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.
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.
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 32– and 64-bit. And in Linux!
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 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.
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 for After Effects is a free download for Microsoft Windows.
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.
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.
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!
The chart shows the distribution between the Windows and OS X versions, leaving the Mac all the way down at just 10%.
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.
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.
