Normality downloads are down

Some down­loads from this site are cur­rently bro­ken. Sorry, I can’t be arsed to fix it right now.

On a side note, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see how many peo­ple con­tact me about my plug-​​ins when they can­not down­load them as opposed to after they did…

Edit: Fixed.

Normality will not run in After Effects CS5

A quick note as I’ve heard this this ques­tion come up a lot lately from peo­ple read­ing my ear­lier post and in dis­cus­sions on var­i­ous forums on the topic of AE CS5 being 64-​​bit only.

Will Nor­mal­ity /​ Atlas /​ Gen­er­a­tor be ported to 64-​​bit for After Effects CS5?

The short answer: No.

Longer answer: Adobe has made the busi­ness deci­sion to deprive me (and all other pro­fes­sional AE users) of a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment by remov­ing sup­port for 32-​​bit plug-​​ins, e.g. all exist­ing third-​​party plug-​​ins, in AE CS5.

Again, this was not done for tech­ni­cal rea­sons, it was purely a busi­ness decision.

Along with my invalu­able col­lec­tion of third-​​party plug-​​ins I also lose the func­tion­al­ity I require to do my daily work. Now I need to go out and find replace­ments for sta­ble and time-​​tested tools and in some cases even develop new ones to replace cus­tom soft­ware I do not own the rights to.

AE’s main strength IMHO was the sheer num­ber of third-​​party plug-​​ins that are not avail­able for other plat­forms. In a way Adobe has lev­eled the play­ing field.

In light of this predica­ment I in turn have also made a busi­ness deci­sion: I’m sim­ply tak­ing my busi­ness else­where.
As I’ll have to replace all my plug-​​ins any­way, this is the per­fect oppor­tu­nity for me to ditch After Effects for a more pow­er­ful solu­tion. One that, iron­i­cally, man­ages to run in both 32and 64-​​bit. And in Linux!

A word to the After Effects community

I’m not doing this out of spite or to harm the AE com­mu­nity in any way and I apol­o­gize to all users that have come to rely on my plug-​​ins for their daily work.
Updat­ing my soft­ware to run in CS5 means I myself would have to invest in the new ver­sion, and I’m sure you under­stand that’s not some­thing I’m pre­pared to do just to sup­port some free plug-​​ins.

Just like Adobe’s, mine is purely a busi­ness decision.

Generator

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.

GeneratorGeneratorGeneratorGenerator

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.

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.

Re: Normality's 50.000 Downloads

A quick follow-​​up to last week’s post about Nor­mal­ity reach­ing 50.000 down­loads: While I’m happy that the soft­ware is so pop­u­lar and that it is being put to good use in stu­dios around the world, what I’m not so thrilled with is the ratio of down­loads to donations.

So far only 13 (!) of the roughly 55.000 down­load­ers have con­tributed to say thanks and to sup­port con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the soft­ware. Alas, that’s less than 0.1% of all down­load­ers.
Now I never expected to get rich by releas­ing a dona­tion­ware After Effects plug-​​in… but it would def­i­nitely be nice to at least be able to off­set my host­ing costs.

Main­tain­ing and sup­port­ing free soft­ware costs time and money that I am no longer able or will­ing to put in at this rate.

Normality reaches 50.000 downloads

It’s been just a few months since I released Nor­mal­ity 3.0 for After Effects. Back then it was only known as a secret weapon in  the darker realms of the After Effects com­mu­nity.
Then Video Copi­lot came along and fea­tured Nor­mal­ity in their fan­tas­tic and in-​​depth tuto­r­ial, lead­ing to a mas­sive boost in the software’s pop­u­lar­ity and usage around the world.

Now, after sub­tract­ing the thou­sands of “ille­git­i­mate” down­loads dur­ing an attack on my site in Sep­tem­ber, I can proudly announce that Nor­mal­ity has offi­cially reached 50.000 downloads!

Nor­mal­ity Down­loads by OS

Google Chart

The chart shows  the dis­tri­b­u­tion between the Win­dows and OS X ver­sions, leav­ing the Mac all the way down at just 10%.

Nor­mal­ity Down­loads by Region

Google Chart

And, because I’m a fiend for sta­tis­tics, here’s the break­down by region. A cou­ple of sur­prises there in my opinion!

Any­way, this means there are (poten­tially) 50.000 users of my plug-​​in out there! I would def­i­nitely like to hear from you all about your expe­ri­ences with the soft­ware and the cool projects you are using it on.

Downloads suspended. Edit: We're back

Due to what is either mas­sive abuse, neg­li­gence or an out­right denial of ser­vice attack, I have been forced to sus­pend access to all down­loads until fur­ther notice.

A user with the IP address 208.95.112.198 found it nec­es­sary or fun to down­load Nor­mal­ity 44.712 times in one night… that’s sim­ply unac­cept­able and unfor­tu­nately actions had to be taken to pre­vent con­tin­ued abuse of my lim­ited resources.

I apol­o­gize for the incon­ve­nience and hope to rein­state down­loads once the traf­fic has returned to a more rea­son­able level.


Edit: It looks like things have returned to nor­mal. Down­loads are back up ten­ta­tively, but I’ll keep an eye out for any sus­pi­cious activity…