PaperVision3D+ ActionScript3==funtime…

It’s been a while since I had done any decent flash/Actionscript programming. For some reason I had the feeling that nothing was really changing for the last few years. I was so wrong. I have been in a coma while some talented brains have been plotting and building 3D engines that actually work under (the not so optimized) flash player.

So I’m back at it with a papervision3d project for Barbie Shanghai’s website.
What seemed simple in the first glance was actually quite challenging. The site was designed with cover flow in mind. The problem with the design is that its a pseudo 3D scene, its not a mathematically accurate perspective. The solution was to create an individual Viewport3D scene for each object in the movie. For the movement on the y axis I am actually tweening the whole viewport of each object on the stage. For performance I only render the Viewport3D for each floor only when its changing in size or animating.

I used the Tweener package for all the tweens. I needed to tween the ColorMaterial’s fillColor. So I created a package based on how tweener splits the color hex value. Here is the code for the package: PaperVisionColorMaterialProperty.as - Papervision3D ColorMaterial property for Tweener. To use it you must call PaperVisionColorMaterialProperty.init(); somewhere in you code.

If you don’t know what PaperVision3D is about, check the following links:
Papervision3D - The source.
ROXIC  - Nice “fake” 3D, notice that the spares are not real 3D objects.
MR-doob - This guy has really mad experiments going on in his lab.

New Track: Money Maker

Nice electro track I made over the weekend… The vocals have been laying about for years. It still needs allot of work to get the lead sound to screech right. And I need to add some more ambient effects.

Hope you like it!

MoneyMaka.mp3

Native iPhone Application: Tap-N-Flip

Ok some changes. Othello is just too easy. That is why there are about 10 different versions of the game in the app store. So this game is an arcade version of Othello. It has levels, Score, lives and can be played multiplayer. I implemented the GUI with OpenGL ES and added some sounds using the Open AL api.

Native iPhone Application:Wi-Reversi

I have been working for the past month on an iPhone version for the classic game Othello/Reversi. Basically its a board game where you need to flip as many of your opponent pieces that you can. Seems to be quite popular game as I have noticed 2 other developers have made their Cocoa Touch version. Anyways I will still persue this as I have 2 nice features that are unique.

Wifi mode - the if two versions of the game are located on the same wifi network, The players can play a multi player game where each player has his own view of the game on his iPhone.
Insanity mode - When playing multi-player mode, you can select the Insanity mode. There are no turns and each player needs to tap faster then the opponent to finish the game.
The AI part and game logic were coded by my colleague Aaaron Davidson. Aaron is an extremely talented AI and games systems developer.

I hope to have this released on the Apple Store soon enough. I need to give the UI some final touches.

WordPress rocks, from now on it’s a blog

New homepage, It’s a blog from now on. I have to many things going on and I couldn’t find a better way to organize my collection. so WordPress is the way to go. Took me about half an hour to setup, it’s so easy. It’s so easy to customize. It’s easy to update and I can do it from my iPhone.

P.S.
If you noticed that for a new site I have allot of entries, It’s just because I am backdating…

Code: Trolltech QT Development

QT on Wikipedia: Qt_(toolkit)

QT is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of GUI programs, and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers.

I have been getting into QT development lately in work and at home. The framework is a clean cross platform C++ toolkit. Other then the GUI, it provides a simple and elegant abstraction to all the system API’s. I find myself spending less time messing with with writing another file manager or graphic manager, and focusing on the actual application. The documentation is great and covers the objects well. They have an object for any type of action you would need in an application and most of the times its written the way I would.
The most important benefit for me is the ability to see all the frameworks code. Unlike Windows MFC development, I would find myself stepping deeper into the objects and getting a clear understanding of what they exactly do.
So from now on if I need to develop any Cross platform applications this is my preferred framework.

Learn more about QT:
www.trolltech.com

Website: Natan Elkanovich 

I am working on a website for a talented named Natan Elkanovich. Natan’s work is manly Pop-Art and he uses a combination of Acrylic, Silicone and Mix-Media to create intricate and detailed paintings.

I needed to create a website that is easy to maintain and quick to change. I wanted to create a way for him to change the gallery without the use of complicated web interface. My solution was a series of perl scripts that will automatically generate the website from a collection of images organized in a folder hierarchy. For creating the thumbnails and editing the images I used ImageMagick combined with the PerlMagick module. It takes about 2 minutes to generate the whole site.

Check out Natan’s site: Natan Elkanovich

Developing Native iPhone Applications

My first cell phone was an iPhone. It’s a decade late, but a good entry into the mobile world. So now that I am a proud iPhone owner and an experienced Apple developer, the next natural stage would be to develop some killer applications for the iPhone OS.

I have downloaded and installed the iPhone developer SDK. It’s basically a simplified Cocoa framework and proves to be extremely easy to learn.

So stay tuned for updates on future projects!

MacHEADS the Movie

You need to check out MacHEADS the Movie. Not only for the obvious reason that it’s about Macs, and we love macs, but also a good friend of mine, Koby Shely happened to direct it.

Update:
The movie is now 2nd place in documentaries in iTunes! Good job Kobi!

Working for Pocket Kings and moving to Ireland 

Pocket Kings provides Technology and Marketing consulting services to the online poker industry and one of the fastest growing poker sites. The company is located in Dublin, Ireland. I will be working as a client side developer for the mac software application. I am starting to work today and I am very excited. Most of my web experience has been with http, so this is a great opportunity for me to learn some new client/server skills and network protocols.

Update:
It’s time to move on… too much pixel pushing and office politics turn your brain into jelly…

Apple WWDC 2007, I’m here!

This is unbelievable, I’m finely here! The atmosphere is great. Loads of mac heads, all lined up to see the rock star. I wonder what he is going to pull out of his hat this time… And one more thing… iPhone with 3G?

After all this time being an Apple developer, my company sent me here. This is going to be a great conference. Lot’s of cool session here and I am intending to be in all of them. My goal is to get closer with objective-c, learn more audio tricks, and go to the Core Audio Lab. It’s always great to meet the developers face to face and get information on the internal workings of some of the apps. As with all the sdk’s, at some point you are pointing in the dark and its always enlightening to speak to the designers.

Website: Orion Design

I created this website for my brother Orion. He is a deck contractor and needed a portfolio site. He needed gallery which he could constantly change, upload images and organize albums. I found the open source Gallery which came up 1st on google when I typed gallery. It was a great choice. There is a minor learning curve for the administration but the flexibility is awesome. He is constantly changing the site and I have almost 0% maintenance time.

Check out Orion’s site: דקים פרגולות איפאה

Print-CD Cover: Space Monkey-Hyperactive 

Cover CD for Space Monkey’s 2nd release. SM wanted something similar to the first cover but he had an image of a gas mask that he wanted us to use. The addition of the samurai crest on the top gave the art a manga sort of touch which i liked.

You can purchse the release here:
Space Monkey-Hyperactive

Waves Tune - Working on a new plug-in from Waves

A year and a half in the making, this is an awesome project that I was privileged to work on. Waves Tune is a Vocal Tuning Plug-in that is used for fixing out of tune singers or can be used as a modern vocal effect.
From Wave Tune Product Page:

The singer has just wrapped up an amazing take. The phrasing, the emotion, the delivery, it’s all there. But there are notes you’d like to change, and others that need to be fixed. You need perfect pitch transformation. You need precision realtime editing capabilities.
You need Waves Tune. With full ReWire support, formant correction, and an extensive palette of pitch shaping tools, Waves Tune lets you do all your editing right there within your DAW environment - no need to export sections or work offline. Better sounding and more flexible than any other pitch correction processor, Waves Tune will get your vocals back on track.

In this project I became more acquainted with OpenGL and 3d graphics programming. There was allot of room to explore, so I could focus on making the interface smoother and cooler. There is a nice zooming effect I created and when the pages are moved the screen will slide into the point of view. You can see the zooming effect on this video: Waves Tune Video on YouTube
Another cool aspect was using ReWire not for the audio capabilities but for the synchronization and ability to control your host application from within the plug-in’s GUI.

This Plug-in will be released soon and will support the following platforms:
VST - Window and Mac OS X
Audio Units - Mac OS X
Pro-Tools/RTAS/Audio Suite - Window and Mac OS X
MAS - Mac OS X

Print-CD Cover: Agitato Homemade 

CD print job for Agitato. It was hard to get the idea for this one, but once I had it, it was quick to produce. I wanted to capture the meaning of homemade products and make it trancy, so pickled creatures was the way to go. This was an excelent opprtunity to get started with Maya. The 3d germs were basic enough. Some nice shaders from Highend3d give them a nice silky touch.

Print-CD Cover: Agitato - Stereo Activity

New compilation from Agitato. This one was a bit restricting. The label insisted on having speakers on the cover which is the brand mark of the compilation series. Created the speaker object with Maya.

Print-CD Cover: Chillum 4- The ultimate tribal ambient journey  

Just finished a CD cover job for Agitato Records. Agitato is an Israeli independent trance music label. The inspiration for this one came to me as I was toying with the chill word in my head and thinking of the most chilled being on earth. Jellyfish, floating about in the cold ocean. The art is made from a collection of real and rendered jellyfish tentacles laid over a hi-res image of a jellyfish.

Website+Music: Short Term Project

Just finished uploading my bands newest site. the Short Term Project is an Euro/Dance/Club project that I’ve been working on for the last year and a half. I think it’s time to spread the word and give people a chance to catch my tunes. All of the songs are written by me and Nixa. All the music is generated on my Mac with Logic audio, Pro-tools and loads of soft synths and plugins.

You can view the site and download some MP3’s:
The Short Term Project - Pop Dance Vocal Trance

The site is mostly a Flash animation I made. Took a while to sketch the characters. I guess I am a bit rusty…

Print-CD Cover: Trauma - TB-O-NOT-2B 

I really love this one. The name of the band makes it hard to make a cover that is not heavy metal. I needed to mix the TB303 from the releases title with the name of the band. So we have a TB in the trauma emergency room. I’m not sure if all the viewers get the perspective of this image, Perhaps I should have added a glass table so the TB is not hanging mid air. The artist was thrilled when he received the cover.