6beersofseparation.com.au has scored a FWA!!!
ever since i got into flash ive always wanted one of these… and its nice to finally have one next to your name.
although it has been a team effort from holler sydney and our second FWA in the 2 years we’ve been going.
alright!

at work i spend hours, even days programming the tiniest flash effects to make that website just that little more special. it is the most exciting part of the job, experimenting with ideas and seeing their visual outcome.

thought id make it a habbit to post some of these effects after each project in the true spirit of open source… but enough justificating!

this is a spray paint effect that i coded for a tooheys new microsite, 6beersofseparation.com.au, comes complete with drips and streaks.
you can see it in action when you click the walls.

have a spray…
[kml_flashembed movie="http://julapy.com/source/SprayPaint.swf" height="250" width="400" /]

here is the source
happy vandalising!

this is my first crack at a beat detection algorithm in flash. it works by calculating average sample energy per frame over a certain band and compares the value against the last few values stored in a buffer. if the value is larger then whats in the memory, a beat occurs. currently it supports multiple bands, so you can listen for a kick or a snare at the same time. the theory is based on this article that i found while looking at some processing examples.

ive knocked up a little example, left and right arrow keys moves the band across the spectrum, < and > keys stretch and shrink the band, up and down arrow keys increase and decrease the beat threshold. you will see two line markers jumping around, the white represents the average energy for the current frame within that band and the yellow represents the average energy in the buffer.

check out the swf here. download the source here.

I made a little Air app the other day, needed something that could save and load my Midi settings. It particularly comes in handy when you have a Midi controller with multiple presets that you may want to switch between, nothing worse that having to hardcode Midi note values.

Providing you have Red5 server running with your Midi app as explained in the previous post, its just a matter of selecting your Midi-In and Midi-Out devices from the dropdowns, pressing connect and assigning your Midi notes.  Once you have all your inputs assigned you can then save your Midi settings in an xml file. Same goes if you want to load your old settings and make some changes.

I’ve built this app tailored for my Akai MPD24 but I’ve kept it robust enough so if someone else wants to come along and adopt it for their own Midi controller it is pretty flexible. I’d like to make a general tool for a range of Midi controllers but I’ve only got the one, so would be great to hear from anyone that adopts the app to their own controller.

As always, here is the code.
MidiConfig Air App.
MidiConfig Air App source.
Flex example on how to use the xml config along with small Midi library that I’ve put together for Red5 Midi applications.

Getting Midi into Flash has always been on the todo list and finally this weekend it all came together.

I started by googling different methods, all of which involved setting up some kind of Flash Server and running an application which communicated with MIDI devices, and relaying MIDI messages to flash through a NetConnection.

I came across the work of John Grden and his impressive papervision guitar demo, very cool. John used Red5 as his Flash Server which I’ve come across on many occasions but never had a chance to properly explore. Red5 is an Open Source Flash Server written in Java, they have a load of tutorials and examples to get you started. I personally recommend the Getting started with Red5 Server tutorial which is your first logical step in getting MIDI into flash, and you can make sure that your Red5 server is working and communication with Flash.

So I borrowed my mates USB MIDI keyboard and got cracking. A whole day of trials and tribulations followed due to keyboard driver issues. If you have USB MIDI device and a Logitech webcam installed on the same machine, beware! Finally solved the problem by clearing some values in the registry which always makes me nervous.

Anyhoo, I won’t be regurgitating what John already outlined in his blog entry, instead here is my working source.

You will have to set your own MIDI-IN and MIDI-OUT devices, whpich you should see come up when the application initialises. Once that is done, start hitting those keys and you should see the MIDI data being traced out. Here is helpful link that will explain the MIDI data coming through. Basically the second value in the array is your note which corresponds to the key you just hit and the third value in the array is your velocity, the strength with which you hit that note. All values range from 0-127.

So with all those MIDI messages pouring into my machine I got a bit excited and went out and bought the Akai MPD24 which includes an assortment of slides, rotary knobs and velocity pads, perfect for an external hardware interface into Flash. So far I’ve built a little app that visually represents each one of the MIDI buttons. Looking forward to plugging it into papervision and hopefully getting it going with some music software, so it controls audio and visuals simultaneously.

In this experiment I was trying to achieve natural swimming motion as exhibited by the koi. At the moment there is only one motion behaviour class, the Bezier, which means the koi move along a random, curved path. Through some easing equations I have made it so the koi burst with its initial movements and come to a gradual hover. The fins and tail are also controlled, so they flap according to the speed of the koi.

As I’ve realised, mimicking the natural movements of fish is not an easy task. I’m in the process of creating addition motion behaviour classes to randomise the koi’s behaviour which should find their way to this blog soon.

For a peek at the swf, click here.
To download the source, click here.

www.sebastianandrews.com

This website is a photo gallery viewer application that I’ve put together for a client, a London based photographer.

The multi layered environment gives the application a 3d feel. The environment is fully configurable through a xml, allowing the user to chose the number of layers, the color scheme and the content of each layer.

www.julapy.com/earblockboy

This is a personal ongoing project, a website I’ve built to host a collection of soundscape recordings. It was also an opportunity to plug in some code based effects I’ve developed (particles and rays in the Intro).

At Cyberview I had a chance to build a framework for Slot (Poker) Games. Part of this project entailed building a reusable and skinnable component into which graphics could be easily plugged into by designers. The Slot Engine became the backbone of the Flash Slot games at Cyberview. It underwent many revisions and refactoring, the latest incorporated MVC architecture.

For a demonstration, please click here.

Inspired by the book, Flash Math Creativity, in this experiment I created a series of circles slightly out of sync, trailing after one another to give the impression of a slinky. Its amazing what you can achieve with some basic trigonometry.

To view the final product, click here.
To download the source, click here.