Kenneth Weiss » Graphics

PaperVision3D+ ActionScript3==funtime…

Kenneth — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:13:24 +0000

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.

Print-CD Cover: Space Monkey-Hyperactive

Kenneth — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 01:30:15 +0000

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

Print-CD Cover: Agitato Homemade

Kenneth — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 11:08:40 +0000

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

Kenneth — Sat, 14 May 2005 17:50:27 +0000

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

Kenneth — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:00:55 +0000

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.

Print-CD Cover: Trauma – TB-O-NOT-2B

Kenneth — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 22:45:20 +0000

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.

Print-CD Cover: Indica

Kenneth — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 22:24:16 +0000

CD cover for a new release from Agitato. This is the second cover that I am creating for Agitato. Seems they liked the previous cover I did for Space Monkey and I am enjoying designing CD covers as well.
I have created something pretty generic, this is a standard Trance cover, no messing. Used Maya for rendering the landscape and added lots of layer overlays in Photoshop for the Mandala.

Print-CD Cover: Space Monkey – Psychotic episode

Kenneth — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:32:37 +0000

This is my first attempt at an album cover. DJ Space Monkey happens to be a good friend of mine so this was a good opportunity for me. The basic idea was to try and get something psychotic/monkeyish/futuristic/trancy. I think it came out quite right. The art is created by overlaying a ton of images onto the monkey and blending them all together. Space monkey applied some post processing.

The CD can be purchased here:
Space Monkey – Psychotic episode

Nice Flash Actionscript Sample

Kenneth — Fri, 11 Apr 2003 19:35:19 +0000

This is a nice Actionscript flash animation I created. I used it for the chromosoniq site. It is some sort of a navigation panel and each planet represents a page in the site. It demonstrates a ‘fake’ 3D animation. All the planets are image sequences that have been pre-distorted in Photoshop. The light reflection is added to the Movie Object as a top layer with some gradient. I use some simple math calculations for placing the objects.

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