality.
Download Generator Beta 0.2
Download
Generator for After Effects is a free download for Microsoft Windows.
Download Generator
Generator is a free After Effects plug-in for Microsoft Windows.
Donations
Developing free software costs time and money. If you appreciate my work and use it in production, please donate.
I will be more inclined to release cool stuff in the future if I see that my work is appreciated.
Donations
Developing free software costs time and money. If you appreciate my work and use it in production, please donate.
I will be more inclined to release cool stuff in the future if I see that my work is appreciated.
November 2 2009
I’ve added proper color-space conversion to Atlas, so you shouldn’t be getting any more over-saturated results.
The one remaining bug I’ve come across is the broken Reinhard ’05 mapping — please let me know if you find anything else broken or behaving unexpected!
Download the newest version of Atlas.
October 29 2009
Well, that was quick! Thanks to user feedback I was able to fix two nasty little bugs in the original release of Atlas right away.
Grab the latest version!
October 28 2009
As previously announced, here’s the first release of my new tone mapping plug-in for After Effects, Atlas.
The release is buggy and probably not fit for production, but it’s open-source so I hope to get some help to bring it up to speed! Atlas is released under the free GPL license.
This release is Windows only for now… however, the full source code is included, which means that anyone with more time on their hands than me can feel free to compile a Mac version. I didn’t try it myself, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t run on Mac OS X.
To compile the code you will need to download and link with the After Effects SDK. For legal reasons I unfortunately cannot distribute these files with Atlas. The required pfstmo libraries are included with the download, however.
The code is not yet well documented, but the plug-in itself is just about as simple as it gets, so you should find your way around easily if you’re familiar with the SDK.
Hints on usage
If you’re not familiar with the concept of tone mapping, Wikipedia has a good introduction that should give you an idea of the use and functionality of this versatile technique.
Please note that for obvious reasons the effect is most useful in 32-bit color mode with 32-bit source images. It will work in lower modes but the resulting effect might not be what you expect.
Please go ahead and download Atlas and then let me know in the comments if you come across any bugs or have other suggestions!
October 26 2009
Atlas is a port of the pfstmo tone mapping operators to the Adobe After Effects plug-in format. This plug-in is free open source software licensed under the GPL.
Tone Mapping
So what’s tone mapping you ask? According to Wikipedia:
Tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map a set of colours to another; often to approximate the appearance of high dynamic range images in media with a more limited dynamic range.
The technique is particularly useful if you have high dynamic range images, such as rendered CG-imagery in floating point color-depth (OpenEXR) or HDR photographs, and you want to bring their broad spectrum into a range more suitable for display on a computer monitor or television screen.
There exist numerous tone mapping operators that approach this problem from different angles and achieve varying results.
| Supported tone mapping operators |
| Drago |
| Ashikhmin |
| Reinhard ’02 |
| Reinhard ’05 |
| Mantiuk |
| Durand |
| Pattanaik |
| Fattal |
Lately, the effect has also become something of a fad in photographer’s circles, as a quick Flickr Search will show.
Still tone mapping is a very versatile technique that can be used for photorealistic as well as artistic effects.
Download Atlas 0.3 (Beta)
Download
Sorry, Windows only for now. The included source code may be used to compile a release for Mac OS X by someone with more time on their hands than me.
If you want to play with the code you will also need to install the After Effects SDK, which I cannot include for legal reasons.
Usage Notes
Atlas is designed to work exclusively in 32-bit floating point color-space. Applying Atlas in 8-bit or 16-bit projects will yield unpredictable and/or possibly unbelievably gross and ugly results. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
Donations
Developing free software costs time and money. If you appreciate my work and use it in production, please donate.
I will be more inclined to release cool stuff in the future if I see that my work is appreciated.
