For my first experiment I used the phongshader, cause for some reason found on the internet, I thought this was the best quality shader around. You can see it a bit like this, but all shaders have their own specific use.

Ok so, the PhongShader has 3 main parameters (maybe in a follow up I will discuss some more little details about the shaders): The Light, the lightcolor and the ambientcolor.

Experiment 1
For example 1 I used an out-of-the-box light, and white as lightcolor, and for the ambientcolor I used black:
phongshader example 1
Looks pretty cool almost straigt out of the box. But although I really love vignettes, in a page already with a vignette and my content being this dark, I thought it wasn’t really doing it’s work here, so I wanted to alter the lighting.

First el-simplo adjustment (some call it el-lazy). So I changed the ambient-light to a lighter shade of gray:
phongshader example 2
Although the vignette of the lighting is working really nice for my content looking straight to the camera, I really miss the dark shadows that need to be there when I rotate the cube.

So… as an amateuristic-amateur-strobist-hobby-photographer my first thought was: I need to make my light-source bigger. Tried it, but with absolutely no effect. Then I thought: Maybe when I place my light further away from my subject, the light-bulbs would be more parallel blablabla… tried it, didn’t do the trick. Basically, there’s no way to alter the light-source yet.

Experiment 2
So then I said to myself… Maybe another shader would be more to my liking.
For this example I’m gonna discuss 4 shaders: FlatShader, CellShader, GouraudShader and the Phongshader. On this site the 4 shaders are explained nicely.

In my planned version 2 of the papervision shaders, I also will take a closer look at the EnvMapShader and the BumpMapShader. But for now to only discuss these 4 ’simple’ techniques, and because my 1-dimensional-rotating cube only has 4 visible sides, I made a visual example of the 4 shaders:

(drag to rotate the cube)

So the CellShader is indeed the cartoon shader. Not usable for my use, but I can see tons of cool uses for this one.
The GouraudShader looks pretty cool, a bit too dark for my liking still, but nice gradients and nice dark shadows when rotating. The shadows are a bit strange though. If you rotate really slow, look at the specular highlight and the shadows. The highlight, and the shadow pattern are following a diagonal line. Must be because of the splitting of the rectangle into triangles. In this example it looks weird enough for me so it’s not usable.
The FlatShader looks really good. Simple, clean, bright and with the dark shadows when rotating. No disturbing vignette, but also thus without specular highlight. Ok, fair enough. You win some, you lose some with Flash
And last but not least the PhongShader again for comparison. Try to rotate this side really slowly as well, and see that the same diagonal line is seen here in the highlight and shadows as with the GouraudShader.

I tried to solve this by increasing the amount of segments on the cube, but this gave unexpected behavior; almost a bevel like effect:

Thought it might had something to do with the precise materials, so turned precise of, but the same results. It’s a bit too late now to dive into this. Maybe for an update, or a second version. If someone can explain this, please comment!

For my portfolio version 0.2 I will go for the FlatShader. Nice, subtle, lighting detail that adds to the design and doesn’t distract from the content.

Please comment, if you think I’m incorrect, or you can add some info that is missing. I would love to hear your feedback on this subject!

Once in a while there are some video’s out there which are really inspirational. Sit back for a couple of minutes and enjoy.

Flight 404
On vimeo I saw an artist working with processing, making audio visualisations. I think he did an amazing job. Not the standard strangely behaving ribbons or pixels, but organic shapes ‘dancing’ on the music. If only Flash would allow this kind of quality output, but the concepts he is using are very inspirational.

Made with Processing. Audio by The Flashbulb (’Warren’ off the album These Open Fields).

With this one flight 404 inserts lyrics in a really cool way:

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

Laika
This cool stop-motion video is full of little details that just adds to the coolness… Check the depth of field lift of, or the volume slider. Details like that make it stand out.

LAÏKA (SHORT VERSION) from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

Misha Shyukin
This video is actually quit simple in terms of technique I think. I can make a prototype in Papervision3d of this kind of easily. But when I see stuff like this, I am aware of the quality difference between a rendered vid like this and real-time flash. And I think it keeps reminding me that this is the quality we want to see, and as a Flash Developer I think we need to get every trick out there to reach for this quality.

pia from misha shyukin on Vimeo.

Daniel Franke
From this video I get lots of inspiration. It combines first of all two really cool concepts; a ribbon like animation and blurrrrr! I love blurs… But my inspiration is actually the movement of the camera. It reacts to the music/sounds, and I really want to bring that concept to Papervision3d after seeing this. Making a cool demo demonstrating this. To be continued…

SOUND SCULPTURES from Daniel Franke on Vimeo.

Misc
And just ending with some really cool vids:

Cool concept, very well executed. The cool thing being that in the end you see how it is made. A bit surprising, kind of working with flash. Just push the technology with different kind of tricks to keep performance decent.
http://www.favoritecolor.tv/work/bda09001/

Miniature city. I just love tilt-shifting

And just because it’s cool…

Sometimes you come across something that really is touching you in one way or another. Once in a while I have that with film.

Inspiration

I had that for example with the BBC documentary ‘Earth’ in HD. The shots are amazing, and the relaxing voice of sir David Attenborough pulled me into the most beautiful places on earth, observing.

Koyaanisqatsi is an example of a masterpiece where the symbiosis of music and imagery is working like a charm together. I had the same feeling when I saw Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction epic Metropolis with a soundtrack produced by Detroit Techno legend Jeff Mills.

Home

Yesterday evening I came across a twitter message that asked for 90 minutes of my time for something that had blown him away. It was the movie called ‘Home’. You can watch it for free on YouTube (this time good quality, and even with subtitles). I was totally lost in the movie after only 5 minutes, it just took me by the hand and pulled me in, because every shot is beautiful (love those pano air shots of the earth) and the music works really well with the imagery. It may be a bit cliche how they worked with waves, working to a climax and then let it rest again before building up to another climax, but they executed it really well.

I was impressed, so you have to just check it out!
It’s only 90 minutes of your time…

Still checking things out, and I’m not gonna bore you guys/girls with how late I wake up and when I’m feeding the cat. But when I’m experiencing something funny, remarkable or astonishing, I might let you know!

So please help me learn the ins and outs, or feed me with the latest twitter gossip… I want to know what it’s all about. I can be reached at @sentoplene (I believe that’s the right way of writing it )

Ok… this is enough web2.0 for a while now, except making the shiny floor of course… that remains awesome (is it vintage already?)

I’m now gonna feed the cat, seriously.

When launching my portfolio I got some nice reactions. Some direct reactions through e-mail, direct messaging, spoken word (remember that one), but also silent reactions which I tracked down via my site stats. It’s kinda nice to find your portfolio on other websites/blogs. So here’s a selection, which at the same time must make my blog soooo google friendly:

Thank you China: RIAmeeting
Thank you Germany: Pixel Gangster
Thank you Italy: David Salvatori (nice to see your stuff alongside Kenda Perez)
Thank you Brazil: Cabanacriacao
Thank you Britain: Alex Constantinou (for choosing the Font(-style) )

Ok, enough of the SEO, and self-love, let’s look at some details:

I’ve always wanted to make a text-based website; it’s immediately personal because of the narrative style. But only text on a page can get boring really fast, so it needed a little funkyness.

MotionBlur

Apart from the fact that I animated every character instead of whole words/lines, the main animation detail is the motion blur that is applied to everything that moves/rotates/scales. This makes motion more natural / film-like. And I’m trying to imitate film as much as possible, cause I think people find film-like visuals often beautiful.

DOF

Another blur-effect I use often is the Depth-Of-Field blur… You have one field of focus, and everything closer or further away from that field gets more blurred when moving away. This is used in film and photography to get the viewers attention to the subject, and thus isolating the main subject from the surrounding/background. I made a quick prototype of something with DOF effect here: Talk3D prototype. When I have some spare time I will make the classes a bit more solid and clean and release the code here.

DropShadow
Another thing that’s applied on a lot of places in the site, is subtle dropshadow. Subtle dropshadow (not the classic dropshadow or bevels that people use on their photographs when they first use Photoshop) can create just a little bit more depth than normal text. Thanks again mr. Constantinou for pointing this out for me.

left with, right without dropshadow

Code
If you came this far and expected some code-snippets; I will include/share some structured code in the future but these are little details where the code isn’t that exciting. (hint motionblur: TweenMax, onUpdate: BlurAlgorithm).

This is my very first post on my new Blog! It may take me a couple of years to get the whole twitter-thingy, so be patient on that one.

What I want to do with this blog.

Well, I’ve got some interests, being: (electronic) Music, Photography and Flash. In the end, when I’m fully grown up ;), I really want to combine all of those in something like video clips/movies: Make music, make visuals (with video, photography, animation etc.) and intertwine them.

To make it work, the different media need to be interacting with each other on a detailed level. So often it just lacks the detailed level and it just doesn’t work, it will remain two separate media just playing alongside each other.

With this blog I want to post some things that I find on the journey towards the intertwining of different media. So it’s about getting into detail of all media individually, and eventually into the detail of the symbiosis.
(according to the Dutch Fat Van Dale - symbiosis: The living together of two unequal organisms, where both organisms take advantage of)

Oh, and I’m Dutch and I sometimes love to just translate 1:1 to English (sometimes on purpose, and sometimes as only a real Dutchman can)

I hope you will find this blog inspiring once in a while.