Computer Arts (February 2004)

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QTFGTQPNKPG GOCKNWU [email protected] www.webfusion.co.uk

ON YOUR C D-ROM

Photoshop CS try-out Free image-e software wortditing h $99 THE WORLD’S BEST–SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

Combine pixel and vector art to create our great cover image OVER 30 PAGES OF EXPERT TUTORIALS VIDEO TO PHOTOSHOP

Retouching tips for turning video footage into quality stills

INDESIGN TYPE TIPS Our guide to InDesign’s powerful font features

TIME FOR FLASH

No CD? Please see your newsagent

Discover the secrets and shortcuts of the Flash timeline

EXCLUSIVE 3D REVIEWS! LIGHTWAVE 3D 8, SILO AND ANIMATION APP GROUP TEST Printed in the UK

Outside the UK and Éire £6 C$ 19.95

FEBRUARY 2004

£6

02 9 771360 537024

INTRO W WE’VE STILL GOT A STEEP AND EXCITING LEARNING CURVE TO CATCH UP WITH ALL OF 2003’S DEVELOPMENTS

ILLUSTRATORS We take our illustrations seriously here at Computer Arts. This month, Identikal designed our cover – find out how to do it for yourself on page 26. We’re always on the lookout for new talent – so if you’re interested in contributing, contact [email protected] DEREK LEA Canadian illustrator Derek Lea reveals how to transform a Photoshop file in Painter to create traditional art with a contemporary style – using great techniques – on page 36. WWW.DEREKLEA.COM JASON ARBER Renowned illustrator and typographer Jason Arber gets to grips with InDesign, using OpenType fonts and other typographical wizardry on page 58. WWW.PIXELSURGEON.COM NILS DAVEY Illustration duo Nils Monkey and Jawa designed our Flash timeline illustration on page 50 in their original style, using ‘building’ and ‘timeline’ as their theme. WWW.JAWABRAND.CO.UK ROB CHIU Nominated for awards relating to his film work, Rob Chiu is at home with both 2D illustration and video. This month, he designed our video stills illustration on page 68. WWW.THE RONIN.CO.UK

hat will the New Year bring? After the flurry of activity at the end of 2003 – Macromedia Studio MX 2004, Discreet 3ds max 6 and Adobe Creative Suite – are we looking at a quiet year ahead for creative software? The answer, of course, is no. Although Macromedia has already kicked things off with Director MX 2004 (see page 12 for the lowdown on the new features) and NewTek’s LightWave 8 is finally here (see our preview on page 78), we've still got a steep and exciting learning curve to catch up with all of 2003’s developments. Upgrades may inject some exhilaration and experimentation into the industry, but it’s what people like you are doing with the tools that remains most important. There’s nothing better than seeing new illustration styles, new Web applications, new video or 3D techniques – even from folk still using Photoshop 6 and Flash 5. New upgrades offer some fast, new effects, but it’s the inspiration and creative thinking that produces the work we love. This issue in particular, there’s some great artwork on display: some examples come with in-depth tutorials, so you can

COVER ILLUSTRATOR IDENTIKAL

This London-based design duo is behind this latest Computer Arts cover. Identikal, which recently celebrated its fifth birthday, has a fantastic portfolio – ranging from editorial work, icons and font design to interior design for clients such as Playstation.com and Guinness. The guys are typographers, illustrators and designers rolled into one, and we asked them to produce something really graphical, solid and contemporary associated with Illustrator, while bringing in the textured elements of Photoshop. Nick and Adam Hayes take you through the process of creating this cover, starting on page 22. WWW.IDENTIKAL.COM

create the images yourself; others are there simply to be enjoyed. Turn to page 22, where we’ve asked leading designers and illustrators to show us their own favourite image of the year, and talk about the highs and lows of 2003 while looking ahead to 2004. Our lead profile this month (page 42) is Cuban Council, a US agency some of you may recognise from design portal K10K.com, which is producing some great work for the music industry, editorial, advertising and more. Turn to page 26 and you can get to grips with our Identikal cover image using Photoshop and Illustrator, and transform a layered Photoshop file in Painter, following the step-by-step guidance of illustration pro Derek Lea (page 36). But the technical insight doesn’t stop there – master the timeline in Flash MX 2004 (page 50), get to grips with typography in InDesign (page 58) and produce some impressive, print-quality still images from your video footage (page 68). Enjoy the issue! VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR, THE WORLD’S BEST-SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

EDITORIAL THE CA TEAM VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] RODDY LLEWELLYN ART EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] JON ALONGI CD EDITOR [email protected]

CONTACT Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW PHONE 01225 442 244 EMAIL [email protected] SUBS 0870 444 8455

Computer Arts_February 2004

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CONTENTS FEBRUARY ISSUE 93

FULL LIST OF CONTENTS

NEWS

FEATURES

12 Director MX 2004 14 New LaCie Porsche drives 17 Studio AKA’s latest short 20 Guest font showcase

22 Review of the year 42 Cuban Council in profile 66 La Graphica in profile

TUTORIALS

SHORTCUTS

26 Photoshop & Illustrator 36 Painter 8 50 Flash MX 2004 58 InDesign CS 68 After Effects & Photoshop

33 Dreamweaver 48 Photoshop 65 After Effects 75 3ds max

REVIEWS

77 Full listing 78 LightWave 8 80 Boris FX 7 86 HP Deskjet 9670 94 Character animation tools

REGULARS

10 Your letters and opinion 32 Win one of five copies of Stitcher 4! 56 Save 33 per cent on the price of Computer Arts and get a free gift when you subscribe 100 Back issues 108 Exposure 114 Retrospective

ON THE COVER 26 VECTOR AND PIXEL UNITE!

Create our stunning cover image and master Photoshop and Illustrator with our expert tutorial from The Identikal Corporation

50 MASTER THE FLASH TIMELINE

Discover the secrets and shortcuts of the Flash MX 2004 timeline and make your animations rock with this in-depth tutorial

58 TYPOGRAPHY IN INDESIGN CS

With the spectacular InDesign CS comes some fantastic new typography tools and greater support for OpenType fonts. We tell you everything you need to know!

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22 REVIEW OF THE YEAR

Josh Davis, Rob Lindström, Büro Destruct and other leading industry figures comment on the highs – and lows – of 2003

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58 Illustration by LaGraphica Turn to page 66 Have your work featured here – email [email protected]

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS 68 BRING YOUR STILLS TO LIFE

Learn the secrets of creating fantastic still images from your video footage in After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Photoshop

78 LIGHTWAVE 3D 8 PREVIEW

68

World exclusive: We check out LightWave 3D 8, NewTek’s latest and greatest 3D application

36 EVOLVING ARTWORK

Painter 8 to Photoshop and back again. Become a natural media expert with our fantastic tutorial

42 CUBAN COUNCIL PROFILE

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We meet the brilliant, San Francisco-based design firm responsible for the cult k10k Website

SUBSCRIBE

TODAY AND GET A FREE GIFT!

BEGIN THE YE ON A DESIGN AR HIGH…

NEVER MISS AN OT ISSUE –TURN TO HER PAGE 56

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FULL LIST OF CD CONTENTS

WORLD EXCLUSIVE TRY-OUT!

CD93 CONTENTS PHOTOSHOP CS (PC + MAC) EXCLUSIVE 30-DAY TRYOUT: We got it first! Take Photoshop CS for a 30-day test-drive with our exclusive demo. See right for more details and check out page 26 for our fantastic expert tutorial

BLACKMAGIC 2.0 BUSINESS EDITION (PC)

FULL PRODUCT: Yours to keep. This fantastic tool, as sold for $99 (£56), enables you to quickly transform black and white images into coloured ones! See page 8 for further details

PHOTOSHOP PLUG-INS (PC) FREE! Check out these top Photoshop plug-ins, all of which will aid you in your day-to-day imageediting tasks. Color Washer and Focal Blade are demos, and Photo Freebies is yours for nothing. See www.thepluginsite.com

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e’ve got some really special things for you this month. First up, a chance to take Photoshop CS for a 30-day test-drive on both PC and Mac! Use your new Photoshop CS keyboard shortcut card too – free inside the mag. Also on the CD is BlackMagic 2.0.3 – a fantastic tool that normally costs $99 (£56), and enables you to easily colourise black and white images. See your CD inlay for system requirements, and read on for more info!

30-DAY TRIALS PC + MAC

PHOTOSHOP CS WORLD EXCLUSIVE Try out the brand new version of

Photoshop CS for a whole month!

P

hotoshop CS is the latest version of Adobe’s industry-standard imageediting tool and, bringing new features such as Layer Comps, Match Colour and Shadow/Highlight, it’s the best release yet. We’ve teamed up with Adobe to bring you the exclusive demo for Mac and PC – before anyone else. Using the new Layer Comps feature, you can now store different iterations of your image in one document; this makes it easier to create several variations on a certain creative project. And the new Match Colour tool is fantastic for retaining consistency across two or more images. Say you shoot one image at night and one in the morning, and you want them to be consistent – no problem. Bringing muddy images back to life is easy, too, thanks to the incredibly

efficient and intuitive Shadow/Highlight tool. But there’s much more to the app than this – the best thing is to give it a try! This month, we’ve teamed up with leading design house Identikal to bring you a fantastic Photoshop and Illustrator CS tutorial. Vector and pixels unite with our expert tuition beginning on page 26. You’ll be able to download the Illustrator CS demo from the following location:

www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe Boot up your cover CD, install the Photoshop CS demo, arm yourself with your free and exclusive Shortcut card (it’s bagged with this copy of Computer Arts), then turn to page 26 for the ultimate in creative Photoshop tutorials. No other magazine gives you such vital Photoshop advice! INFO www.adobe.co.uk

PAGESPINNER 4.1 (MAC) FULL PRODUCT: A fantastic HTML and Webauthoring tool that enables you to quickly and easily create superb Websites. Yours to keep!

SILO (PC) NEW DEMO: Your chance to try out this brand new 3D modelling tool for 15 days. Check out the review on page 84 for the Computer Arts verdict

SILO LEARNING EDITION (PC) FULL PRODUCT: The complete Learning Edition of Silo. The only limitation is that you cannot save models that have over 100 faces. Also on the CD: A demo of the Silo character modelling plug-in

Enliven muddy or dull images using the Shadow/Highlight tool. Simple sliders enable you to tweak parameters, such as Shadow intensity, with ease. Photoshop CS also comes with its own panorama-stitching tool, Photomerge.

TUTORIAL FILES Follow our tutorials with these files – Photoshop and Illustrator (page 26), Flash (page 50), Painter (page 36), video stills (page 68) and more

BOOK CHAPTERS Free PDF chapters from the latest Peachpit design books on Dreamweaver MX 2004! Check out our book reviews on page 92

6 Computer Arts_February 2004

Apply instant Note Paper effects – such as Charcoal, Chalk or Conté– to your images and you can turn them into stylised illustrations in moments. Select a texture from the library to add striking efffects like these to your work.

FREE INSIDE THE MAGAZINE! PHOTOSHOP CS SHORTCUT CARD This month, Photoshop CS – the first of four keyboard shortcut cards!

A Taken pictures at different times of the day? Harmonising sky tones isn’t a problem with MatchColour..

With Photoshop CS’s MatchColour, you can colour-coordinate all kinds of shots more effectively.

TRY IT OUT FOR YOURSELF!

s well as bringing you the exclusive 30-day trial of Photoshop CS on this month’s cover CD, we’ve got another special gift for you: a Photoshop CS keyboard shortcut card, created exclusively by Computer Arts. Handy enough to stick on your monitor or tuck beneath your keyboard, this card gives you all of Photoshop CS’s main keyboard shortcuts at a glance. A Photoshop keyboard shortcut card no longer comes with the app, so this is your chance to get your hands on one… But that’s not all. Over the next few months, we’ll be bringing you three more exclusive collector’s shortcut cards – for Illustrator CS, InDesign CS and FreeHand MX. You’d be mad to miss them. These shortcut cards are for UK newsstand and subscribers only, though, so if you want the next three and are buying the magazine in a country outside the UK, subscribe now by turning to page 56. You’ll also save 33 per cent – and get a free gift!

FRE

Keybo E a shortc rd u cards t

Put your demo to the test with our hands-on Photoshop CS & Illustrator tutorial See page 26

Computer Arts_February 2004

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FULL PROGRAM PC

BLACKMAGIC BUSINESS EDITION

FREE SOFTW A WORTHRE £56* *Equival ent to $9 of going

9 at time to press

EXCLUSIVE FULL PRODUCT Easily convert your black and white photographs into lifelike colour

W

e’ve teamed up with NeuralTek this month to bring you the fantastic BlackMagic Business Edition – a tool that enables you to quickly and easily colourise black and white, sepia or IR (infrared) photos. You can also use it to colour-correct/re-colour photographs with dull, faded or inappropriate hues. Creating professional-quality colourised images with BlackMagic is simple, and the results are so good, they often look as if they were really shot in colour. With BlackMagic, you don’t even need to pick colours. You identify the type of object to be colourised, then BlackMagic automatically performs the calculations required. The tool makes full use of ‘TimeBrush RLC (Real-LifeColour)’ technology. This was specifically created for colourising black and white Hollywood motion pictures, and has been used to help restore many classic movies. The Business Edition of the software has a processing resolution limit of four megapixels, but you’ll get an unlimited image-processing resolution if you take advantage of our exclusive upgrade offer (see right). This full program is extremely easy to use, and the resulting colour photos have saturated, consistent and correct hues. You can transform your images into full colour in a matter of minutes. See your CD inlay for system requirements, and below for details on obtaining your serial number – plus info on how to save money if you want to upgrade your free app to a higher version.

UPGRADE OFFER The kind folk at NeuralTek are offering Computer Arts readers the chance to upgrade to the Professional Edition of BlackMagic for only $149. This is a saving of $50 on the full Pro version, which has a number of advantages over the Business Edition, including unlimited processing resolution, more colour controls and the ability to fine-tune luminance and saturation. To upgrade to the Professional Edition at this price, go to the same Website as the registration URL, enter the same username and password, then follow the upgrade ordering instructions.

Thanks to an array of easy-to-use presets, you can transform your old black and white photos into something more contemporary.

INFO www.neuraltek.com

GETTING YOUR SERIAL NUMBER Registering your copy of BlackMagic Business Edition couldn’t be simpler. To get your serial number emailed direct to your inbox within minutes, simply go to:

www.blackmagic-colour.com/fpl.html

BlackMagic has no problem with fine detail… simply zoom in and let the app do all the hard work for you.

Using the username and password below, log in and enter your details. You’ll now be sent your serial number.

USERNAME: XPACT20 PASSWORD: XPACT20 NeuralTek’s capable app can turn old landscape shots into something much funkier.

8 Computer Arts_February 2004

LETTERS LOCK, STOCK AND BARREL Having just graduated from college, I’m now working on various freelance design jobs and keen to explore all the avenues available to me. Your Taking Stock feature presented another one to me: stock illustration. When I was at college, the possibility of having my work displayed on Getty Images or Digital Vision sites was not even a dream, but now I‘m starting to feel more confident about my work, it‘s at least a possibility. Many of the illustrators featured extolled the virtues of the exposure available from stock work for such large companies, which is a tempting prospect for a young designer. So would you recommend it? If I sent you some work, would you tell me if it was suitable? The article did touch on some negative aspects and I looked up Richard May’s comments in my mate’s back catalogue of Computer Arts (you’ve been going a while, haven’t you?) and he’s got some serious reservations. Advice please! James Cornell BSc Graphic Design If you read the rest of our Letters section, you might get some idea of the perceived negative side to stock. I’m afraid it’ll be up to you to see if it’s a route you want to take – as you may have gathered, there are both

WE RECEIVED MANY GREAT EMAILS ABOUT OUR STOCK ILLUSTRATION FEATURE BACK IN ISSUE 91, AND WE’VE PRINTED A FEW OF THEM HERE. IF YOU HAVE A QUERY ABOUT THIS OR ANY OTHER TOPIC, EMAIL US AT [email protected], OR JOIN US ONLINE AT FORUM.COMPUTERARTS.CO.UK

big potential benefits and drawbacks. As with many issues when you’re first starting out, this is a career choice. We’d recommend building up a strong portfolio first, then showing it to some illustration agents and potential clients for advice. If you’re working in illustration, become a member of the AOI (Association of Illustrators), which has a portfolio consultation service and offers legal advice to help you on the way. And, of course, if you want us to take a look at your work, send it in on disc to Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth St, Bath BA1 2BW.

feature kicked up a storm – Issue 91’s stock illustration try. wrecking the creative indus is ity activ the ve belie some

GRADUATES BEWARE I think the promotion of stock illustration is damaging the creative industry and its practitioners. As a freelance illustrator and agency consultant, I graduated in June 2002 and was approached at the New Designers Show in Islington by a representative from a stock company. I was encouraged to sign away my whole portfolio as stock, but my agent strongly advised me not to do so. Having spoken to graduates from my former college this year, I know many were also approached. I hope they reached the same decision as me. One year on, with two agents and a handful of exciting commissions to my name, I know I made the right choice. I firmly believe that for a graduate to sign away their career at the first hurdle could be devastating. When I return to my college as a guest lecturer in the future, I shall be sure to advise students against such practices. I would hope that you would consider omitting articles similar to this one in future in favour of promoting illustration and

★ LETTER OF THE MONTH JAM TODAY, ANNIHILATION TOMORROW Computer Arts magazine is a bedrock for us. Its support and leadership in the creative community is inspired and very much at the head of the curve. That said, I was alarmed by issue 91’s seeming support of the most dangerous practice that has hit our industry in recent years: royalty-free stock imagery. It is a practice, along with the sale of cheap individual images, that has seen a conservative 40 per cent decline in the number of practising photographers in America, and will increasingly compromise the livelihoods of many thousands of photographers and illustrators in the UK and Europe. The Association of Illustrators and the Society of Artists Agents in the UK, along with the Graphic Artists Guild and the Illustrators Partnership in the US, strongly advises all image-makers to avoid royalty-free like the plague. It’s a simple fact that images in these collections have a value of about £10 or less to the buyer – sold

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in their thousands they represent a hopelessly valueless commodity. The market is not suddenly using a vast number of extra images; it has increased with business as a whole, but not by anything like the scale of stock images now available (over one billion for sale on the Web, according to a recent estimate). Every time a stock image is used, chances are a photographer or illustrator has not been commissioned. It’s such a great shame, because this should have be a golden era for both photographers and illustrators. There have been lots of new magazines launched and the advent of the World Wide Web has created a whole new medium that has a huge visual content requirement. As an agent, I represent one artist who produced a royalty-free collection before joining us. For him, it’s proved to be one of the worse decisions he’s made. He gets a few thousand a year from sales, but the cost has been far greater. First, the ads and

literature using his images could’ve been more lucrative commissions. Second, his style is now associated with products and campaigns that any self-respecting art director would prefer his clients not to be linked with. The exclusive relationship between product and image – vital to a successful campaign – cannot happen if the style is associated with low budget and random exposure. It has been a big debate on both sides of the Atlantic and the facts are beyond question. Anyone considering a royalty-free collection should read the health warning first – and then desist. Computer Arts, like all with an audience, has a responsibility to its readership. The wholesale support and promotion of royalty-free stock will kill the businesses of many of your readers and will dumb down the creativity that this country excels in. Harry Lyon-Smith The Society of Artists’ Agents, Chair www.illustrationweb.com

FREE

COLL SHORT ECTO CUT R’S C ARDS

photography commissioned in the traditional manner – which has been successful for many years. Sarah Beetson

STOCK CONCERNS I’m an illustrator and my husband is a photographer. Royalty-free collections of images have done great damage to our business and do a huge disservice to creative and talented artworkers in this country. Thanks to the short-term personal desires of those who wish only to line their own pockets, other work which could contribute to the living development of art in this country will never see the light of day. I find it difficult to believe that what began as a massive new field of creativity in computer art has been cut down in its early years and reduced to this situation – where we, the producers, are put out of work by parasites in the industry. If only artwork could simply be commissioned and pictures used at a fair price within control of the artist, then artists – who, after all, are the originators and rightful recipients of reward – should all be well and happy. Sue Climpson Many thanks for all your letters. Stock photography and illustration is a subject we’ve covered in the past – both the pros and the cons. Illustrator Richard May blamed stock illustration for exploiting young talent in issue 76, but Magictorch praised it in its Opinion column in issue 83 – and has already launched its own fairer rate stock library. Particularly interesting from our point of view is hearing what fellow artists think about the situation. As a creative industry magazine, we’re obliged to report on all the ways illustrators and designers – new and experienced – can earn a living from their work. Remember, we’ve run various series on going freelance. And we’ve often interviewed, profiled and commissioned such illustrators and covered in detail how they completed a brief. All the illustrators we spoke to for the Digital Vision piece were obviously enticed by the idea of a constant stream of money, but most were there for the profile, not the cash. We asked them if they were aware of the arguments against the practice, but most of them were just flattered to be asked. We also shot a lot of awkward questions at Digital Vision’s Creative Director and she defended her position by claiming stock imagery helped support the industry as a whole. Computer Arts for one, does not use stock illustration. We commission all our covers and inside illustrations as an original image. However, we do report on new stock catalogues, because we’re interested in the styles, techniques, software used and contributors – they reflect what’s popular today. Our Taking Stock feature reported on how new and experienced illustrators alike could take a different route if they were finding it difficult to obtain commissions. Thanks again for everybody’s interesting and valuable input. What does everyone else think? Is there room for both stock and original commissions to live in this industry? As an enthusiast, freelance or employed designer, would you consider taking this route? Would your decision be driven by creative or financial needs? We’d love to hear from you.

NEXT MONTH IN COMPUTER ARTS 94

No 2 of 4

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PHOTOSHOP TIPS

Transform your Photoshop skills with our expert advice on retouching images, illustration for print and Web, using filters, the intricacies of Photoshop CS and more!

FREE INSIDE WEB MAGAZINE!

Macromedia Masterclass MX 2004 – Issue 3. The next in our fantastic in-depth series on Macromedia’s stunning app. This month, we look at the mighty Flash and what it brings to the end-user experience. Don’t miss it! *Supplement available to UK newsstand and subscribers only. To subscribe, call +44 (0)870 4448 455

POSTER DESIGN Master the intricacies of creating super-sized artwork – stylish tutorial by leading design studio

CREATING COMIC BOOK ART Design your own graphic novel with our in-depth tutorial feature

PHOTOSHOP CS PLUG-INS GROUP TEST

CRUSHED IN PROFILE

The ultimate lowdown on the very best Photoshop plug-ins

From club flyers to album covers and movie titles, cutting-edge design agency Crushed reveals the secrets behind its portfolio

REVIEWED SOON Director MX 2004

Stitcher 4

DAZ|Studio

Mirage

LightWave 3D 8

Boris RED 3GL

Canopus EDIUS 2

New cameras from Sony

Adobe Atmosphere 1.0

Poser 5 OS X

Ulead DVD Workshop 2

Latest printers from Epson

ON SALE 19 FEBRUARY All contents correct at time of going to press

Computer Arts_February 2004

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NEWS

SEND ALL NEWS, COMMENTS AND LINKS TO MARK PENFOLD AT [email protected]

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

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HARD LaCie unveils portable drive, designed by Porsche

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AWARDS Winners of Canon

Digital Creators Content 2003 announced

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DIRECTOR MX 2004 SOFTWARE Macromedia’s 20-year-old application still has what it takes OPINION D&AD director

extols the virtues of a brand new awards category

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s Director nears its 20th birthday, Macromedia is set to launch the latest version of its veteran package. The company hopes that Director MX 2004 will persuade those who have not yet upgraded to the MX line to make the switch – and while the number of new features isn’t huge, there are significant changes to look forward to.

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LEVI’S Win a place at Levi’s very own design agency, courtesy of the Levi’s Student Awards 2004

WEEKLY UPDATES

www.computerarts.co.uk

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BETTER INTEGRATION

An improved array of Publish Settings provides much greater flexibility.

For a start, Macromedia has fully converted Director’s interface to the MX style, with proper docking facilities and improved palettes. These changes aren’t just cosmetic; the program now

integrates much more easily with both Flash MX and FireWorks MX. Macromedia reckons Flash content runs 15-70 per cent faster than before, thanks to optimised code. Now you can simply drag and drop Flash objects and components into a Director cast, with all properties exposed through the interface, and create new objects via coding. And for the first time, you can script that coding in something other than Lingo, thanks to the addition of JavaScript syntax. You can use this alongside or in preference to Lingo, even within the same project. But the biggest change is one that’s been requested ever since the package

News

SOFTWARE The latest releases, updates and software news SERIF PAGEPLUS 9 This is the latest release of Serif’s entry-level desktop publishing tool. Loaded with wizards and templates to make the beginner’s life easy, PagePlus 9 also has enhanced PDF/X support. The package comes with 2000 wizards and 20 tutorials and costs £100. www.serif.com

YELLOW PENCILS FOR 2004 AWARDS

New competitions, a DVD – and a three-week Congress initiated by D&AD

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ritish Design & Art Direction has announced its plans for the coming year – 2004 will see more annual awards events, a brand new book, a DVD, plus the first ever D&AD Congress. This will be an ambitious three-week event in London, featuring screenings, exhibitions, seminars and workshops for emerging and experienced designers. T “he idea for this first Congress is that one can access the complete D&AD experience at one place and time,”says new Chief Executive Michael Hockney. The highlights of the 21-day Congress will be the D&AD Awards ceremonies, where winners walk away with the coveted Yellow Pencil statues. The main Awards, which recognise excellence in the year’s advertising, packaging, new media and more, will be held in May and

went cross-platform. At last, it’s possible to publish both Mac and Windows projectors from either platform, doing away with the need for separate copies. A new Publish tool also simplifies other arcane procedures and eliminates redundancies to reduce file sizes. Continuing the theme of integration, Director MX 2004 includes support for

deadline for entries is 17 February. The D&AD Student Awards, which see the best of the nation’s students battle it out for valuable industry recognition, will take place in June with a deadline of 26 March. During the announcements, D&AD unveiled The 2003 D&AD Book, the printed showcase of last year’s Awards. It couldn’t be more different to the previous year’s Victorian tome, as designed by Mother; the yellow plastic p ‘ henomenon’ was designed by agency Esterson Lackersteen with an unusual suckered cover. This definitive guide to contemporary design, as well as a DVD showreel, is available to buy from the D&AD Website. Here you’ll also find information on the 2004 Awards and a listing of Congress events. INFO www.dandad.org

combine sophisticated Director behaviours with DVD content. One other much-requested but somewhat obscure improvement is the ability to assign custom names to sprites and channels, rather than fixed numbers. This should simplify altering a sprite or channel behaviour. The company says that with this latest version, it hopes to put to rest the

AT LAST, IT’S POSSIBLE TO PUBLISH BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS PROJECTORS FROM EITHER PLATFORM, DOING AWAY WITH THE NEED FOR SEPARATE COPIES Windows Media content (on both platforms) and DVD video. You can embed both in projectors or Web pages and fully control them with custom user-interface components.

ALIVE AND KICKING However, Macromedia is eager to point out that Director has not suddenly evolved into an all-purpose DVD authoring tool. Such features are aimed largely at the educational and kiosk market, making it possible to

persistent rumours of Director’s demise – or consolidation with Flash – at least for a while. W “ e wouldn’t be making major changes such as the addition of JavaScript to a product that’s about to be discontinued,”commented Wayne Smith, Senior Technical Product Manager of Macromedia Europe. Director MX 2004 is expected to be launched at the beginning of February. Pricing remains the same: £1127 for the full product, £375 for an upgrade. INFO www.macromedia.com

Director MX 2004 will bring several key improvements – most notably the ability to create projections for both Mac and PC from one copy of the app.

ANDREW’S PLUG-IN COLLECTION Abneil Software has released a new update of Andrew’s vector plug-in set. The new collection of Illustrator plug-ins contains 12 classic and 12 variations with streamlined interfaces and new creative options. A demo is available for Mac OS X and Windows, while the full set costs £18. www.graphicxtras.com HOUDINI 6.1 RELEASED

The latest Apprentice version of Side Effect’s massive 3D animation and effects package is now available to download for free. Featuring enhanced character animation tools, global illumination rendering, interactive light and camera controls, and an embedded Help browser, the new package has been in beta since SIGGRAPH last year. www.sidefx.com CANOPUS EDIUS 2.0 This new package from Canopus enables editing, mixing and output to DV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 in real time, without rendering. While EDIUS 2.0 works with any Windows-based, OHCI-compliant system, it’s optimised for Canopus’s series of non-linear editing solutions. It’s expected to cost around £430. Check out the Website for a video demo. www.canopus.com BRAZIL 1.2 FOR 3DS MAX 6 Californian-based software provider SplutterFish has released Brazil 1.2 as a fully-integrated rendering suite for Discreet’s 3ds max 6. First seen in July this year, Brazil 1.2 builds on the package’s photorealistic rendering capacity, but also introduces new toon and skin shaders. Licences start at around £686. www.splutterfish.com

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HARDWARE Stay abreast of the latest art-enhancing technology

COMBUSTION GRAPHICS BUNDLES 3D Discreet bundles combustion with Quadro FX cards

D NIKON D70 Nikon has confirmed that it will release its consumer digital SLR in the spring of 2004. The D70 will come with a choice of lenses, including a newly developed high-quality DX format Nikkon zoom lens. The body is expected to cost around £800. www.nikon.co.uk CANON HIGH-SPEED SCANNERS Designed to cope with a huge throughput, Canon’s two new A3 scanners are capable of scanning up to 50 colour pages per minute with an optimal resolution of 600x600dpi. The peripherals also use MultiStream technology, which enables them to generate multiple image outputs from a single scan. Prices start at £7632. www.canon.co.uk TERRATEC VIDEO-EDITING CARD The Cameo 200 RT video capture and editing card adds FireWire capability to your PC and accelerates editing and effects performance to real-time speeds. The card comes bundled with Ulead Video Studio 7 and Movie Factory 2 for on-the-fly DVD burning. It costs £90. www.terratec.co.uk HP A3 PRINTERS Hewlett-Packard has announced the Deskjet 9600 series of A3 inkjet printers. The 9650 is the basic model, and according to the company is capable of 20ppm black and 15ppm colour. The 9670 adds an automatic duplexing unit and the 9680 built-in PostScript drivers. Starting at £349, the 9600 series is available now. (The 9670 is reviewed on page 86.) www.hp.com/uk MEDIA 100 SLASHES PRICES Media 100 has cut the price of its flagship 844/Xe real-time editing and compositing system by 56 per cent, from $44,995 to $19,995 (£25,766 to £11,450). The ‘entry level’ 844/Xi system has also been cut by 60 per cent, from $24,995 to $9,995 (£14,311 to £5723). Media 100’s software line-up is enjoying similar cuts. www.media100.co.uk

14 Computer Arts_February 2004

iscreet has teamed up with PNY, manufacturers of the NVIDIA graphics cards, to bundle a range of market-leading Quadro FX boards with combustion 2.1. Prices start at a very tempting £260, although the time-limited deal doesn’t include an upgrade path to combustion 3. There are three configurations in all: FX 500, FX 1100 and, in pole position, the Quadro FX 3000. NVIDIA’s flagship card, with a full copy of Discreet’s visual effects package, will set you back £1528, while the mid-range bundle comes in at £758. According to Discreet’s Nick Manning, Product Manager for Northern Europe, the packages are designed to “promote combustion to new customers and push the software into the mainstream.” combustion is based on technology developed by Discreet for its high-end compositing solutions, and has been used in such big-screen flicks as The Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter. Currently at version 3 on the Windows platform, a Macintosh release is due out early in 2004.

The combustion 2.1 and Quadro FX card bundles should prove a formidable combination.

INFO www.discreet.com

LACIE’S PORSCHE DRIVES HARD DRIVE LaCie releases ultra-portable Porsche storage solution

L

aCie has announced the availability of a new range of ultra-portable external hard drives. Designed by worldfamous FA Porsche, the drives come in two flavours, USB 2.0 or FireWire, with sizes up to 80GB. The swish new hardware is the latest result of a long-running partnership between LaCie and the famed design house. Weighing in at a just over seven ounces, the silvery objects are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand – and because they run on bus power there’s no need for an additional power supply. Prices start at £100. The hardware company has also announced the release of a three-port FireWire 800 card, for high-speed connection to your laptop. With the aim of solving any mobile connectivity problems, the FireWire 800 CardBus PC card adds a pair of external FireWire 800s and a single FireWire 400 to your Mac or PC laptop. Prices start at £60.

INFO www.lacie.com/uk

World-famous FA Porsche designed this ultra-portable 80GB hard drive for LaCie. It weighs just seven ounces.

WEBSITES The hottest sites and services on the Web…

PIXEL RANGER www.pixelranger.com Pixel Ranger is the alias of Californian Web designer Shane Mielke, who counts among his many credits jobs for motor giants Ford and Lexus; their sites brilliantly exemplify the polished efficiency of his output. Much of the Ranger’s work feels like something the Men In Black would enjoy using. BASEMENT JAXX www.basementjaxx.co.uk Basement Jaxx is celebrating the release of its new album with a new Website. As you’d expect, this is high energy and a little ‘crazy’, but still great fun. In a musical landscape populated by bland lookalikes, it’s good to see a band using up-to-date styles (and setting a few of its own). COMPUTERLOVE www.computerlove.net/postercontest The computerlove annual poster design competition has just closed its doors to entrants. Trundle over to the competition site and browse through the hundreds of entrants, all based on the theme ‘I love’, and see what you think. Some are truly brilliant. The ideal browse if you don’t know what you’re looking for. LOGAN www.hellologan.com Located in the LA offices the Beastie boys used to use for Grand Royal, Logan is a production company specialising in music promos. Recent work includes the MTV Awards best Hip Hop intro and a suitably weird promo for legendary Japanese techo-bod Ken Ishii. To coin an underused music biz term, ‘it’s all good’. PUNISHER THE MOVIE www.punisherthemovie.com Another fine movie site from hi-res. This one, for the upcoming comicbook caper Punisher, takes you on a tour of a deserted office where you can hunt for clues and download trailers. The comic book/role-playing action the site recreates is perfectly judged. ME COMPANY www.mecompany.com It’s hard to ignore this promotional site for London-based design agency Me Company, thanks to its beguiling interface and pleasing wallpaper. It’s also great to interact with a site that’s simply great fun to play with. On the business side, it seems there’s little Me Company can’t turn its hand to.

WANT YOUR NEW SITE FEATURED? Send the link to [email protected] with the subject header ‘Websites’.

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Illustration Gold winner: Ryohei Hatokawa, with his Ultra Fish Collection.

CANON DIGITAL CREATORS 2003 AWARDS Canon’s international creative

competition – final winners announced

C

reative computer users from around the world have been recognised for their photographic and illustrative talents in the Digital Creators Contest 2003. The winners were selected from over 3500 entries from 77 countries. Top honours went to Japanese artists Ryohei Hatokawa and Shinishiro Satom, who took Gold in the Illustration and Web categories, while Matthew Thomas of the US won the Digital Movie award with That Day. Artists from the UK were among the winners, too – Monke and Shoko took Bronze in the Digital Movie and Graphics categories respectively. The judges, among them design hotshots Tomato (www.tomato.co.uk) and Web-meister Josh Davis (www.praystation.com), faced a difficult task choosing the winners. “There were works that redefined the realm of digital visual art and challenged the boundaries

of expression,” according to James Leipnick of Canon Europe. Three years on, the competition continues to encourage new work, as Karine Stephan, one of the four artists who make up Monke, explains: “We made our entry, The Weather In Somerset, especially for the competition. It really gave us something to work towards.” The call for 2004 entries begins soon… INFO www.canon.com/cdcc

(Above) UK’s Shoko won Bronze in the Web category for its STOP THE WAR, while Yoshikazu Okajima (above, right) was awarded Bronze in Digital Graphics/Illustration for space-time.

News

STARS IN THEIR EYES ANIMATION Public can’t get enough of Studio AKA’s latest short

J

ojo in the Stars, an animated short from world-famous agency Studio AKA, has attracted huge interest since its trailer went online in late 2003. Mark Craste’s story of love, self-sacrifice and jealousy, set in a bizarre black and white ‘in-between’ world, was produced and funded in-house at Studio AKA. The film expands on the world Craste first introduced with Pica Towers, a set of interstitials commissioned (but never used) by Channel 4. “On paper, it just shouldn’t work,” says Studio AKA’s Creative Director Philip Hunt – but somehow, thanks to Craste’s trademark visual flair, it does. A labour of love, Jojo required the active participation of the entire 30-strong AKA staff over a period of months, a process that Hunt feels has “profoundly influenced the way we work.” The film premieres in London this February and thereafter tours animation festivals around the world.

OPINION DIGITAL CRAFTS

SUBJECT D&AD has introduced a new Digital Crafts

category to its Awards. According to Louise Fowler, Awards Director, it’s important to identify excellence in specific digital crafts – as well as the big ideas

INFO jojo.studioaka.co.uk

LEARNING CURVE WHETHER YOU’RE INTERESTED IN ILLUSTRATION, 3D, WEB DESIGN OR VIDEO, YOU’LL FIND A COURSE HERE TO SUIT AQUENT London Maxon and Aquent, the Adobe-accredited training provider, run a huge range of creative courses on a scheduled and bespoke basis. One of the largest companies in this field, it has 71 offices in 16 countries. Illustrator Intermediate 22 January, £200+ Photoshop Advanced 28 January, £200+ www.aquent.co.uk TRANSMEDIA Bristol, London Long-standing providers of creative training, Transmedia is Adobe, Macromedia and Quark-authorised. Courses in Bristol cover all major graphic design packages, while the London branch also covers video. Introduction to Adobe Creative Suite 15-16 January, £445 Flash MX 2004 Application Development 26-28 January, £650 www.transmedia.co.uk TIDALFIRE Edinburgh Accredited by Quark, Adobe and Macromedia, Tidalfire offers a broad range of design and graphics training packages for print and Web media.

Photoshop Advanced 26 January, £375+ InDesign Advanced 27 January, 375+ www.tidalfire.com 3D3 WORLD Tuscany, Italy 3D3 World runs in-depth courses covering 3D animation, graphic design and Web technology. Courses are run from a state-ofthe-art studio in Tuscany. Tutors are frequently industry ‘stars’. Maya From 26 April (two weeks), £1800 (including accommodation) Multimedia Masterclass 4 Weeks From 26 April (four weeks), £3200 (including accommodation) www.3d3world.com HARLEQUIN SOLUTIONS West London From purpose-built studios, Harlequin delivers courses covering all the Web, print and multimedia design packages. All are Macromedia, Quark and Adobe authorised. Colour Management 15-16 January, £645 Advanced Photoshop 26-27 January, £645 www.solutions.co.uk

Interactive Media is a funny one. When we introduced this category to the D&AD Awards in 1997, we received less than 100 entries, and for a few years ‘Interactive’ was a niche category. For the last three or four years, however, the number of entries has rocketed, and Interactive is no more niche than press advertising, posters, TV, radio or graphic design. Interactive & Digital Media at D&AD is an Awards category that we review every year and update as necessary, in line with the rapid industry changes. This year, we felt that we needed to shake up the category a bit more to prevent it stagnating. We really wanted to raise the bar and attract the best creative work, so Yahoo! worked with us to put together a focus group to review how we could reflect the ‘world of digital’. I couldn’t have hoped to sit down with a more qualified bunch of people. David Alberts, Ranzie Anthony, David Butter, David Burrows, Robert Campbell, Malcolm Garrett, Fru Hazlitt, Phil Ley, Gary Lockton, Marcus Vinton and Steve Vranakis offered advice and opinions across the whole gamut of digital experience and creative communications. The opinion of the group, and one I agree with, is that in order for D&AD to identify the best creative work we should take a step back – we should appreciate the big ideas and also hone in, recognise the diversity of creative input and contribution craft has made to the work. For ‘traditional’ media, there are raft of ‘Crafts’ categories at D&AD in which we have seen creativity really flourish, and it has always been possible for entrants to submit digital formats into categories such as Photography, Illustration and Typography. However, now D&AD has introduced a new Digital Crafts category to specifically celebrate the work of writers, animators, typographers, photographers and illustrators in this arena and their contribution to creativity. In order to also ensure we capture all of the big ideas, we have restructured the existing Interactive & Digital Media category by function, such as Games, Entertainment and Information, rather than specific platforms or commercial sectors. This is to encourage entrants to forget about the channel and concentrate on the challenge. At D&AD, we don’t take introducing a whole category lightly. As the champion of great creative ideas, we are working hard to ensure that the very best in creative Interactive and Digital work is made visible. What we would really like to see is work of D&AD Gold standard in this category. Now that would make people sit up and take notice. INFO Louise Fowler is D&AD Awards Director. To find out more about the D&AD Awards or to enter online, log onto www.dandad.org

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News

Xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx

COMING SOON A CALENDAR OF ESSENTIAL RELEASES, EVENTS (AND WISHFUL THINKING) FOR ALL DIGITAL CREATIVES

FEBRUARY Computer Arts Projects 55 Designing the perfect portfolio. On sale 5 February The Haunted Mansion Disney’s Eddie Murphy flick should hit UK cinemas on 13 February combustion 3 Discreet finally ships its premier app for the Mac FreeHand MX 2004 Will Macromedia update its much-loved illustrating tool? Computer Arts 94 On sale 19 February CorelDRAW Corel ships a new version of the graphics suite incorporating Kai’s Vector Tools

DENIM ART AWARDS Levi’s Student Awards 2004 calls for entries

MARCH Computer Arts Projects 56 On sale from 4 March Computer Arts 95 On sale 18 March Softimage|XSI Major update due? Cleaner for Mac Apple buys out Discreet’s encoding app? Maya 6 Should be here by now. Or at least version 5.5… DVD Studio Pro 2.5 Apple’s .5 upgrade finally arrives 19-inch widescreen laptops Due to hit the shelves now

F

ollowing the success of last year’s event, Levi’s is already calling for entries to its Digital Arts Awards 2004. This time, the company is looking to get tutors involved in the search for up-and-coming talent by integrating the competition with existing coursework. Registered tutors from institutions all over Britain will be sent a CD of ‘design assets’ – these include a brief and an overview of technical specifications for entries, which must

be in by 19 April. Aside from its technical and creative merits, work will also be judged on the designer’s “understanding of the Levi’s brand.” This is a rare opportunity for students to work to a real-life brief from one of the world best-recognised brands. Winners take away an Apple iBook and a placement with the Levi’s European marketing agency, Lateral. ■ INFO www.eu.levi.com

STITCHER 4 SOFTWARE RealVIZ announces the

APRIL

Cinema 4D R9 Expected to be in beta testing right now Computer Arts Projects 57 Brand new issue on sale 1 April G5 PowerBooks Next-gen laptops now in early stages of production? Computer Arts 96 On sale 15 April Shrek 2 In last production stages

MAY

Painter 9 More brushes, canvases and bundled extras please! The Punisher John Travolta brings the comic hero to life. Out 7 May Computer Arts 97 On sale 13 May Troy Blockbusting historical epic with Brad Pitt. Hits cinemas 21 May Computer Arts Projects 59 In newsagents from 27 May

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latest version of its acclaimed panorama-creation tool

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allic software developer RealVIZ has just released Stitcher 4, the latest version of its panoramic vista-generating tool. The most significant update to the application comes in the form of new Photoshop integration. A long-overdue feature, this enables you to export your Stitcher file as a PSD with all images as layers. Another innovation is the ability to interactively preview your QuickTime VR files, which should speed up production enormously. The app can also read EXIF data from cameras, while the Stencil Editor should simplify the removal of vignettes and artefacts. New automation tools enabling you to align, crop and render your panorama,

plus a range of extra interpolation methods, complete the update. Stitcher 4, which runs on both Mac OS X and Windows, is out any day now

and will cost around £350. For your chance to win one of five copies, turn to our competition on page 32. ■ INFO www.realviz.com

3d software leader

Discreet is a division of Autodesk, Inc. Discreet and 3ds max are trademarks or registered trademarks of Autodesk Inc. Autodesk Canada Inc. in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. © Copyright 2003 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Our users don’t always have the right version…

Even as you read this, someone is reporting a company using cracked copies of 3ds max™.That company could end up paying a hefty fine as well as suffering the embarrassment of being caught. Could that be your company? On the other hand, if you’re one of over 150 000 legal 3ds max users and you’re tired of being in competition with companies who don’t buy their software, call the BSA on 0800 510510 or visit www.bsa.org to access your local site. There is a reward up to £ 10 000 for information leading to a successful settlement. www.discreet.com

GUEST FONT SHOWCASE Max Kisman, the designer of this month’s guest font, Bfrika and Bribat, aims to raise money for children with his work “The concept behind these fonts is to generate an unpredictable visual rhythm in an attractive decorative presentation,” explains typographer Max Kisman. “Filling up the white space around the letters

20 Computer Arts_February 2004

HELP KIDS IN AFRICA

accentuates form over function, thus creating an interference of visual impressions with its legibility.” Originally, Bfrika was fashioned for issue 17 of respected South African design mag I-Jusi. But with

both typefaces, Kisman aims to raise funds for orphanages in Kenya and Uganda, under the charitable Building Letters scheme. Designed for Mac and PC, the fonts are available now from Holland Fonts – and will be distributed in 2004 through associated foundries. INFO www.buildingletters.org, www.hollandfonts.com

REVIEW OF THE YEAR

ANNA AUGUL www.quikanddirty.com

Anna Augul’s brilliant Website prompted Computer Arts to profile her in issue 87. This Australian illustrator creates beautifully detailed vector work and her online portfolio has captured the attention of a worldwide audience.

With 2003 gone quicker than Michael Schumacher through a pit-stop, it’s time to look back, look forward and take stock. Last year saw some fantastic work for print, advertising, Websites and animation, but financially it wasn’t the best of times for many agencies and freelancers. However, the signs for 2004 already look good, with companies and individuals now investing more time and money across a whole range of digital arts. We asked seven talented and internationally recognised illustrators and designers to reflect on the last 12 months – the highs, the lows and their favourite creation of 2003. After that, they reveal what they believe 2004 has in store…

22 Computer Arts_February 2004

What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? 2003 was hectic but fun. I went back to university to do a post-graduate course, so juggling that with work, freelance work and fun was definitely a rollercoaster ride! What other great design have you seen this year – and what do you like about it? I’m really enjoying a lot of the funky commercial work coming out of the smaller studios all around the world. And many advertising campaigns are really pushing the boundaries at the moment, which is good to see. What’s this image and who was it for? This is a personal piece I did this year. Why do you like it? It has a beautiful, innocent feel to it. What software did you use? Illustrator. What are you looking forward to in 2004? More time for myself and a new job –hopefully!

Feature

JON BURGERMAN

ROB LINDSTRÖM

IAN BILBEY

www.jonburgerman.com

www.designchapel.com

www.ianbilbey.com

Illustrator Jon Burgerman has provided many illustrations and tutorials for Computer Arts. His unique and character-driven style has captured the attention of such clients as Diesel and Levi’s.

Swedish designer Rob Lindström creates Websites for high-profile clients around the world. In the November 2003 issue of Computer Arts, he showed us how he creates his Nun illustrations in Photoshop and Flash.

What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? 2003 has been great – lots of work and things, both personal and commercial. Highs include doing live drawing at the Baltic in Newcastle and working on top secret toy projects with Far Eastern companies. Lows include moving house twice in three months, a terrible live radio interview, being ill and losing my vision a bit.

What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? The high was that I finally left my full-time job at Paregos after five years to start my design company North Kingdom. It’s also been fun that DesignChapel has received so much publicity around the world. Lows? I’ve had no time for my personal life or to work on our own Website.

What other great design have you seen this year – and what do you like about it? Pictoplasma 2 – a completely delicious directory of character design; there’s joy and genius on almost every page. As an object of design, the iPod is quite beautiful and I’d like to marry it.

What other great design have you seen this year – and what do you like about it? Illustrators such as Jason Brooks, Simone Legno, Scott Hansen, Celia Calle and photographers like Michael Zeppetello, Willy Camden and Sacha Dean Biyan.

What’s this image and who was it for? It’s a slice from a series of images made by my pal Sune (www.duudle.dk) and myself, though this part is by me. They all join together to form a long doodle mile. It was made for ourselves and we’d like to turn it into a book or wall frieze.

What’s this image and who was it for? It’s another version of my Nun series. It’s going to be a wall-painting in my sister’s house.

Why do you like it? It was made for the fun of making it. I enjoy collaborating with other artists – it’s something I increasingly have less time to do. What software did you use? We drew the images in a sketchbook, then collaged them in Photoshop.

Why do you like it? It was one of the few illustrations I had time to do this year. I also like it because of its sexual appearance, which I think is a cool contrast to the innocent nun theme. What software did you use? Pen, ink, FreeHand and Flash.

What are you looking forward to in 2004? Seeing Vincent Gallo’s film Brown Bunny.

What are you looking forward to in 2004? Starting work on the North Kingdom profile and the next version of DesignChapel. Most of all, I’m looking forward to working with our new design firm and the new people we’re planning to meet.

What do you think 2004 will bring to design? Death of cel-shaded computer games, a continued retreat to hand-drawn aesthetics – and more plasma screens everywhere.

What do you think 2004 will bring to design? A lot more motion graphics. Broadband is coming quickly, which means that more QuickTime will be integrated into Websites.

UK-based Ian Bilbey’s thought-provoking style has attracted such big-name clients as Issey Miyake and Jaguar. This automobile-obsessed illustrator has had a busy year… What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? Highs were some well paid commercial jobs – VW Beetle and Tetrapac ads. There was only one low and that was trying to move house. Oh, and Schumacher winning the F1 Championship. What other great design have you seen this year – and what did you like about it? The Abram Games exhibition at the Design Museum and Eric Ravilious Centenary exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. What’s this image and who was it for? I had fun with this. It was to illustrate an advert for my illustration agency, so I could pretty much do what I liked and still get paid. Why do you like it? Well, it’s a steam train – that’s why I like it! What software did you use? Freehand 5.5! I do have later versions, but for this style I don’t need any more clever bits. What are you looking forward to in 2004? Skiing in February and a referendum on the Euro constitution. If only. What do you think 2004 will bring to the design world? To be honest, I have no idea what the design world is. There’s too much ego design and less of that would be nice.

Computer Arts_February 2004

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MAX KISMAN

JOSH DAVIS

BÜRO DESTRUCT

www.maxkisman.com

www.joshuadavis.com

www.burodestruct.net

Max Kisman is a pioneer of highly graphic illustration and typography, whose type foundry Holland Fonts (www.hollandfonts.com) is wellknown worldwide. He lives in San Francisco.

Industry favourite Josh Davis, the man behind Praystation.com and his book Flash to the Core, shares his year’s experience.

Switzerland-based Büro Destruct has had a great year, launching books and completing some superb design work for a wide range of clients. See issue 90 of Computer Arts for our in-depth profile. We spoke to one of its designers, Lopetz.

What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? Highs were that Holland Fonts was published in Indie Fonts 2. I also gave some graphic design and typography classes, put together a typography event in San Francisco and coproduced a charity font collection, Building Letters. Lows were that font sales stayed down. What other great design have you seen this year – and what do you like about it? When putting together a font collaboration, I had the opportunity to work with respected designers and see their work. In particular, I like the “i” and “I” of Rudy Vanderlans, who managed to assign a stronger personality to this character. What’s this image and who was it for? It’s a one-page advert for Holland Fonts in Tipografica #57 from Argentina, August 2003. Why do you like it? Its simplicity. What software did you use? Brain, brush and Bézier curves.

What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? The highs – the birth of our first child Kelly Ann Davis in February and for experiencing so many wonderful people, places and things. The lows – starting 2003 with no job or money. What’s this image and who was it for? It was one of three posters designed for www.buildingletters.org. A project that compiled work from several designers and artists from around the world to produce three posters, a magazine and CD-ROM, containing 38 fonts. The monies raised for this project help build two orphanages for kids with or affected by AIDS. Why do you like it? There’s nothing more rewarding than creating something for a good client for a good cause. This is one of those rare projects that enabled me to create something exciting visually that other designers and artists might want to buy – and that supported a great cause. What software did you use? Flash and Illustrator.

What are you looking forward to in 2004? Continuing collaborations begun in 2003, mastering FontLab, Typecon 2004 in San Francisco and getting more illustration work.

What are you looking forward to in 2004? I try not to think too much about the future. Someone told me once that if you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you’re pissing on today.

What do you think 2004 will bring to design? The last decade, the aesthetics of design has been driven by technology, obscuring its voice. More worldwide collaborations of designers will bring opportunities for everyone to reflect on global/cultural changes. When designers care about their communities, they have a stronger tool to survive than any existing technology.

What do you think 2004 will bring to design? I don’t really care. I’ve used technology as a medium to express my ideas and create work that is personal. I’ve been doing this way before the design world paid me to do what I do now, and I’d continue to do it even if the design world stopped paying me to do what I do now. This attitude keeps me pretty grounded.

24 Computer Arts_February 2004

What were the highs and lows of 2003 for you? The high was the promotional trips to Japan and England for our Büro Destruct II book. The low is just too much spam mail. What other great design have you seen this year – and what do you like about it? The Sony Ericsson P900 mobile phone looks great. A good design after some really ugly ones. What’s this image and who was it for? It’s a poster for a club night with DJ Luke Vibert at a local venue in Berne. Why do you like it? First, because we really love Luke Vibert’s music. And, second, because his name, personality and music really fit the poster’s funky vibrating pinball machine design. What software did you use? Illustrator. What are you looking forward to in 2004? To have as much fun as we had in 2003. What do you think 2004 will bring design? We’ll tell you in Computer Arts, January 2005.

EXCLUSIVE

P CS PHOTOSHO

O 30-DAY DEM R U O Y ON CD-ROM

ILLUSTRATION BY IDENTIKAL CORPORATION www.identikal.com

26 Computer Arts_February 2004

Tutorial

PHOTOSHOP + ILLUSTRATOR

AND

UNITE! For our cover this is top design house sue, Identikal brings together th e pixel and vector ar worlds of t unique illustratio to create a n. how it was done Discover using Photoshop and Ill ustrator

Throughout this tutorial, we’re go ing to show you how simple it is to unify two very dif ferent formats of digital Illustrati on, known as vecto r and pixel. The process is demons trated superbly by The Identikal Corporation, using Photoshop and Illu strator together in one sm ooth operation. Where to start? We kick off in Photosh op and take you through the set-up stages, sh owing you how easy it is to do the preparation work for such an image. We then mo ve quickly into Illu strator – first, to show you how to create ind ividual line-art graphics; then, in more detail, to ex plain the technique known as t‘hick and thin line’, which is the soul of the pie ce. Finally, we ret ouch pixel images in Photosh op using some sim ple but clever touches. To complete this stu nning image, we then take you through colour-c orrection tips and what Identika l calls b ‘ itmap screen eff ects’.

INFO Illustration and tutorial by The Identikal Corpor Get in contact on ation. 020 7263 2129 or [email protected] out more at ww , and find w.identikal.com

ON THE CD Head to the Tutori al\Cover feature folder on your CD for the files that accompany this tutorial. These are for personal trainin g purposes only, and are not to be reproduced elsew here. You’ll also find the bra nd new demo of Photoshop CS on the CD. For the Photoshop CS dem o, go to www.adobe.com /products/tryado be

Computer Arts_February 2004

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^

INSIGHT

PART 1 PHOTOSHOP First, the preparation work needed to create Identikal’s image

SPECIAL INKS

“Here at Identikal, we produce images and design that are strongly dependent on colour,” says one half of the design duo, Adam Hayes. “So, for those of you with some spare cash, get a PANTONE survival kit. Once you obtain this item, it’ll never leave your side! Nothing beats having extensive knowledge of special colours. Best of all, it will give you the edge on your rivals.”

PART 2 ILLUSTRATOR Next, various line-art techniques – the most unique part of this illustration

6

Open up Illustrator, create a new document and save. Import the scanned and edited image you made in Part 1 by selecting Place from the File menu.

1

This illustration really depends on your subject matter, as we’re creating distinctive shapes. Here, Identikal has selected objects that are vital to any successful traditional and digital artist, such as pencils, draftsman pens, paintbrushes and so on. This relates to the subject of illustration itself – it’s a kind of real toolbox, rather than a virtual toolbox.

4

Once your image is scanned, save it and open it in Photoshop. Leave the manipulation for now – simply strengthen the detail of the scan by adjusting the brightness and contrast. Image detail will be more important later on, when drawing in Illustrator.

2

For this step, you can use either a digital camera or a scanner. We opted for the latter, because with scanning it’s easier to get detailed images in and out of your computer. Just remember to use a protective acetate layer when scanning in objects. If you’re using a camera, lay the equipment out on a flat surface.

7

Zoom into the most simple of the scanned objects. This is for you to gain confidence in this style; it’s better to start on a simpler object than on a complex one. Examine its detail and understand its shape.

5

Look at the scanned image. Are you happy with the composition? Are the individual objects working? If not, make these changes now. Delete the bad objects and perfect the positioning of the items, because you need to be 100 per cent confident before you move on to the next step. Now export the scan as a TIFF file, ready for importing into Illustrator.

Once you’ve prepared your scanner, set it up to its highest-quality setting. Don’t worry about how you lay out your objects at this stage, because you can move them around later on. Now scan.

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INSIGHT

^

3

WACOM TABLETS

“Four years ago, we had never even tried a Wacom graphics tablet, as most of our work (including our typefaces) was drawn by mouse,” says Identikal’s Adam Hayes. “Now the Wacom tablet is one of the most valued bits of hardware in our graphic studio. It’s just like real drawing. So for those of you out there who can really draw, our advice is simple: get one!”

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Now get comfortable. First, make sure you are using the right drawing tool (Bézier pen). Using drawing hardware like a Wacom tablet is handy, but if you haven’t got one, a mouse will do!

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT THICK AND THIN LINE

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Now begin drawing. The first part of the object you must draw is the outline. Draw around the shape as though you’re cutting it out (as if it’s a silhouette). Completely ignore the inside detail; you’ll pick this out later. Afterwards, make sure the lines are completed as one shape.

10

This step is all about looking within the silhouette and picking out the simple structures. With this pen, for instance, the guys at Identikal have worked on the lid and on the body. Remember, keep it simple!

“This is a technique used by engineers, architects and draftsmen alike,” explains Identikal’s Adam Hayes, “which is probably why it looks so sophisticated. It’s simply achieved by using thick line weights on the outer part of your drawing, and then thin line weights on the inside. Believe us, your work will look more professional using this technique – see Steps 9 to 17 for more detailed insight.”

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Select all the final intricate details (Step 11), and make the line weight about .25 or hairline. Of course, the line thickness is entirely up to you, as long as you remember to start from the outside paths with thick lines, and then work your way in with lighter weights. You’ve now mastered the technique!

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16

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17

If you’ve followed Steps 9 to12 correctly, you should find the next three Steps easy enough. These are important to capture the technique known as t‘hick and thin line’, though, so follow them carefully! Select the silhouette line (as in Step 9) and make the line weight about 1 point. Remember not to select the other paths and do not fill with any colour.

Finally, check all your paths, thick and thin, for any blips or badly drawn errors. Now select the whole of the object paths and Group. This is to avoid confusion later on, when the image becomes packed with paths from the other objects you’re drawing. Also, colour your paths. The colours for this whole illustration will be complementary, and they don’t get better than orange and blue. The lines are all coloured in orange. All lines should be one colour only.

11

Now do exactly the same as Step 9 and 10, but this time pick out all the intricate details –even bits of logos and type, as detailing is what makes this image look so exciting. For copyright reasons, you obviously cannot reproduce product logos. Now select the inner detail paths (the ones you painstakingly drew in Step 10) and make the line weight about .5 point. Remember not to select the other paths and do not fill with any colour.

Now apply Steps 8 to 16 to every object in your scanned image. Keep the drawing quality consistent. Don’t add loads of detail to one object and then rush another, because this will only ruin the harmony of your image. Patience and attention to detail is important when it comes to the overall style.

12

INSIGHT

^

Remember to join up all paths that you draw, to create solid shapes. Empty lines are not encouraged. This is because they can conflict when you import paths into Photoshop. Give your paths a final check and make sure they’re all joined!

VECTOR LINE-ART

“When it comes to vector, no style looks more contemporary than line-art,” says Adam Hayes of Identikal. “We’ve been doing this style of illustration since we first started using vector-editing software a decade ago. Simply by using a photograph of an object or a sketch, and tracing around the detail – which you can do in Photoshop and Illustrator – you can get a convincing stylish image. The Identikal style evolved from this.”

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Once every object is drawn up as line-art, and in the thick and thin line, it gives you the perfect chance to go over your composition again. Zoom out to full size. Delete the scanned image to reveal only the line-art (this could be an image in itself). Now you can easily grab any object (if you followed Step 16), duplicate it or move it around, and fine-tune the overall composition.

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^

INSIGHT

COLOUR CO-ORDINATION

“Good colour co-ordination gets you halfway there to generating a great image,” reckons Identikal’s Adam Hayes. “Think of your colour palette before you make a mark! Study colour wheels, primary colours and process colours. Your work will benefit hugely.”

19

Your final task in Illustrator is to sort out the typography, because it’s always better to get a good image together in Illustrator before finishing it up in Photoshop. Here, Identikal has drawn up its own font to give the image a unique and original look, but the choice of font is entirely up to you.

24

Concentrate on one object again (as in Step 7). Fix the line-art layer to the relevant pixel image, and chain-link them by pressing the chain icon in the Layers window. This enables you to shift your objects around for final composition purposes.

22

Now create a new layer and select Place from the File menu. Import the Illustrator EPS as Full colour. Alternatively, copy the line-art from the Illustrator window, then paste it into the Photoshop window as pixels. The only problem with this technique is that you may lose colour information – and your orange may end up looking rather red.

20

25

Pick out the individual abnormalities of the object and retouch with the Clone tool. Here we delete things like logos and dirt or grime.

Save your image as an Illustrator EPS, ready for the final stage in Photoshop.

PART 3 BACK TO PHOTOSHOP These are the final steps to a great vector and pixel image

23

Look over your image and composition. You’re on the home stretch now, so there’s no turning back. Turn on your scanned object layer.

26

Streamline the object with airbrushing. Use the object paths (imported in Step 21) as masks by selecting the desired area path of the object and pressing the dotted line circle at the bottom of the paths window.

^

INSIGHT

21

Open your original edited scan. Turn off the scanned image layer by pressing the eye icon in the layer window. Make the background layer blue, then import your Illustrator paths by copying the paths from Illustrator, then pasting them into your Photoshop document. A Paste window will come up, so make sure you select Paste As Paths. This creates a path layer in the path window.

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BITMAP SCREEN EFFECTS

“Screen effects have become fashionable again. Large dot screens and line screens at 45 degrees are all very simple and easy to do.” explains Adam Hayes. “Just open your image in Photoshop, convert it to greyscale, adjust brightness and contrast, convert to bitmap, and use Halftone Screen, Shape: Line, Angle: 45 degrees. Now you have a fresh-looking image!”

27

Cut out the shape by selecting the silhouette path, and then paste it into a new layer. Delete the old layer. Adjust the brightness and contrast.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT

APPLICATIONS

Says Adam Hayes: “At Identikal, one of our most used vector apps is FreeHand, but this is slowly changing; we’re now using Illustrator. We just advise you to choose the best software that suits you. Don’t get snobby with what package to use and always keep your options open – you can always substitute Illustrator for FreeHand.”

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This step is all about one simple technique, based on print screens, which Identikal calls the bitmap screen effect. Start by converting the object to greyscale, then convert it to bitmap. Use the Halftone Screen selection, Shape: Line, Angle: 45 degrees. Turn the layer to Multiply and lay over the retouched object layer.

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Save your final image in TIFF format as Still_Image_Print.tif. You’ll want to apply LZW compression (this reduces the file size without reducing image quality), but the byte order really doesn’t make much difference, because most software can read a TIFF in both formats.

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Now for those vital final checks. Are the lines working? Have you retouched the pixel photos correctly? Is there anything that looks out of shape (or place)? Once you’ve finished these checks, flatten the layers in your image and save the result.

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Now apply Steps 25 to 28 to every object in your scanned image collection. This is to keep everything correct and in style. Once you have applied this to every object, merge down each individual pixel layer as one layer, then merge down the line-art layers as one layer. Remember to always keep the line-art and pixel layers separate.

FINAL STEP

C

ongratulations! You’ve now perfectly united the worlds of vector and pixel in a single image, which is a fresh and original approach to digital illustration. You can use this style for anything, as long as you have a good subject –and patience!

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Adjust the colours of the pixel layer, then turn the pixel image layer to screen. If there is too much yellow in your image, it will turn green because of the blue background. Remove this using Photoshop’s colour adjustment tools. A good tip is to work in CMYK, because it’s easier to adjust colour using the Channel Mixer. If there’s too much yellow, simply take down the levels of the Yellow channel. Make sure the line-art layer is on top of the pixel layer!

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PRIZES WORTH £1750!

WIN Stitcher 4

Five copies of the yet-to-be-released 2D and 3D panorama tool from RealVIZ up for grabs!

T

his month, we’ve teamed up with RealVIZ to offer you the chance of winning one of five copies of the company’s superb panorama-creation tool, Stitcher 4. The application hasn’t even been released yet – so here’s your chance to get your hands on it before anyone else! Stitcher has long been the industry standard tool for panoramic work – it’s been used in such blockbusters as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – and this latest release contains a number of fantastic new features. Significantly, smoother integration with Photoshop. New tools enable you to export your creations to Adobe’s app with each image being a separate layer – maximising editing control. A new ‘Best Rendering’ preview gives a better representation of your finished panorama, interactive QuickTime VR previewing makes it possible to interactively adjust QTVR parameters, while an improved interface makes workflow easier than ever before. With Stitcher 4, you can create panoramas for use on the Web, as definition mattes, environment maps, image sequences, and for use in 3D projects as background scenes. Whatever your chosen medium, Stitcher provides unparalleled tools for creating striking images. To be in with a chance of winning one of five copies, worth around £350 each, simply answer the following question and drop us a line at the address below. You can also enter this, and many more competitions, online at www.computerarts.co.uk/competition. INFO www.realviz.com

32 Computer Arts_February 2004

QUESTION WHAT FILM, STARRING NICOLAS CAGE, HAS REALVIZ STITCHER BEEN USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF? TO ENTER Try the easy way, via our Website. 1) Put the Computer Arts CD into your CD drive. 2) On the Contents screen, click Compo. 3) Enter Stitcher as the competition name, fill in the rest of the form, then click Submit Entry. If you don’t have Web access, you can still enter by sending us your answer on a postcard to: Stitcher competition, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW. Please include your address and a telephone number so we can contact you if you win.

THE RULES The closing date is 26 February 2004. Employees of RealVIZ and Future Publishing, their agents and families are not permitted to enter. Multiple entries are not accepted. The editor’s decision is final and there are no cash alternatives. No other correspondence will be entered into. If you are entering by post and do not wish any of the companies involved in this competition to contact you with further offers, please indicate this on your entry. We will not pass your details on to third parties. ■

Q&A

DREAMWEAVER

SHORTCUTS

Making small tweaks to a Website image can be a real pain. You have to fire up a graphics program like Fireworks or Photoshop, open the image, make the necessary changes, then re-export the image. Well, thanks to Dreamweaver’s new ability to edit images natively, that’s all a thing of the past

focuses on the amazing colour of Greek houses, but some of the impact is destroyed by the surrounding material. Therefore, we’ll need to crop the image. We’d also like to brighten up those colours a bit, while increasing the contrast. If you have a look at the before and after screenshots below, you’ll see how major graphical changes can be made to an image in all of about 45 seconds.

A

s any professional Web designer will know all too well, time is money. Time saved is like cash in the bank, as it frees you up to bring in more clients and pursue new jobs. Unfortunately, though, clients are often breathing down your neck, demanding changes and updates to their sites, giving new deadlines and saying, “Immediately, if not sooner!” These kind of interruptions can affect workflow and productivity, but they need to be addressed in order to keep your customers happy. Often, you’ll be right in the middle of making changes to text or tweaking the design layout in HTML, when you’ll get an email or phone call from the client, asking you to crop an image, adjust the contrast or make it faster to download. Normally, this would mean stopping what you are doing, opening up Fireworks or Photoshop, finding the image on your hard drive, opening it, making the necessary changes, re-exporting the image and then re-uploading it. Even if you’re fortunate enough to work on a Dual G5, the most time-consuming step is opening the external graphics program. How nice would it be if you could make that change in Dreamweaver, without ever having to open another program? Well, now you can. This new functionality is only available in Dreamweaver MX 2004, so make sure you’ve bought a copy. We don’t have the space here to go into all the great new features in this release, but trust us, it’s worth the cash to upgrade. Even though Dreamweaver is actually using Fireworks technology for its native image editing, you don’t need Fireworks installed to use this new feature. To see what we mean, start off by opening an HTML page that contains an image you’re looking to edit. For this example, we have selected a page with a holiday photo of Greece. The photo

Before

After

Select your image and open the Properties panel (Ctrl+F3). You’ll see a string of icons beside Edit, for decreasing file size, cropping, adjusting contrast and sharpening. Simply choose an icon and save your changes! To lower the file size, choose the icon that looks like a vice. Dreamweaver will ask you if you’d like to create a Fireworks PNG to edit, or if you’d like to edit the image directly. If your changes are final, and you won’t need to undo them, don’t bother creating a PNG. However, if you’re really not sure about the new changes it is a bit safer to use a Fireworks PNG. Once you’ve done that, you can simply use the standard Web Export interface to nudge the file size down to reasonable levels. INFO Expertise supplied by BD4D’s Ryan Carson, [email protected], www.bd4d.com

CROPPING AND OPTIMISING

➥

CLIENTS ARE BREATHING DOWN YOUR NECK… GIVING NEW DEADLINES AND SAYING, “IMMEDIATELY, IF NOT SOONER!”

1

Make sure the Properties panel is open (Ctrl+F3) and then select your image. On the Properties panel, choose the Crop tool. This tool works exactly the way you would expect it to in Fireworks or Photoshop. After making your selection, hit Enter.

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The image has been cropped and colour corrected in Dreamweaver. Next we’ll bump down the file size, as the original 95k isn’t very 56k modemfriendly. Select the image, then the Optimise In Fireworks button on the Properties panel.

Now that we’ve cropped the image so it draws the eye to the colourful steps, we need to adjust contrast and brightness. Select your image and click the Brightness/Contrast button. We’ve gone for a Brightness value of 11 and Contrast value of 38. After you’ve chosen appropriate values, click OK.

We’d like to get our image down to under 20k, so we’ve gone with a JPEG setting of 65, which knocks it down from a whopping 95k to 19.1k. After selecting Update we’re all done. Just save your changes and upload the new image.

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©2004 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, GoLive, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, “Tools for the New Work” and Version Cue are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

BABIES

HEARTACHE

Introducing the Adobe® Creative Suite. Open it up and you’ll find next generation software so powerful, we’ve even renamed it : Photoshop® CS, Illustrator ® CS, InDesign® CS

®

and GoLive® CS. All conveniently combined with Acrobat® Professional and Version Cue,™ an innovative new tool that helps you keep track of your files. So now you can go ahead and play around with your ideas all you want. www.adobe.co.uk/designtherapy

THERAPY

Tools for the New Work™

It’s a creative support group.

Adobe Creative Suite

It’s more than creative software.

ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK LEA

www.dereklea.com

36 Computer Arts_February 2004

Tutorial

PAINTER 8

EVOLVING ARTWORK Discover how to use Painter’s toolset to the full as natural media expert Derek Lea builds upon a layered Photoshop file in Painter 8 – transforming his rough sketches to photorealistic figures, then back again Painter 8 will seem rather familiar to any Photoshop user. Corel has wisely decided to embrace the conventional user-interface and logic that was defined by the world’s leading image-editing program. The result is a version of Painter that Photoshop artists can navigate and operate with ease. What’s more, the intuitive workspace enables you to forget about exploring the interface and focus on painting – which is how it should be. Here we’ll explore the app’s creative possibilities by incorporating natural media into an existing layered Photoshop file (on your CD). The file is composed of a digital photograph of an easel and an original oil painting, as well as some finished Poser 5 rendered images. The result is a unique combination of art in its most tactile and, at the same time, most contemporary forms. It’s this marriage of the tactile and the virtual that lies at the heart of Painter. So what better way to bridge the gap between the two than blending the elements with the world’s leading natural media simulation program. INFO Artwork and tutorial by Derek Lea, [email protected], www.dereklea.com

ON THE CD The Photoshop file you need to follow this tutorial is on your CD in the Tutorial\Painter folder. This is for personal training purposes only and not to be reproduced elsewhere.

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^

INSIGHT

PART 1 INTRODUCING PAINT AND LAYERS In Painter 8, open up the file working.psd from the CD (in the Tutorial\Painter folder)

LOCKING LAYERS

Locking layers that aren’t currently in use is a good habit to get into while using Painter. There will eventually come a time when you accidentally paint over something because you’ve selected the wrong layer. Keeping your layers locked when they’re out of use takes little effort, and can save you a lot of trouble fixing mistakes later on.

7

Again, use the Option key to access the Eyedropper and sample a lighter green colour from the figure’s back. Use the Paint Brush with the same settings to paint this light green over an area of similar colour on the figure’s back. Use this technique to sample various colours from the same area, then paint them over the top on the soft acrylics layer.

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In the Layers palette, select the left layer and click on the Lock Layer button in the Layers palette to lock the content. This stops you from accidentally painting over the image. It’s a good idea to preserve existing content, so lock the remaining layers as well.

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Create another layer by clicking on the New Layer button in the Layers palette. Click and drag the layer to the top of the stack in the Layers palette. Double-click the layer icon to open the Layer Attributes, then rename the layer ‘soft acrylics’. Now select the left layer, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the left layer in the Layers palette.

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Select the Brush tool from the toolbox. In the Brush Selector bar, select Acrylics from the Brush category and Captured Bristle as the Brush Variant. In the Property bar, make sure that Freehand Strokes is selected, then set the size to 20.1 and the opacity to 18 per cent. Leave the more advanced settings like Resat, Bleed and Jitter Set to their defaults. Keep things relatively simple at this stage.

PART 2 MIXING PAINT Create and alter custom paint colours using Painter 8’s fantastic new Mixer palette feature

8 5

Zoom in closer on the figure to the left. In the Layers palette, click on the Pick Up Underlying Colour checkbox to blend the colour from underlying layers with the new strokes on the current layer. With the Brush tool selected, hold down the Option key to temporarily access the Eyedropper and sample a white colour from the blank canvas.

In the Mixer palette, click on the Apply Colour (paint brush) button. Adjust the slider at the bottom to specify a brush width of around 19 or 20 pixels, then paint a few strokes in the open area at the upper-left of the Mixer palette to add your sampled colour. Now, in the image area, use the Eyedropper tool to sample a yellow colour from the figure.

^

INSIGHT STROKE OPTIONS

3

Choose Select Layer Transparency from the pop-up menu to generate a selection based on the layer content; we’ll use this to constrain our brush strokes. Select the ‘soft acrylics’ layer in the Layers palette. From the menu, choose Select>Hide Marquee, so that we don’t have to look at the annoying marching ants all the time.

38 Computer Arts_February 2004

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Using small brush strokes, begin to paint within the hidden selection on the soft acrylics layer. Paint with white over areas that define the edges of the figure to the bottom and the left. Keep introducing slight stokes to build up layers of paint so that the figure begins to look like an unfinished painting.

Once you’ve chosen a brush, direct your attention to the Property bar. The first two options control how the strokes behave. The first is the Freehand Strokes option, which enables you to paint as you normally would. Beware of the second option, which only paints in straight line segments – if things are looking weird, you’ve probably enabled this option. It seems an odd thing to include in such an intuitive application, so turn it off!

Tutorial

9

In the Mixer palette, paint some yellow in the open area, being careful not to touch the green. Continue on in this manner to sample colours from the figure, adding them to the Mixer without allowing them to touch. We want a nice variety of colours – don’t worry about tints and shades, just focus on getting a variety of colours in the Mixer.

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In the Mixer palette, direct your attention to the swatches at the top of the palette. Click on the white swatch to select it, then use the Apply Colour tool to paint some white over a few of the areas of colour in the Mixing palette. Select the Mix Colour tool, then mix the white with the surrounding colours to create suitable tints.

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Try varying the size and opacity settings within the Property bar while you’re painting on the soft acrylics layer, creating more of a subtle blending between images and painting. Choose Select>None from the menu to deselect the current selection and continue to paint, this time letting your brush strokes fall onto areas of the canvas outside the figure.

PART 3 SKETCHING Now to add some traditional sketches and figure-drawings to enhance the image further

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Once you’re satisfied with the colours in the Mixer, select the Mix colour (Palette knife) tool in the Mixer palette, then use it to paint over your existing colours in the Mixer to blend them together (as shown). The Mix Colour tool enables you to mix the current colours within the Mixer, without adding any new colours to them.

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The Mixer palette is quickly filling up, so select the Mixer’s Pan (Hand) tool, then click and drag on the painted area within the palette to move it, freeing up some valuable empty space. Click on the black swatch at the top of the palette. Now select the Add Colour tool and paint some black into the mixer so that it’s touching the other colours.

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Click the Lock icon in the Layers palette to lock the content of the soft acrylics layer. Click the layer’s Visibility icon to hide it. Select the left layer in the Layers palette and reduce the opacity of the layer to 50 per cent. Now click the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette and drag the New Layer to the top of the palette.

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Now, in the Mixer palette, select the Sample Colour (Eyedropper) tool. Click on one of the colours in the Mixer to select it as the current colour and use the current Paintbrush tool to paint on the same soft acrylic layer. Use this method to sample a number of colours from the Mixer palette and paint them over the figure’s back.

14

Select the Mix Colour tool in the Mixer palette and use it to blend the black with the other colours, creating shaded versions of the neighbouring colours. Now that you have a great mix of tones to choose from, use the Sample Colour tool in the palette to select them, and use the Brush tool to paint with these colours on the current layer within the active hidden selection.

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Double-click the layer icon, then rename the ‘sketch left’ layer in the Layer attributes box and click OK. Select Pencils from the brush category. Select Flattened Pencil as the Brush Variant. In the Mixer palette, use the Sample Colour tool to sample a dark green colour. Zoom in close on the figure and sketch around the darkest areas of the figure’s edge.

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18

Continue to use the Pencil to draw around the bottom and left side of the figure on the canvas. Keep sampling different colours from the Mixer, depending upon the colour present in that part of the image. For instance, if the area is mostly orange, sample an orange colour; if it’s a soft green, sample a soft green colour – and so on.

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Don’t worry about tracing the leg all the way down. Also, draw some line-work to define areas such as the ear, musculature and facial features. Return the opacity of the paper layer to 100 so that you can see your sketched outlines. Leave the opacity alone and return to your sketch right layer. Draw over some of your line-work again to strengthen it.

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Lock the sketch right layer and create a new one. Place this beneath the sketch right layer in the Layers palette, then double-click the New Layer icon and name it ‘pastels right’. Enable the Pick Up Underlying Colour function. Now select Oil Pastels from the Brush category and select Chunky Oil Pastel 30 as the Brush Variant.

PART 4 OIL PASTELS Now we’ll introduce acrylic paints, pencils and pastels to the mix

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Use the same colour sensibility to draw line-work inside the figure. Vary the colours as you draw simple lines that outline defined areas of muscle, curvature, or light and shadow. When you have finished, don’t create too many lines just yet; enable Visibility of the soft acrylics layer and return the opacity of the left layer to 100.

In the Property bar, set the size to 23, the opacity to 10 per cent and the grain to 20 per cent. Leave the other settings at their defaults. Select the sample colour in the Mixer palette and sample a medium brown colour from your new set. In the image window, use the Oil Pastel to add some shading to the figure on your new layer.

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Use the Pan tool to move down the contents of the Mixing palette and reveal some free space. Next, use the Eyedropper tool to sample a range of browns and sepias from the right of the image. In the Mixer palette, use the Add Colour tool to brush in a number of swatches in a row from dark to light. Finally, blend the new colours in the Mixer palette with the Mix Colour tool.

Lock the sketch left layer in the Layers palette. Select the paper layer and reduce the opacity to 45 per cent. Click the New Layer button and name the new layer ‘sketch right’. From the Mixer, choose a darker brown colour using the Sample Colour tool. Now use the current Pencil tool to carefully trace the outline of the figure on the right.

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INSIGHT

^

20

MIXER PALETTE

When you have spent a considerable amount of time creating a beautiful mixed palette in the Mixer, it’s possible to save it for use later on. Just click on the arrow at the upper-right of the palette and choose Save Mixer Colours from the Palette menu. This enables you to save the Mixer content as a file that you can simply load any time by selecting Load Mixer Colours from the same Palette menu.

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In the Layers palette, change the composite method of the current layer to darken. Select a slightly lighter colour from the range of sepias and browns in the Mixer palette. Use the Oil Pastel with the current settings to paint the outer regions of your initial dark areas. Select a darker reddish brown from the Mixer and add hints of colour to shadowy areas.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT PALETTES GALORE

Although more recent versions of Painter are better organised, this iteration still has its fair share of palettes. All of the available ones are listed under the Window menu and include custom brush-creation palettes, papers, weaves, and more. If you’re not working with two monitors, though, it’s better to only display palettes that you use regularly. You can then bring up others as required. We found that showing just the colours, the Mixer and the Layers palette created a much tidier workspace.

PART 5 CONTÉ Finally, we introduce Painter’s version of figure-drawing artists’ favourite tool: Conté

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Reduce the size of the pastel to 10 and the opacity to 5 in the Property bar. Use the current colour on the current layer to add some smaller strokes to the shadow areas. Use the right layer as a reference for shading by switching off the paper layer, then turn the paper layer back on and add the shading strokes on the layer called pastels right.

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Reduce the opacity of the current Oil Pastel brush to 5 per cent. Continue using various colours sampled from the sepias and browns in the Mixer palette and paint over the strokes you added earlier to smooth them out. Choose Select>None from the menu. Select the Pan tool in the Mixer palette and shift the original mixed colours into view.

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Create a final new layer and select Conté from the Brush category. Choose Tapered Conte 8 as the Brush Variant. Reduce the opacity to 30 per cent and the size to 5 in the Property bar. Sample a very light sepia tone from the Mixer and zoom in on the figure to the right. Use the Conté to draw in some slight highlights on the figure to the right.

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Lock the pastels right layer and switch off the visibility of the right layer in the Layers palette. Select the left layer and Ctrl-click the layer icon in the Layers palette. Choose Select Layer Transparency from the pop-up menu, then choose Select>Invert from the menu, and finally choose Select>Hide Marquee from the menu.

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Create a layer, move it to the top in the Layers palette, then call it ‘pastels figure’. Enable Pick Up Underlying Colour. Use the current Oil Pastel and paint over areas of the figure’s back on the new layer. Sample colours from the Mixer palette and use various brush sizes and opacities in the Property bar.

FINAL STEP

N

ow reduce the opacity of the Conté to 15 per cent and pan across to the figure on the left. Use colours from the Mixer to sketch on top of the other paint and pastel work to create some rough Conté line-work. When you’re finished, move back to the right-hand figure and draw in some lines in medium and darker tones in the appropriate areas.

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Create a new layer in the Layers palette and name it ‘pastels left’. Change the composite method of this new layer to darken. Increase the Oil Pastel brush size to 25.3 and increase the opacity to 16 per cent in the Property bar. Paint within the active selection on the new layer using sepia colours sampled from the Mixer.

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Profile

CUBAN COUNCIL “Doing CD covers is great because you get instant gratification at the end of it – you get the package in hand,” says Michael Schmidt of Cuban Council. “But it’s so hard, creatively speaking. Every time we do it, we’re kicking ourselves six weeks in, saying, ‘Why the hell did we do this?’ It takes FOREVER…”

N

ot that he’s complaining, mind you. It’s just that for Michael Schmidt, and the other folks on the Council, there are always a thousand new areas to explore and a million new approaches to try out. If they’re not designing animations for Sony Ericsson mobile phones, they’re tackling CD layouts for local indie labels; assuming they’re not already working on print illustrations for magazines, redesigning an Adobe site, or coming up with a CMS design and back-end for the largest indie record label in the world, Epitaph. Whether it’s on the Web, a CD case or your mobile phone, Cuban Council’s distinctive pixel-art is the work of just four people slaving away in San Francisco. Schmidt and his old friend Toke Nygaard (pronounced ‘toe-kuh’) make up the creative half of the team, with Per Jørgensen as Technical

“We were hired by Rethink Advertising and Global Mechanic in Canada to design and animate pixel characters for a pitch for telecommunications giant Bell Canada,” says Michael Schmidt. “The pitch was very successful, a massive campaign was funded, and we’re now involved in everything from TV commercials to billboard-sized outdoor posters and pixellated hotrod-esque bus wraps!”

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“Launched by us back in 1998, www.k10k.net has quickly grown into the Web’s premier design portal,” says Michael Schmidt. “The goal of the site? To give people a creative breathing space, where they can find inspiration and, through user-participation, inspire others as well.”

According to Schmidt, the Cuban Council Website (www.cubancouncil.com) is: “Yummy wood, with the smell of expensive cigars lingering in the background.”

Director and Michael Buzzard as the self-styled Code Curator, programmer extraordinaire.

LOVE IN SAN FRANCISCO

Sample work from the dusty www.k10k.net archives.

These guys may be San Francisco-based, but three-quarters of CC are born-and-bred Danes – and while they have extensive design experience under their belts, the company itself was formed only recently. It sprang into life as a result of k10k (www.k10k.net), Schmidt and Nygaard’s original ‘digital design playground’, a curious blend of news, events, discussion, inspiration and plain old weird stuff, and still a major focus of their passions. “I don’t have any formal artistic training; I have a Bachelor’s from the University of Copenhagen in English Literature and Ancient History,” explains Schmidt. “While I was doing that, I was also working as a graphic designer and I was heavily into role-playing games. We had an RPG magazine and that was basically my first experience with graphic design. “Halfway through my degree, I got offered a job at the first Danish Internet magazine,” continues Schmidt. “I think that was in 1995. Predictably, the magazine folded after about a

some time, or something like it, anyway. We really wanted our own digital design playground, because there were only a couple of those sites around at the time and they weren’t enough for us; we wanted something fresher and newer. It took us another year to get that going.” While k10k was quietly growing into something of a cult – plainly inspiring the

I DON’T HAVE ANY FORMAL ARTISTIC TRAINING; I HAVE A BACHELOR’S FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ANCIENT HISTORY. WHILE I WAS DOING THAT, I WAS ALSO WORKING AS A GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND I WAS HEAVILY INTO ROLE-PLAYING GAMES

Illustrations from Cuban Council’s k10k issue #8, subtitled “On the Night of Mr. Melvyn’s Murder…”

44 Computer Arts_February 2004

year because no-one was using the Internet at the time, but I just got drawn into the Net industry after that.” Schmidt was introduced to Nygaard by a mutual friend while both were still living in Copenhagen. “It took about a year before we met up in person, at an Internet conference. We’ve been working together since. We’d already been talking about the k10k Website for

likes of Pixelsurgeon along the way – Schmidt had other things on his mind. He’d fallen in love with a girl who lived in San Francisco and decided it was time to make the move there. “I persuaded Toke Nygaard to give up his job at Wallpaper* and come over here, too. Cuban Council is a relatively new thing; we’ve been working together on projects, but we just haven’t had a name for it. It was the first time

Profile

MOODSTATS Download Cuban Council’s moodmonitoring application and keep track of your emotions, both good and bad

“A small, Shockwave-based piece we did for Design for Freedom, in collaboration with Jusum,” explains Michael Schmidt. “It uses Moodstats data (see panel, right) to generate different types of beetles which then interact over time.”

we were working together without either of us having real jobs.” The pair enlisted Jørgensen, with whom Schmidt had worked in Denmark, along with Mike Buzzard, another email correspondent, and the only American on the team. Thus Cuban Council was born, so-called because the guys’ offices were – and still are – situated above a ‘semi-Cuban’ grocery store.

NO DESIGN BY COMMITTEE It’s small but perfectly formed, according to Schmidt. “Both of us have worked for large

hard. That’s been a choice for us and I think it’s going to stay that way.” Nygaard agrees; each person, it seems, has their own specialisation. “Mike tends to do all the heavy-duty back-end work,” he says. “Michael is sort of in-between; he has a really good understanding of design, and at the same time does all the in-between coding like HTML, DHTML, Lingo and so on. I do the pure creative stuff. I don’t do any coding at all.” Presumably, then, with just two people making the creative decisions, projects develop effortlessly in a perfectly symbiotic exchange of

One of Cuban Council’s ongoing side projects is Moodstats (www.moodstats.com), a personal journal that enables you to record and rate how your day has been in various categories, such as stress, creativity, sexual achievements or pretty much anything you like. Written entirely in Director and available as a downloadable PC or Mac application, the program can also generate multi-coloured graphs and stats showing you how your moods have been over any given period of time. Register your version and you can even ‘sync’ your data with other users and check out how you stand with the current world mood. Moodstats grew from one of Toke Nygaard’s particular passions. “I’ve always had a fetish for stats and mapping data in different ways,” he says. “When I was 14 or so, I was writing a diary, and every day I would give a mark out of ten depending on how I felt. Over the course of a whole year, I had all this data that I then started mapping in to a chart on graph paper. So in the end I had a chart of my pre-teen misery!” He describes Moodstats in its current state as “just a program that makes graphs. The cool thing about it is that we don’t know where it’s taking us. We don’t know how people are using it. We get feedback from people who use it for research or self-help or keeping their girlfriends in check...” In fact, Moodstats has already been used for a Cuban Council illo in Korean design magazine Impress. The values of all current Moodstats users were fed into a custom-made Flash parser, which then spat out a garden of flowers, whose position, height and colour were all determined by the users’ mood, creativity and stress values. Cosmic, man.

THERE’S A LOT OF HEAD-BUTTING BETWEEN US AND WE’LL BOTH BE PULLING IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO COMPROMISE AND WE BOTH HAVE A HARD TIME WITH THAT, ESPECIALLY IF WE’RE DOING STUFF FOR OURSELVES, LIKE THE CUBAN COUNCIL SITE

companies who have gone through rapid expansion, with huge products and tons of people coming in. We don’t want to do that with our company; we’re very happy having full control and we don’t have to support 20 other people’s payrolls.” Although CC occasionally employs a freelancer (“We primarily use Vicki Wong from Ndroid and Meomi, because she has a really cool pixel style that works for us,” says Schmidt) and has considered hiring an intern, the team remains happy with its less-is-more approach – at least for now. “We can pick and choose from the work, because we only have to worry about paying ourselves, and that‘s not

ideas? Well, no, not exactly. “The biggest challenge we have is that Toke and I are extremely stubborn,” laughs Schmidt. “There’s a lot of head-butting between us and we’ll both be pulling in different directions. Sometimes we have to compromise and we both have a hard time with that, especially if we’re doing stuff for ourselves, like the Cuban Council site. That took us about a year to do, because we couldn’t agree on ANYTHING. We’re getting better at it, though...” And presumably their own stuff is never good enough? “Definitely,” concedes Schmidt. “I’ve been making changes to k10k every day since it was launched in 1998, and I’m still

“Moodstats (www.moodstats.com) enables you to record and rate your day emotionally,” says Schmidt. “Once you’ve entered sufficient data, it generates multi-coloured graphs and statistics, showing you exactly how your moods have been.”

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An online photo system designed for Epitaph Records. “Bands currently on tour are given digital cameras by the label, and then expected to upload images and small nuggets of wisdom from their life on the road,” says Schmidt.

A set of recent animations for Sony Ericsson’s P800 PDA phones. “The animations are accompanied by sound and come pre-installed on the handset,” explains Michael Schmidt. “It was a joy to work on animations for a big colour screen for a change.” A fold-out CD cover that Cuban Council designed for the Open Up And Say... compilation CD, released by Tigerbeat6 Records in San Francisco.

working on it. It’s never going to be done. I think the Cuban Council site is the first personal project we’ve completed and just left for what it is. We’ve just finished our business cards and that took us eight months...” Of course, it doesn’t help when those pesky clients get in the way. Like most designers, CC much prefers to be trusted with its own creative decisions, and doesn’t take too kindly to being manhandled into a particular way of thinking by cocksure blue chips. “The clients we keep on working with are the ones who don’t give us a ton of feedback,” reckons Schmidt. “The clients we do one project with are just obsessive... We were involved in a particular project – I won’t say the name of the company – but it was insane the amount of feedback they had. It was like, move this four pixels to the right, make this four

while back, redesigning the Studio Website. Even though that was a fun project and the people at Adobe were very friendly, it was kind of frustrating being in a situation where you have basically 15 people trying to make the decision. Nothing got decided and it took forever to get approval for changes.” Part of the problem, if it can be called that, is that CC likes to take an overall approach with any client, suggesting ways the design could extend to other areas of their client’s Website, print media or whatever. “With the Adobe Studio site, we were also looking at the dotcom site and suggesting changes to make to that,” Schmidt continues. “Even though they liked our suggestions – and I’ve noticed that they’ve implemented some of them – they were saying, ‘We can’t get approval for this. I don’t have the authority’ and

WE KILLED THE PROJECT HALFWAY THROUGH, GAVE THEM BACK ALL THE FILES AND SAID, ‘YOU PAID FOR IT; DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. BUT WE’RE NOT INTERESTED IN BEING INVOLVED ANY MORE, BECAUSE WE THINK THE FINAL RESULT IS GOING TO SUCK

Album cover designed for the latest release from UK band Cranes. Elegance and simplicity lay behind the overall design: “We took photos of the streets of NYC from a seedy Manhattan hotel room,” remembers Schmidt.

46 Computer Arts_February 2004

pixels taller... In that situation, you really can’t work with a client any more. They’re paying you to do a design and when they go into that much detail, it’s production work – like you’re an art director assistant at an ad agency.” CC was having none of it. “We killed the project halfway through, gave them back all the files and said, ‘You paid for it; do whatever you want. But we’re not interested in being involved any more because we think the final result is going to suck.’” He laughs. “That was pretty much it. You’ve got to expect the client trusts your judgement; that’s why they pay us the money.” It is, he says, more of a problem with larger corporate clients – even Adobe, which also sponsors CC. “We did some work for Adobe a

that sort of thing. With a smaller company, they’ll usually say, ‘That sounds great, let’s do that.’ They’re more interested in getting the best they can.”

STAYING PLAYFUL Corporate frustrations aside, CC mainly relies on Adobe software – Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive – along with a smattering of Flash and Schmidt’s “hardcore Director stuff.” They are, unsurprisingly, dedicated Mac fanatics, although both Buzzard and Jørgensen use a PC “for good reasons.” No matter what project it’s working on, CC always tries to include a hint of quirkiness, to adopt a playful tone that all this intense design shouldn’t be taken too seriously. This is

Profile

YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING The Cuban Council...

A rather personal piece by Cuban Council, created for Brian Taylor’s excellent Dodge Magazine.

especially evident in the company’s pixel work – check out what it devised for Sony Ericsson’s P800 PDA phones opposite (left). “We try to have fun while we do our thing,” admits Nygaard. “The good thing for us is that we’re only two people who have to agree on stuff, and that makes it easier to include lots of little weird details. If you work at Wallpaper* or whatever, there are always three or four stages where things are taken out; but we don’t have that elimination where all the fun stuff gets sucked out. I like to include some sort of quirkiness to things.” It’s this pixel style which Schmidt believes is now CC’s defining characteristic. “The whole pixel graphics thing comes from a fascination with computer games and the fact we grew up with C64s and Ataris. I think that’s the truest inspiration you can find in our work, because it’s what we really specialise in.” Early influences included Neville Brody and David Carson, although Schmidt says he hopes the company has now settled into a style all its own. “We try not to emulate anyone else. The only problem is that this can limit you, because you’re scared to try something new. You really have to kick yourself when it comes to trying something that’s off the beaten path. “The Cuban Council Website, for instance, was a complete departure,” he adds, “because we wanted to have something that was like wood, and smooth, like antique, which is partly why it took so long.” Still, it doesn’t seem as if CC’s quest for design perfection will end any time soon. With k10k still a major love for CC’s members, and yet another redesign in the offing, plus countless side-projects (see the Moodstats panel on page 45), it’s amazing the foursome manage to finish any ‘real’ work at all. Trawling for new sites to post on k10k is a major time-sink for Schmidt, who checks between 50 and 60 new sites a day. He clearly loves it, although he’s not pleased with the state of the design industry right now. “It seems to be going through phases,” he says. “You get phases where people are really

TOKE NYGAARD Creative Director. Likes the smell of leather and listening to old dad jazz on Sundays. Loathes the sound of people eating in TV commercials. MICHAEL SCHMIDT Createch Director. Likes tattoos, pixels, Neil Gaiman, Kevin Smith, Jeff Noon, Moodstats and probably you. But not necessarily in that order. MICHAEL BUZZARD Code Curator. Likes Thinkpads, travel, airport bars, clean code and rainy San Francisco afternoons. Has an unusual dependency on coffee and Sudafed. PER JØRGENSEN And, finally, we mustn’t forget the Technical Director, who unfortunately couldn’t make the photoshoot. Likes physics, things that are puzzling, things that are noisy, things that are quiet, and pretty much everything in-between. He does exist, honest – take a look at www.cubancouncil.com if you don’t believe us! A Little Pixel Creature poster featuring the official k10k (www.k10k.net) mascot, Barney the Beagle.

excited and doing crazy stuff – when Flash was introduced, for instance. Then there’s a downtime, where everyone is emulating everyone else and no-one is trying anything new. Technically speaking, things get better, but it’s not something that really adds to the atmosphere as a whole. Right now, we’re going through some sort of slump.” He admits he’s disappointed – although all is not lost… “One thing that’s good is that it seems like there are more people doing illustration work these days,” he says. “We didn’t have that for a long time. Hopefully, within a year, someone will be doing something new and interesting, because we kind of need it right now.” Chances are, if you need any help kickstarting the next design revolution, Cuban Council will be more than happy to oblige… INFO You can contact Cuban Council at +1 415 252 0203, [email protected] and www.cubancouncil.com. Also, take a look at www.k10k.net. Words by Ed Ricketts, [email protected]

Icons for Cuban Council’s Moodstats application (www.moodstats.com), and for the download section on www.epitaph.com.

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PHOTOSHOP CS

SHORTCUTS The brief? Fake a UFO sighting, but don’t produce an ultra-clear, film-quality image of a flying saucer, posed aesthetically within a perfectly exposed frame. It has to look like something unrecognisable has darted in front of you, and you’ve caught it

black level, by matching the darkest parts of each image. We then need to add a little movement. There are two types of movement in this scene, so we need to apply the Motion Blur filter twice – once to recreate the ‘motion’ of the spaceship (this is easy enough; we just add it to the spaceship layer), then again for the camera shake. We need to add the latter to both the background and the spaceship, though, so we merge the layers beforehand. Next comes the grain. Photoshop’s Grain filter offers a range of different types and levels, while the simpler Noise filter is more suited to the kind of electronic noise you’d get on digital camera or camcorder footage. A tip for the digital camera faker: noise tends to appear stronger when the

camera is struggling to cope with poor lighting, and it tends to show up more on darker areas of the screen. Apply the filter to a duplicate layer, then using an Overlay mode to highlight grain in darker areas. With the grain in place, the image begins to look disturbingly authentic. However, grain has to be the last thing you add before re-enhancing the shot (see the walkthrough below). If you start messing with the image after the grain is in place, it’ll look wrong. There are other effects you can add to give the shot extra appeal – a diffuse glow, for instance. You could also add rain or lines for that TV screen capture effect. INFO Expertise supplied by Christian Darkin, [email protected]

IMPROVING YOUR SHOT

F

or this project, we have to produce the kind of shot that would fool the ufologists – the sort of ambiguous, blurred snapshot a member of the public would grab when something passes in front their car at dusk. In short, we want to blur the image, add scratches and grain, degrade the film, ruin the exposure and wreck the composition. And then we want to make it look as though we’ve tried our best to rescue it – to recapture the detail and improve the image as much as possible. The first step, however, has to be the composite. It’s an easy enough job; a quick digital snapshot, taken carefully so as to avoid any contrived composition, with plenty of sky showing – overlaid with a simple rendering of a saucer shape. We do a little colour-matching work to ensure the two images appear to be part of the same shot; because the image is just a smudge, all we need to balance is the

48 Computer Arts_February 2004

WE WANT TO BLUR THE IMAGE, ADD SCRATCHES AND GRAIN, DEGRADE THE FILM, RUIN THE EXPOSURE AND WRECK THE COMPOSITION

1

Once our shot is destroyed by grain and blur, it’s time to enhance it again, and to recapture some of the lost detail. First, we crop the image to show you just the area around the spaceship. We then use the Image Size tool to shrink it to about 100 pixels across or less.

2

Next, we apply some colour and contrast enhancement. Feel free to play around with the image as much as you like to try to restore and emphasise the detail. (The image has been so degraded, you needn’t worry about people seeing the model for what it is!)

4

3

Using the same tool, we then expand it again, only this time we set the image resampling to Nearest Neighbour rather than Bicubic. This leaves us with a computerised, jagged shot that looks as though it’s been deliberately blown up.

Finally, for a finishing touch, we add a Colour Halftone filter. This separates the image into many coloured dots, giving the appearance that the enhanced image has been cut from a newspaper. Show it to ignorant friends to see how effective it is!

ILLUSTRATION BY NILS DAVEY www.jawabrand.co.uk

50 Computer Arts_February 2004

Tutorial

WEB ANIMATION

THE FLASH TIMELINE Every single Flash movie you make begins and ends with the timeline. Here, we show you hidden features and shortcuts – make sure you know how it works inside out The main difference between Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX 2004 Professional, is the latter introduces a screens-based authoring metaphor that’s more familiar to application developers. The timeline is still there, though – and it’s as powerful a tool for creating animations, interaction and applications as it’s always been. Perhaps developers used to working with linear application development tools might be put off by what looks like a movie-editing environment. The Flash timeline is a legacy of the program’s origins as an animation package. Still, as Flash has evolved, the timeline has evolved, too, becoming a flexible, featurefilled tool for creating much more than moving imagery. It takes an expert eye to unravel all the secrets of the timeline, and that’s what we aim to do in this tutorial. We’ve gathered together our best tips and techniques, revealing hidden features and shortcuts that are often overlooked via a simple project. Whether you’re an absolute beginner or a seasoned Flash pro, you’ll find better, faster ways to make the timeline work for you over the next few pages. INFO Tutorial by Karl Hodge, [email protected]

ON THE CD The file you need to complete this tutorial is on the coverdisc in the Tutorial\Flash folder. This is for personal training purposes only and is not to be reproduced elsewhere.

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^

INSIGHT

PART 1 WORKING WITH LAYERS Open the file advertisement.fla from the CD – and follow our steps

ONION SKINNING

The timeline is also home to a series of Onion Skinning modes. These enable you to see a number of frames before, after or on either side of the frame you’re currently working with on the stage. This feature is most useful when working on frame-by-frame animations.

EXPAND OR COLLAPSE

Flash tucks away some of its most useful commands in context-sensitive menus. Right-click in the Layer section of the timeline panel and you can choose to expand or collapse all folders in that section.

7

Similarly, you can change the visibility of items, so you can work on other layers without distraction. To lock or make all layers invisible, click on the appropriate icon at the top of the corresponding column in the Layers section. To unlock or make one layer visible, click on the appropriate dot in the Lock or Visibility column.

1

We’re not going to create a file in this tutorial – we’ll use one we made earlier to show you all the capabilities of the timeline. The document you’ve opened is a simple, skyscraper-format, animated advertisement with some rollover functions.

4

We also recommend using a new layer for each item you animate, to avoid confusion as you juggle between separate tweens, guides and masks. You can also give actions and labels their own separate layers – making them easier to locate quickly as your movie gets larger.

8

Flash MX automatically assigns a new colour swatch to each layer you create. This colour coding is more than just a visual aid for you to differentiate between layers – it’s also the colour that’s used when you activate Outline mode.

2

Creating layers in a Flash document is pleasingly straightforward; you simply hit the New Layer button at the bottom-left of the timeline panel. You can also go to Insert>Timeline>Layer in the main menubar or right-click (Ctrl-click on the Mac) to bring up a context-sensitive menu.

5

The order of the layers, from top to bottom, determines the order of items on screen from front to back. To change that order, all you have to do is drag and drop the layers in place within the timeline. Look at the Symbol ‘Logo’ in the library for an example. It contains text with a shadow, with the text on one layer and the shadow underneath.

9

Click on the square Outline icon at the top of the Layer section in the timeline panel to activate Outline mode onstage. Again, you can switch the mode on or off for individual layers. This mode is handy when you have solid objects that you want to be able to see other objects through – or when you wish to adjust those objects relative to each other.

3

Each new document begins with a single layer. When you create a new layer, it’s always added above the layer currently selected. Layers help you to organise elements within your movie, separating static elements from animations and so on.

52 Computer Arts_February 2004

6

Once you’ve completed work on a layer, you can lock it to prevent further changes by clicking in the appropriate column in the Layers section of the timeline. This function always comes in handy.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT VISIBILITY

One standard animation technique in Flash is to fade objects in and out using Alpha transparency. A problem with this is that when the Alpha transparency of an object is set to 0 per cent, it’s invisible on the stage. To briefly make it visible without altering the object’s settings, you can click the layer you’re working on into Outline mode. The invisible object will now be outlined in the colour you’ve chosen for that layer.

PART 2 LAYER FOLDERS Introduced in Flash 5, folders enable you to sort layers into categories

ADDING FRAMES

10

Flash sports two categories of special Layer: Mask layers and Motion Guides. Mask layers attach to the layer immediately below them when added, obscuring elements in that layer. In use, the Mask appears to be invisible – yet only the elements that appear through the spaces or holes in the Mask can be seen. Only the attached layer is affected.

The quickest way to access all commands for working with frames is to open the contextsensitive menu. Right-click in Windows or Ctrl-click on the Mac to access commands that enable you to create or remove keyframes or ordinary frames, reverse frame sequences, and convert normal frames to keyframes.

15

Layer folders are as easy to add as layers. Select a layer close to where you’d like a folder to be, then click on the Insert Layer Folder icon. Layer folders can be renamed, shown or hidden, locked or colour-coded just like the layers themselves.

11

You use Motion Guides in conjunction with animation layers. To add a Guide to a layer, select a previously tweened motion animation and click on the Add Motion Guide icon at the bottom-left corner of the timeline panel. Insert sufficient frames into the timeline so that the Motion Guide layer is the same duration as the animation you want to affect.

13

Although you can edit many attributes of the Layers section of the timeline panel using icons, there is an additional Properties panel that gives you greater control, particularly if you need to make several changes to the set-up of a Layer.

16

Those familiar with Photoshop Layer Sets may be disappointed to discover that you need to drag and drop layers into folders – you can’t select a set of layers and create a folder containing them. You can, however, nest folders within folders. When you select a layer within a folder, then create a new layer, it’s created inside the folder.

12

Select the first keyframe of the Motion Guide layer, then use the Pencil or Pen tool to draw a path for your animation. Return to the original animated layer and adjust the animated symbol so that its start and end points are at the beginning and end of the guide. Look in the timeline folder ‘Sun Anim’ at frame 85 for an example.

14

Right-click (or Ctrl-click on the Mac) to select the Properties item from the contextual menu. Here you can edit the layer’s name. change its outline colour, define what kind of layer it is, show or hide it. You can also set its individual magnification. This is the only dialog where you can do this.

17

For this reason, it’s better to organise your layers into folders periodically as you work, rather than start your project with a bunch of predefined folders. Once you’ve finished working on a particular aspect of the production – multilayered animation, for example – file it away in a new folder to keep the timeline tidy.

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PART 3 FRAME BY FRAME Next, the intricacies of working with the timeline

21

To select multiple frames, select the first frame in the sequence, then the last frame while holding down the Shift key. You can then drag and drop that entire sequence – even when you select keyframes across layers. To duplicate a frame or frames, hold down the Alt key as you drag, or the Option key on the Mac.

23

The first list of modes helps expands the length of frames – handy when you need to identify frame 133 of a particularly lengthy movie. The next mode is Short – this is a new mode that shortens the height of all layers. Use this when you have a lot of layers that you need to see at once.

18

By moving frame-labelling capabilities out of a special dialog into the Properties panel, Macromedia has made this function even more useful feature than before. As well as enabling you to target specific frames by name in ActionScript, it helps you to keep track of transitions in your movie without breaking them down into scenes.

24

Macromedia introduced Tinted Frames in a previous version of Flash. Switching this option off makes the application appear as it did in older versions, with tweens highlighted by a red dot and keyframes represented by blue dots. Ordinary frames appear in white.

22 19

Get into the habit of labelling frames at the beginning and end of discrete animation sequences, at stages where you include complex sections of ActionScript and at the beginning and end of movies. Use them like good programmers use comments in code.

20

Selecting and manipulating frames in the timeline can be confusing for newcomers, but it’s easier than you might suspect. Click on a single keyframe to select it, then drag it to another position to move it. If you do the same with an ordinary frame, it lengthens the current frame sequence.

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The timeline isn’t fixed in one view. In fact, there are several View modes to choose from – all tucked away in a sub-menu that you can access by clicking on the top-right corner of the timeline panel. Open it now and you’ll see a series of options – the Normal option is the one most people use.

FINAL STEP

F

inally, Preview mode renders a view of the current stage object within the frame on the timeline. This mode is best used when you’re creating frame-by-frame animations, enabling you to see the animation in sequence. You can also use it when working with sound files to match animation events to sound events.

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ILLUSTRATION BY JASON ARBER www.pixelsurgeon.com

58 Computer Arts_February 2004

Tutorial

OPENTYPE FONTS

Y H P A R G O TYP S C N G I S E IN IND s CS and OpenType font n sig De In e ob Ad of n you The combinatio of typography. We show n offer ld or w w ne a to or do e opens th pairing ca of the new features this t os m e th e ak m to w ho

up and t launched, designers sat When InDesign was firs red offe lly fina t application tha took notice. Here was an all been ’d we trol con ic aph ogr the kind of advanced typ s a bit of a t version of InDesign wa screaming for. The firs pair of a ugh thro cle trea n r tha false start, being slowe formance per the two Adobe nailed tights, but with version rnative for alte l rea a e am bec tion problem and the applica XPress. designers tired of Quark ment to further Adobe’s commit InDesign CS refines still ents, em rov imp er er with some oth typography, and togeth arations sep w vie pre to lity abi , the such as interface tweaks work with port, is now a dream to and enhanced XML sup . out lay e pag for and the new standard n’s ce you to some of InDesig This tutorial will introdu styles and ted nes as h suc s, ture fea advanced typographic your poser, which will make the Adobe Paragraph Com pleasing. lly tica the aes and nal sio layouts look both profes esign, the try-out version of InD At the time of writing, is still at te, bsi We be’s Ado from available for download ed in the crib des s st of the feature version 2. However, mo d InDesign trie er nev ’ve you If . tutorial will work just fine ype fonts to lity to work with OpenT before, its amazing abi ce you. vin con t jus ht mig e typ produce great-looking [email protected],

s by Jason Arber, jaso INFO Artwork and word www.pixelsurgeon.com

ON THE CD There are no files to accompany this tutorial on the CD – just follow our 25 steps and get acquainted with InDesign’s superb typographic tools.

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^

INSIGHT

PART 1 TEXT IN INDESIGN Whether you’re a designer or illustrator, the typographic freedom offered by InDesign opens up brand new options for your artwork

LIGATURES MADE EASY Sometimes a sequence of characters – such as ffi – doesn’t look quite right when set on the page, requiring a ligature (two or more characters designed specifically to look more harmonious by becoming a single glyph). Before OpenType, ligatures came in ‘expert sets’, which used characters such as M to represent ffi, for example, consequently tripping up spell-checkers. OpenType, when used in conjunction with an OpenType-aware application, is smart enough to use ligatures yet still enable spell-checking. Best of all, it applies them automatically.

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InDesign usefully includes two methods of automatically kerning fonts. By default, it uses a typeface’s own metrics and kerning tables to determine the distance between pairs of letters. However, in the case of fonts with poor metrics, you can use InDesign’s Optical kerning (in the Character palette). This relies on its own excellent algorithms.

1

After firing up InDesign CS, create a new document (File>New>Document). The app provides a wealth of options – being able to set bleeds, for instance. You can also save Custom settings as presets for later reuse. InDesign has more OpenType tricks up its impressive sleeve. By opening up the Glyphs palette (Window>Glyphs), you have instant access to the full range of characters offered by OpenType fonts. These include alternate, special and accented characters, fractions and ornaments.

There are times, particularly if you’re setting headlines, when it’s necessary to manually override a font’s kerning. Place your cursor between the two characters you wish to kern, then, from the Kerning dropdown menu in the Character palette, select a value (or type in your own).

2

Create a new text box by clicking and dragging with the Text tool (it’s also possible to fill empty frames with text, no matter what tool you used to create it). Typing with an OpenType font, such as Minion Pro, supplied with InDesign CS, shows how any ligatures are automatically applied by default.

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The Glyph palette is extremely useful for inserting obscure characters and dingbats, and you can group together regularly used glyphs in user-defined Glyph Sets. To create these, simply choose New Glyph Set from the Glyph palette’s pop-out menu.

Adjusting the relative distances between characters over a range of characters, such as a line of text or a paragraph, is called tracking. Select the characters you want to track and, using the dropdown menu in the Character palette, make the changes – just as you did in Kerning.

3

You can turn on some of InDesign’s other OpenType features, such as Discretionary Ligatures and Swash characters, via the Character palette (Window>Character). From the pop-out, choose OpenType and select which features to turn on. The changes are instantly reflected in the type.

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InDesign can create outlines from selected type for further manipulation by the application. The process is simplicity itself: select the type you wish to convert and choose Create Outlines from the Type menu. This automatically creates the empty frames.

60 Computer Arts_February 2004

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT

WHAT IS OPENTYPE?

OpenType was jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft, with the aim of creating a truly cross-platform font format and an ability to support an expanded character set based on Unicode. OpenType also features advanced typographic controls, such as ligatures and alternate characters. Many font foundries, such as Linotype (www.linotype.com), are now following Adobe’s lead and converting their type families to the new OpenType standard.

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The empty frames offer limitless opportunities for creativity, such as filling the frame with a photograph or even with more text. To fill the converted type with an image, select the frame and choose Place from the File menu, navigate to an image, such as a TIFF or PDF, and click Open.

16

You can now save the changes you’ve made to the type as a paragraph style – and apply it to other paragraphs. This saves a lot of time if you want to make global changes in a long document. Select Paragraph Styles from the type menu, name your paragraph style and click OK.

13 11

You can further modify the converted text by adding a dropshadow from within InDesign. Select the frame and open the Drop Shadow dialog box (Object>Drop Shadow). There are plenty of variables to play around with, such as the Shadow Colour, Offset, Transparency mode and Blur amount. Drop shadows work on live text, too.

Should the mood take you, you can run text along a path – be it a circular frame or a path created using the Pen tool. Select the Type on a Path tool from the Tools palette, click on a path, then start typing or paste in text. You can still apply special effects to the type (Type>Type on a Path>Options), such as skewing it along the baseline.

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You can create as many such styles as you like – producing unique styles for the beginning of sections, for example. And if you base your new style on a previous one, when you make a change in the previous style it’s reflected in the new paragraph style. You can also specify what the next paragraph style should be, which is useful when importing text.

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Another effect that works on live text is the Transparency mode, accessed via the Transparency dialog box (Window>Transparency). The modes, such as Multiply, Screen and Difference, behave more like Illustrator’s Transparency settings, rather than Photoshop’s which are slightly different.

The budding InDesign typographer has the ability to fill empty frames with Placeholder text (also known as Lorem Ipsum and Greeking), which is vital for mocking-up designs before the final text turns up. Create some linked text frames and select Fill with Placeholder Text from the Type menu.

18

Character styles work in much the same way as paragraph styles, and are designed to provide local formatting within paragraphs. The Character Style palette is accessed via the Type menu. Changes can be saved from styled text or edited from within the Character Style palette itself.

15

You can style the text easily using both the Character and Paragraph palettes. Attributes such as typeface, weight, size, colour, leading, indents and space before or after the paragraph can be specified here. Type values in, select them from dropdown menus or adjust them incrementally using the small up and down arrows.

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^

INSIGHT

XPRESS VS INDESIGN

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Character styles also allow for n ‘ ested styles’ within paragraph styles. This means that you can apply a predefined sequence of character styles to the beginning of a paragraph. Suppose you want the first word of a paragraph to be italic and red, and the next two words to be blue and underlined, for instance – nested styles enable you to do this. Apply via the Drop Caps and Nested Styles option of the Paragraph styles dialog box.

In the early 90s, QuarkXPress was the last word in cutting-edge digital typography, which helped displace the industry leader at the time, Aldus (later Adobe) PageMaker, from its top position. Sadly, not much has changed with XPress since then, and while the world of typography moved on, Quark has added unnecessary bloat to XPress, such as the ability to create Web pages from XPress documents. From a typographic point of view, InDesign has the upper hand, with finer control over type and seamless support for OpenType.

23

InDesign supports a wide array of paragraph alignments. As well as the usual Right and Left aligned, Centred and Justified, with last line aligned left, InDesign also sports Justified with last line aligned right and centred, and the take-no-prisoners Justify All Lines option. You access all flavours of paragraph alignment via the Paragraph palette.

24 20

You apply nested styles using the Paragraph Styles palette, just like other paragraph styles. Click within a paragraph, or select several paragraphs, and click the name of the style you want to apply in the palette. By clicking [No paragraph style], the paragraph is divorced from its associated style, so that subsequent edits to the style won’t be reflected by that particular paragraph.

22

Optical Margin Alignment sets some characters, such as quotation marks, slightly outside the text column to provide a more visually pleasing effect than keeping everything within the frame borders, which can sometimes look wrong. It’s applied on a per-column basis from the Story palette, accessed from the Type menu.

The bad old days of Quark Passport are well and truly gone, because InDesign will support just about every language you can throw at it, including double-byte languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. InDesign also ships with dictionaries for most Western European languages, and a couple of obscure ones such as US legal and medical dictionaries (Edit>Dictionary).

FINAL STEP

T

his final layout shows many of InDesign’s advanced typographic tools put to use, such as OpenType and paragraph and character styles. However, our tutorial has only scratched the surface of what InDesign is capable of, and spending time with the application demonstrates that there really is no better application for setting type.

21

InDesign offers two composition methods: Adobe Paragraph Composer (the default) and Adobe Single-line Composer. Both methods evaluate possible breaks and choose the best method to do this. The advantage of the Paragraph Composer is that it looks at the whole paragraph, optimises accordingly and produces the best results. Change methods via the menu on the Paragraph palette.

^

INSIGHT YEARNING FOR KERNING

Kerning is the adjustment of the space between pairs of characters, which can be applied automatically using kerning tables in a font, or manually by a layout artist or designer. Kerning not only improves the legibility of text, but also the overall colour of the set type. Common pairs of characters that require kerning are To, Wa and Ye. Type set at larger sizes, such as headlines, often require tighter kerning than body text.

62 Computer Arts_February 2004

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Quick Tutorial Q&A

AFTER EFFECTS

SHORTCUTS The fastest way to animate an object is to use motion capture, where a real-world object provides the movement for your animation. Use the files in the After Effects shortcut folder on the CD to follow our hands-on Shortcut

W

henever you animate one layer over another, you want it to look as realistic – or at least as interesting – as possible. So why not take a tip from the Hollywood experts and use motion capture to make your effects look more daring and dramatic? When 3D animators want to recreate realistic human movement in an animated character – as seen in such movies as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within or The Lord Of The Rings – they often dress up an actor wearing a suit of reflective blobs and shoot them acting out the movement using a liveaction camera. The movement of the blobs is then translated into 3D motion data and applied to a 3D model. Every notable CG character, from Jar-Jar Binks to Gollum, has relied on this motion capture technique to some extent. It creates realistic animation that’s extremely difficult to simulate through keyframing alone. But did you know you can take advantage of it in After Effects, too? Imagine, for instance, that you want to create a moving handheld shot of a UFO tracking across the sky. Simulating the UFO’s movement with keyframing alone would take a lot of imagination and hours of experimentation. But by using footage of an aeroplane travelling through the sky, you can simply drop your UFO image on top and create all that realistic jitter and motion in moments, not hours. Check out the UFOlayer.mov on the coverdisc to see what we mean. First off, create a new project and composition, and the import UFOstill.tif and Plane.mov. Put the footage into the timeline, then shrink the UFO layer until it looks about the right size to work with. You may want to reduce the UFO’s size further towards the end of the project, but at this stage it’s easier to work with when it’s more visible.

Select the Plane layer, then go to Window>Tracker Control and click Track Motion to bring up the Plane layer. It takes a bit of know-how to move the tracking crosshairs and box here; the secret is to click in the space between the crosshairs and the dotted outline. Using this technique, drag the crosshairs and tracking boxes until the crosshairs are directly over the centre of the aeroplane. Now click the Track Forward button and, when the tracking is complete, click Apply. The UFOstill.tif is automatically selected as the default target and its motion now matches that of the aeroplane. You’ll need to remove the UFO picture’s black background by selecting the UFOstill layer, and choosing Effects>Keying>Colour Key. Use the Eyedropper to select black, and adjust the controls until the background disappears. Feathering will be particularly useful here, to create a soft look, and to remove the outer black without losing any of the UFO itself. Don’t get too carried away and lose the detail, though.

FOR SOME PROJECTS, YOU ONLY NEED THE TRACKING… YOU CAN THEN USE THIS DATA TO SHIFT BLOCKS OF TEXT OR NESTED IMAGES IN UNUSUAL WAYS

Open the Transform Properties for UFO still and drag over the Anchor Point (rather than Position) until the UFO is directly over the aeroplane in your original footage. If you now play the movie through, you’ll discover that the UFO always obscures the plane. Make sure you’ve checked the M (Motion Blurring) box for this layer.

To make the UFO blend in better, you might want to reduce its opacity. Doing so, however, would reveal the aeroplane. One solution is to clone sky over the aeroplane on the background layer – but this would be extremely time-consuming. A more effective solution is to duplicate the UFO, using the additional layer to adjust the look of the finished composite. Duplicate the UFOstill layer, set the Blending mode to Add and reduce the upper layer’s Opacity to about 70 per cent. The aeroplane is still hidden, but the UFO appears to be bathed in the hazy skylight.

For some projects, you only need to take the tracking data from the footage, not the footage itself. You can then use this information to, say, shift blocks of text or nested images in unusual ways. Track the data of speeding car and use that to move your text through a frame, for instance, and you’ll create a dramatic look that isn’t easy to achieve with keyframing. Regular, repeating motion, such as wheels and motors, can help you create particularly dazzling effects. Build up a library of footage with distinctive movement to apply as motion data. Just remember that to create an accurate track, one distinctive point needs to be clear throughout the shot. INFO Expertise supplied by Chris Kenworthy, [email protected]

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PROFILE

LA GRAPHICA NAME Jon Jackson EMAIL [email protected] WEBSITE www.lagraphica.com

LA designer Jon Jackson’s studio, La Graphica, boasts an enviable list of clients – Sony, Nike, Disney, Toyota and even Sanrio, the company behind Hello Kitty. Enviable fact number two: Jackson himself was hired to work at Disney straight out of design college. I“graduated on a Wednesday and started working for The Mouse the following Monday.” The designer’s artwork is clean and clever, drawing on contemporary styles but presenting them in an attractive and thought-provoking way. “ fter He now works at home, largely using Photoshop and Illustrator. A working for Disney, I realised cubicle culture wasn’t going to get me up in the morning. I’d rather work until the wee hours to free up my days so I can feel the Tuesday afternoon sun on my face on the tennis court… ” What is on your desktop?

I’m really into patterns right now, so I’ve been taking bits of various things that I’ve been working on and making patterns out of them. Which Websites do you visit most?

I usually end up at News Today (www.newstoday.com) at some point in my day, then bounce around from there. I also love to read music reviews, so I visit Pitchfork Media a lot (www.pitchforkmedia.com), too. What are you obsessed by?

Music. I don’t have enough time to listen to it, buy it or read about it. There’s been many a night where I finish work at about 2am, but end up going to bed at about 4am because I’ve stayed up reading about music! Name one brilliant illustrator/designer

Sweden Graphics (www.swedengraphics.com). 1 What are you working on now?

I’m doing a couple of sites for companies in my area, and also working on my own Website. A lot of people are interested in sending me designs and/or photography that they’ve done about LA, so I’m adding a section to put up other designers’ work, to add a bit more community. And if there’s any time left over, I try to get out and take some photographs. What’s your strangest client experience?

One time, a creative agency hired me and two other designers to work on a project. Their client was setting up an enterprise with his wife, and as the agency was funding it they were a little too involved. They wanted us to develop an illustrated identity based on fish as the brand idea, so the wife brought a book of fish and picked out the specimen that she thought looked like her husband, and asked us to base our illustrations on it. Ultimate ambition?

Never to go back to an office and work full-time again. Favourite city?

Los Angeles. However, I really enjoy San Francisco and New York. If you weren’t busy being a designer, what would you be doing now?

A product engineer. I like coming up with solutions for design problems. What keeps you awake at night?

If I don’t have TV or music on when I go to bed, my brain doesn’t shut off, and I’ll be up thinking about everything – from projects to how Burger King’s still in business when I don’t know anyone who eats there.

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Profile

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1. “This is part of Player’s guide to Los Angeles that I designed for Anthem Magazine.” 2. “I did this illustration for a gallery show that Nike put on, called Made in LA,” Jon Jackson explains. “The illustration was for a star map that I designed, which was handed out to guests who had good places to go, see, shop and eat in LA.” 3. This illustration for .net magazine accompanied a feature on cheap Web hosting. “In brainstorming, I was thinking about who would be the most frugal person around – hence the idea for the guy living on the ride, trying to get a hand-out.”

4. “I did this for a designer friend of mine who wanted to do a design battle. He starts the piece and I finish it. The illustration that he sent had made a reference to dollars and cents, so I took that concept and ran with it.” 5. “This is part of an eight-page one-colour layout that I did for ARKITIP. The whole concept was what you can see if you ride the subway in Los Angeles.” 6. “This was a fun piece I did for a magazine called Lit. It’s a small publication, and I decided that it’d be fun to do something that read like an ad, but for nothing that you’ve ever seen advertised before.”

Computer Arts_February 2004

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Tutorial

AFTER EFFECTS > FINAL CUT PRO > PHOTOSHOP

BRING YOUR STILLS TO LIFE With digital video, you have thousands of photographs at your fingertips. But how do you turn those moving pictures into quality still images? Here, we output footage from After Effects and Final Cut Pro, then rework it in Photoshop If you really want the highest-quality still images from your movies, then you need to take a still image camera along with you on the shoot and take pictures while filming. Although DV cameras have come a long way in image quality over the past decade, they are still outgunned by even mid-level digital still cameras, much less high-end digital or film cameras. However, taking a still camera with you on a shoot isn’t always possible or practical. Often, that perfect image was only captured on video – which is where this tutorial comes in. Fortunately Adobe After Effects and Apple Final Cut Pro enable you to export single frames of video as still images. That’s the easy part. The problem is that these images are low resolution when compared to those taken with still cameras. The answer, as you may have guessed, is Adobe Photoshop. We show you how to take your footage from After Effects or Final Cut Pro and create a superb still image in Photoshop. Discover how you can apply native filters to remove common video artifacts (such as interlacing lines and noise), make tonal adjustments to improve exposure problems, and then prepare the image for output back into video, on the Web, or for print. INFO Tutorial by Jason Cranford Teague ([email protected]). Original video footage by David Teague, and taken at Coney Island in Brooklyn New York. Learn more at www.webbedenvironments.com

ON THE CD Look in the Tutorial\Video folder for the files that accompany this tutorial. These files are for personal training purposes only, and are not to be reproduced elsewhere. For the After Effects demo, see www.adobe.co.uk or issue 91 of Computer Arts.

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INSIGHT

PART 1 THE STILL IMAGE Output a single image file for Photoshop in After Effects, or a series of stills in Final Cut Pro

THE RIGHT IMAGE

Try to pick images from footage where there is as little motion as possible. Avoid zooms, pans, or tracking shots, since these will have a lot of blurring between frames. Of course, if you are creating a sequence of shots, you may want some motion blur to indicate action, but trying to remove the blur from a video still in Photoshop is like trying to push back the waves. Instead, work with the ‘defect’ to make it appear more natural, or at least intentional.

6

Enter the base name Still_Image (numbers will be added to each image file name to differentiate them) and save the image. This will create Photoshop files, but unlike After Effects, these images will not have layers.

PART 2 CLEANING UP YOUR IMAGE

1

Open your video clip rocket_ship.mov (on the CD) in After Effects and choose the image you want to work with, placing the playhead over its frame in the timeline. It is important to choose a frame from your video with as little jitter from motion as possible.

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Choose File>Output>Using QuickTime Conversion and choose Series from the Format menu. If this is the first time you have output still images or you want to change your output options, click the Options button and follow the next step. If you are happy with the Output option, skip to step 6.

Choose Composition>Save Frame As>Photoshop Layers and save the image as Still_Image.psd.

Take the raw image and correct some of the most common video defects in Photoshop

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Open the file Still_Image.psd in Photoshop. You’ll find this in the Tutorial\Video folder on the CD.

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Choose Photoshop as your file format and then enter the number of frames you want to be created from each second of video you defined in step 3. So, if you set your In and Out points to last for 1 second, and you enter 8 here, 8 still images will be created as a result.

^

INSIGHT CORRECTING A SEQUENCE

3

Another way of capturing stills is to output sequential images using Final Cut Pro. Open your video clip merry_go_round.mov in the app’s Browser, move the playhead to the first frame you want to use, then press I to set the In Point. Move to the last frame you want to use in the series and press O. The more time between the In and Out points, the more frames you have to work with, but this doesn’t determine the exact number of images that will be generated.

70 Computer Arts_February 2004

The exact values you’ll need to use to correct a video still image will vary, often dramatically, from clip to clip. However, a sequence of images will most likely have almost identical tonal qualities. If you created a series of images, as shown from step 3, then you really only need to correct one image, taking careful notes of what you did, and then create a Photoshop action to correct the rest using the Batch command (File>Actions>Batch).

8

Check to make sure that Pixel Aspect Ratio correction (located in the View menu) is turned off and that the image is using Square pixels (Image>Pixel Aspect Ratio>Square). This way, you can edit the image natively using your monitor.

Tutorial

9

Depending on the quality of the camera that shot the original footage, the speed of the action, and the contrast in the image, you may need to apply Filter>Video>De-Interlace to remove the line artifacts created by interlaced video. You will need to test out which fields (even or odd) produce the best results when eliminated, but Interpolation invariably produces a cleaner results over duplication.

12

Next, look carefully at the highlights in your image, and then begin to gradually move the Highlight Amount slider to the right. You should see the colour in the lighter areas start to pop out with greater detail.

16

To reduce dramatic changes between shadows and highlights while making adjustments, set the Black and White Clip. Higher values reduce colour casts, but may also reduce detail in the image. Generally a value under .1 produces the best results.

13

Once you have adjusted the highlights, use the same technique to adjust the shadows in the image if required to bring out detail in darker areas. You will need to go back and forth between adjusting highlights and shadows until the balance is just right for the image.

17

At this point, your image should look better than the raw image. Save a copy of the results as Still_Image_Clean.psd and open the original to compare the two versions side by side at 100 per cent. If you don’t feel the image quality has improved, try working through the steps again, using more conservative changes.

10

Video images often include a lot noise that can be removed by applying Filter>Noise> Despeckle. However, this can also result in a slightly blurry image, so take a snapshot of the image in the History palette before applying the filter, so you can compare before and after.

14

While working with the highlights or shadows, if you start to notice the image getting duller, adjust the Tonal Width down to decrease the range of pixels affected. If you start to notice colour casting, adjust Radius Up slightly to compensate by increasing the area affected by changing pixels. If you do not see these sliders, make sure Show More Options is checked.

PART 3 PREPPING FOR VIDEO Change your Pixel Aspect Ratio and prepare for broadcast

11

One of the problems with many images brought in from video, especially those shot in natural lighting, is that they tend to be washed-out and have lost detail. Although your natural tendency might be to try the Unsharp Mask to bring some detail back, Photoshop CS introduces the more effective Shadow/Highlight Adjustment command (Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight) that offers greater control.

15

If the colours are too dull or too saturated after changes are made, adjust the Colour Correction and Midtone Contrast sliders. Although the amounts you’ll want to use for each of these will vary from image to image, try to keep the values between –5 to 5 – unless you are looking for an extreme effect, of course.

18

If you have made any further changes to the image, reopen the Still_Image_Clean.psd file that we created in step 17 and start a new Image using a video default. Brits and Europeans (even those using SECAM systems) will use the PAL settings; if you’re in North America, this will be one of the NTSC settings. If your final destination is Widescreen theatre, use Anamorphic.

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19

Using the Select tool (press V), drag the image from the Video_Stills_Clean into the new image. Depending on the original source size of the video, the image may not fit the entire area.

22

Save the file as Still_Image_Video.psd. You can now import this file into your favourite video-editing software. Although most video software can import a wide variety of formats, the advantage of using PSD is that it preserves the layers – this in turn enables you to manipulate them as separate video tracks.

24

Open the Save For Web dialog (File>Save For Web). If you are not familiar with creating photos for the Web, choose one of the JPEG options from the preset menu. Generally, you will want to keep the quality high, but don’t use the Progressive or Optimised options. Click Save when you’re done.

PART 4 PREPPING FOR THE WEB If your image is going on the Web, follow these steps

20

The image will now look stretched, as the computer monitor (using its square pixels) compensates for the non-square pixels. While you are editing your image, it is easier to work without this correction, so simply choose View>Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction to turn it off.

25

Save the image as Still_Image_Web.jpg. You can now use the HTML tag to embed this image into any Web page.

23

If you made any changes to the image, reopen the Still_Image_Clean.psd file created in step 17 and then resize the image (Image>Image Size), without changing the image’s resolution from 72dpi. Make sure that Resample Image is checked, and then experiment with different image sizes, starting with 50 per cent (360 pixels wide).

PART 5 PREPPING FOR PRINT If you’re planning to print your still image, you’ll need to resize and sharpen it

21

INSIGHT

^

Edit the image as needed, adding any text or other elements. If you are working in North America or anywhere using NTSC broadcast, you will also want to apply Filter>Video>NTSC Colours as your last step before saving, to ensure that all your colours are broadcast-safe. You will also need to rasterise all text and effects before saving if you want them to show up in the video.

BYTE ORDER?

Different computers use different conventions for ordering the bytes used to record a particular pixel. Macs will put the important information at the beginning of the bit (this is called ‘big-endian’), while PCs put it at the end (called ‘little-endian’). Generally, most graphics software can translate back and forth without a blip, but if you run into cross-platform problems with your images, this could be the cause. To correct the problem, simply resave the image using the target machine’s byte order.

72 Computer Arts_February 2004

26

Again, If you made any changes to the image, reopen the Still_Image_Clean.psd file created in step 17 and then resize the image (Image>Image Size). Unlike resizing for the Web, for print you have to change the image’s resolution. First, uncheck the Resample Image option and set the Resolution to 300 pixels/in (you can get away with as low as 240ppi).

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT SMALLER IS BETTER

If your final output medium is the screen (Web or video), reducing the image dimensions while keeping the resolution at 72dpi can radically improve the quality of the image, and it can also reduce the image’s file size – meaning faster downloads over the Internet and happier viewers.

VIDEO DEFECTS

27

Notice that the width and height have been automatically reduced proportionally to 2.133 by 1.6 inches. If you need a larger image, check the Resample Image option (make sure it is set for Bicubic Sharper) and enter the new width or height.

One sneaky way to overcome defects in a video still – blur, noise, lack of sharpness and so on – is to simply work with the defects, using filters to exaggerate or cover them with effects. In the final step, you added faux-scan lines. This not only introduces an interesting design element, but also helps cover any residual artifacts from the original interlacing in the image.

31

Convert to CMYK Colour Mode (Image> Mode>CMYK Colour), keeping a careful eye on those areas that are out of gamut. If you notice a significant colour shift, undo the Colour mode change and work with Image Adjustments to smooth the colours out. Of course, if your printer can accept images using Lab colour, it’s best to avoid another Colour mode change, but you may not have a choice.

32 28

Now you are ready to sharpen the image for print. Rather than sharpening the entire image, change the Image Colour mode to Lab Colour (Image>Mode>Lab Colour) and then select the Lightness channel in the Channels palette.

30

Take a look at the Gamut Warning to see which colours are going to have to be shifted when converting to CMYK (View>Gamut Warning). If a significant portion of the image pixels are out of gamut (indicated by turning the pixels grey), you may want to consider additional image adjustments to bring the colours in-line.

Save your final image in TIFF format as Still_Image_Print.tif. You will want to apply LZW compression (this reduces the file size without reducing image quality), but the byte order really doesn’t make much difference because most software that can read a TIFF in either order.

FINAL STEP

T

o bring the image full circle, you can add fauxscan lines to highlight its video origins. First revert back to the Still_Image_Clean.psd file and duplicate the background layer. Apply a Line Halftone Pattern to the duplicate layer (Filter>Sketch>Halftone Pattern) with a size of 2 and contrast of 50. Change the layer’s Blending Mode to Soft Light and reduce opacity to 50 per cent. Save the file as Video_Still_Final.psd.

29

Apply the Unsharp Mask (Filter>Sharpen> Unsharp Mask) to the Lightness channel, which contains all of the structural data about the image, and leave the colours in channels A and B untouched. Pump up the Amount of Sharpness to 200 per cent, but keep the Radius around 2.5 and the Threshold at around 5. This will apply a lot of sharpness to high-contrast edges in the image.

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Q&A

3DS MAX

SHORTCUTS Flame, fire, plasma, and other pyrotechnics aren’t traditionally the preserve of 3ds max, but for our images of the Galileo spacecraft’s final descent into the planet Jupiter, they proved essential

craft, describing the shape of the glow that we’ll eventually place there. The second light is placed above the craft. This fill light is much dimmer, just giving some definition to the probe so that it’s not simply a black shadow. Both lights need to be set to exclude the planet, which must be lit as a completely separate scene. This avoids not only light (and shadow) falling from one object to the other, but also hides the fact that the scale and distance between the two objects are completely unrealistic. At this stage, a render reveals everything in its place. The planet works, the satellite works. The lighting is correct.

object channel, and we set the filter type to Brightness instead of Edge. The glow will then affect just the brightest part of the object (the well-lit underside). The flames are made smaller, and the colour gradient is set to a hotter, more intense yellow.

The second image is even more extreme – the spacecraft is shown plunging into an inferno. For this picture, we removed the planet and instead created a standard max fire object. The settings for this enable you to set the size, detail and colour of the flames. The result is less than realistic, as you can see.

F

ire is one of 3ds max’s weak points. You can’t do the kind of volumetric flame and smoke effects that work so well in LightWave, and Discreet seems to have forgotten about pyrotechnic effects, not adding any updates at all to the systems that create them in the last couple of releases. Some excellent plug-ins are available, but it’s still possible to get highly effective results out of the basic package if you know where to look. For this image (shown above), the brief was to create illustrations for a news item on the last few minutes of the space-probe Galileo, as it burned up in the atmosphere of Jupiter. With the stage set, and the models for the probe and planet created, the first stage of the fire effect is to light the scene. The probe is lit with two lamps. The first, a very bright light, is placed directly under the probe to simulate the heat generated by entry to the atmosphere. This yellow light is given a multiplier of 6x – in other words, six times brighter than normal. A little experimentation is needed to ensure that the light is correctly placed. It needs to bleach out the underside of the

SOME EXCELLENT PLUG-INS ARE AVAILABLE, BUT IT’S STILL POSSIBLE TO GET EFFECTIVE RESULTS OUT OF THE BASIC PACKAGE IF YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK

What the image is lacking is any flame. This is where Video Post comes in. We add a scene event, followed by an image filter effect, choosing Lens Effects Glow as the effect type. We now go back to the scene and right-click on the planet, select Properties, and give the object an individual g-buffer object channel number. We do the same with the spacecraft, giving that a different number. Opening the Glow filter setup, and turning on Preview and VP queue, we get a render of our scene in which the glow can be seen as we adjust it. In the Glow Properties tab, we set the glow to just affect the object channel we’ve given to the planet. In the filter section below this, we select the Edge option so that the glow forms a halo around the planet. (Note that using the Perimeter option instead puts the glow behind the planet rather than in front of it – another dramatic effect.) In the Preferences tab, we set the size of the glow, and specify the Gradient option; this enable us to use the Gradient tab to set the colour of our glow. We set up a gradient with reds and yellows, and then switch to the final Inferno tab to set up tendrils of flame. Finally, we go back to the Video Post stack and add another glow effect. This time we set it to affect only the spacecraft’s

However, if we apply our Glow – not to an individual object channel this time, but to the brightest pixels in the image (the fire and the underside of the craft), we get a quite acceptable combustion – again, this is shown above. You can clearly see the difference between these two effects. One unfortunate aspect of 3ds max’s Video Post filters is that they’re sometimes pixel-based. This means that when you change the resolution of your render, the effect sometimes changes. This is intensely irritating, but you just have to work around it. For more advanced fire effects, try applying a Glow to a particle system – particularly a meatball one. If you make the particles themselves transparent, you can control the glow with their shapes without ever seeing their harsh edges. INFO Expertise supplied by Christian Darkin, [email protected]

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REVIEWS ★★★★★

OUR FIVE-STAR RATING EXPLAINED For a piece of software or hardware to make it into Computer Arts’ reviews section, it has to reach a certain standard. Truly dire products will be ignored, which is why you’ll rarely see one-star ratings. Our reviewers are experts in their own fields. We assess tools from the viewpoint of the professional designer. Does the product do what it’s meant to do? Is the interface clean? Is it quick, reliable and useful? And is it good value? Computer Arts Recommended awards are only given to products that are particularly good value, or truly excel in what they do.

SOFTWARE

LightWave 8 P78 Boris FX 7 P80 Edit Studio 4 P83 Silo 3D P84 Ulead DVD Workshop 2 P85 HARDWARE

HP Deskjet 9670 P86 Iomega USB 2.0 CD-RW P87 USB Instant DVD P87 HP Scanjet 4600 P88 Radeon 9800 Mac Edition P88 BOOKS

Photoshop Secrets of the Pros P92 Exposé 1 Toon Art GROUP TEST

CHARACTER ANIMATION TOOLS P94 Messiah:animate 4 Character studio 4 Motionbuilder 5 Life Forms Studio 4 Poser 5

LightWave has become one of the world’s favourite 3D tools, with one of the most recognised renderers in the industry. But since NewTek previewed version 8 at SIGGRAPH 2003, precious few details have been released. Now all that’s about to change – check out our exclusive world preview over the page and see what you think. As well as LightWave 8, 2004 brings us a new iteration of Boris FX, a tool that’s become a motion graphics favourite among video editors. Also rearing its head is EditStudio 4, a video-editing application that provides great value for money. We also put littleknown 3D app Silo to the test. See what it can do for your 3D artwork on page 84. Hardware-wise, we have a gaggle of peripherals on test, including an interesting MPEG-encoding box, an HP scanner that looks like a picture frame, a rather shaky Iomega CD-RW, and a big and beautiful HP printer. There’s also the usual selection of new gadgets in Creative Stuff. Next issue, we’ll be bringing you an exclusive beta preview of Director MX 2004, so don’t miss it (turn to page 10 for the latest news). Until next time! Robert Carney Deputy Editor [email protected]

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PREVIEW

LIGHTWAVE 3D 8

PC AND MAC

£699

3D Brand new bones and dynamics systems make LightWave 8 a force to be reckoned with CONTACT NewTek Buy online (shipping date TBC) www.newtek.com

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

SYSTEM PC/MAC System requirements yet to be released – more details to follow in the in-depth CA review soon

VERDICT LightWave 8 is a very focused upgrade. There will be a few enhancements to the modelling software, a couple of tweaks to the interface and some additional plug-ins. However, the new bones and dynamics upgrades are clever choices, and will keep the package competitive for a while yet. The features aren’t show-stopping, but at £699, the price is.

The new IK system is quick to set up and easy to use. The ability to cut and paste bone settings speeds up the process considerably.

L

ightWave has always been one of the top 3D modelling and animation packages around. Its pedigree stretches right back to the days when the Amiga was the computer of choice for the graphics professional. But while the rest of the industry has been frantically releasing new versions to keep up with user demand for more innovative and exciting features, LightWave hasn’t been updated for nearly two years – until now. The programming team for version 8 has some new blood in it, and programmers who’ve worked on third-party plug-ins to the package in the past have now been brought into the fold (along with their technology). Half of the original team are gone, working on a new 3D project that won’t see the light of day for some time yet. In the meantime, many things in the industry have changed – and many things have stayed the same… So what hasn’t changed? Well, nobody’s come up with anything to match LightWave’s volumetric smoke and fire effects. And none of the other packages have added new fur generators or a 196-bit renderer. Modelling technology has also hit a bit of a full-stop, with modelling features merely refined and improved over the last few years. Nevertheless, significant improvements have been

78 Computer Arts_February 2004

made. Dynamics is now an essential technology for all 3D apps; soft objects, such as cloth, rubber and flesh, have been set in motion; collisions between rigid objects are now robustly handled by all LightWave’s competitors… 3ds max boasts a top-quality rendering engine in the form of mental ray, too, giving it the ability to produce photoreal scenes. Meanwhile, combustion has established itself on a par with After Effects, and its strong integration with max has made the two packages difficult to resist. Maya hasn’t stood still either. Its character animation tools continue to race ahead, thanks to an excellent bones system. The app also boasts clever dynamics which are even capable of modelling liquids in motion. Despite such progress, LightWave remains surprisingly competitive overall, although clearly there’s much pressure on v8 to perform. So LightWave’s new team has taken a long look at the competition and focused its energies on two main areas of the package: dynamics and bones.

STRONG BONES On the bones side, NewTek has completely rewritten the IK system. It’s now much stronger. You can quickly create bones structures and produce relationships between the bones, deciding where IK chains start and end, setting

Review

FEATURES • 3D modelling tools • Comprehensive animation features • New bones system • New dynamics • 196-bit renderer • HDRI global lighting • Volumetric combustion effects • Fur generator

With the new Scene Editor, you can cut and paste keyframes anywhere in time, as well as on different objects or attributes.

LightWave is still the only package with a 196-bit rendering engine and HDRI lighting. The photorealistic results speak for themselves.

angles of limitation and stiffness for each bone very easily, and mixing forward and inverse kinematics seamlessly over your skeleton. You can then copy settings from one bone to another instantly, so that once you’ve set up the joints for one arm or leg, you can paste them over to the other leg without fuss. You can even save and load a skeleton, so that once you’ve created a well-balanced character rig, you can use it again. Once you’ve placed a bone, you can split it instantly into as many new bones as you like, and they’ll retain their relationships to everything else. So, for instance, if halfway through a job you realise you need to put some expression into a character’s fingers, you can turn one finger bone into three joints without having to rejig the whole character. In fact, LightWave 8 will ship with 1.2GB of content, including 30-40 character models and dozens of bones rigs pre-designed and balanced for a range of characters. Models and scenes, as well as examples of how pros have produced complex effects, will also be included. Skinning characters so that bones and skin move appropriately with each other has always been a difficult

job, and each 3D app or character animation program has brought its own set of tools to try to make life easier. Nothing has yet solved the problem fully, but LightWave 8 uses vertex painting as a starting point. The package can guess from the bones and the mesh the weighting of the model; you can then clean up using paint tools. LightWave’s new dynamics tools are equally impressive. Soft and hard body dynamics are supported, with wobbling and rippling effects, as well as simple collisions. Particles can be given weights in dynamics, too, so they can be made to impact on soft or hard objects – opening the way for bullet impacts on clothing, water pushing objects downstream, and meteors bouncing off the hulls of spacecraft. Cloth can be sewn and unsewn, so you can create fabric which tears or unzips as part of an animation. You can also apply dynamics to bones and adjust their springiness, resistance and viscosity. Hit a character with an object and they’ll reel backwards, then recover (or fall to the floor), depending on your settings.

NON-LINEAR EDITING LightWave 8’s Scene Editor LightWave’s Scene Editor is expanding to become a fully functional non-linear animation editor. In other words, you can use it to select blocks of keyframes, and cut and paste them around to other times, other attributes, even other objects. If you’re animating a bouncing ball, you only need to keyframe one bounce, then you can copy it again and again. If you’re trying to make animations of several objects, or even different attributes work in sync, you can do that,

too. With non-linear editing, animating complex sequences becomes a matter of dropping in and moving around the motions that make up the sequence. LightWave’s Scene Editor isn’t designed as a character tool (there’s a separate non-linear editor for pure character animation). However, it’s an interesting and useful device for animators working on long sequences or reusing the same animation moves time and time again.

The new IK system enables you to copy settings of bones from one to another, so configuring a complex rig is much easier.

You can sew and unsew cloth. Here, by animating an object through the material, it appears to tear or unzip.

BARGAIN TOOL All of these tools give LightWave users a lot to shout about. You can now do things you could only ever do before with plug-ins, and character animation is far quicker and more robust. If you’re thinking of switching apps, the case for LightWave is definitely stronger than ever. That said, there’s little that users of 3ds max, Maya and Softimage will see in the new LightWave as being genuinely innovative. It’s a step forward for LightWave itself, but not a great leap for the industry. For that, users will have to wait for version 9, which promises a lot more. However, one thing many designers will be pleased about is the app’s new price. Pricing in the 3D market seems to have become a little arbitrary of late. At the top end, Softimage charges up to £6000; at the bottom, LightWave now costs around £700. The other packages are sprinkled between the two. With such a price range, you’d expect a vast discrepancy in features – but you won’t find one. The tools in LightWave compare favourably with those of its more expensive competitors, and although some packages are more focused towards other areas of the industry, and each has its own unique abilities, there’s nothing in any of the products that justifies such a massive price differential. To put it in perspective, LightWave 8 will be so cheap that you’ll be able to afford it and NewTek’s video postproduction suite, Video Toaster, for about the same price as 3ds max. Thought that would get your attention…

Bones can have dynamic reactions. In this example, a character is hit by a giant fist; he is forced back by the blow, but eventually recovers.

Particles can be involved in the dynamic calculations, too. Here, a flag is being bombarded by particles, which bounce off it, creating ripples in the fabric. All images © Darkside Animation

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BORIS FX 7

PC AND MAC £198

SPECIAL FX We test the tool that’s more than a set of filters but less than a full effects package CONTACT Planet PC 01274 713 400 www.borisfx.com

SYSTEM PC 512MB RAM • 200MB HD space • Win 2000/XP • 32MB VRAM graphics card MAC 512MB RAM • 200MB HD space • OS X 10.2.6+ • 32MB VRAM graphics card

FOR Inexpensive keying and effects Some great filters for the price ● A good introduction to visual effects work ● ●

AGAINST Limited control of splines and mattes ● No intersecting 3D layers ● Some fiddly controls ●

VERDICT

★★★ Boris FX is a great introduction to simple video effects, straight from the timeline, but if you already own After Effects, then Boris Continuum Complete might be a better choice. For the price, FX 7 is good value – as long as you don’t think you’re getting something equivalent to After Effects.

B

oris FX is a relatively inexpensive effects package, which can be used directly from your non-linearediting timeline. Combining 3D layers with a good range of filters, it’s widely used by pro-sumer editors looking for a few reasonable effects. There are two standard approaches to simple effects work. You can apply a filter in the timeline, or export your footage to another application to finish the effects work. Boris FX does a little of both; you apply FX as a filter, and then click the filter to make the Boris User Interface appear. This is far quicker than exporting to After Effects. When

features of the whole package. Light Zoom (see boxout) is superb, while Film Grain is surprisingly good. Although just about every application has some way to simulate film grain, the lower-end filters do nothing more than mess up your image. Thankfully, Boris FX 7, although simple compared to many grain applications that are on the market, creates a good, smooth grain with a rapid render time. It won’t create a f‘ilm-look’, but it will add the required graining to DV and CGI layers. Z-blur is a useful way of adding realistic depth blurring, but the Spiral and Radial blurs are nothing that you won’t have seen elsewhere. The Wire Removal tool is simple, too, and almost as good as anything OPENGL HARDWARE ACCELERATION IS AN you’ll find in more advanced software, should EXCITING ADDITION TO BORIS FX, VASTLY you happen to shoot any stunts or models where REDUCING PREVIEW AND RENDER TIMES wires are used for support. OpenGL hardware acceleration is an exciting you’ve done your effects work, simply click Apply and new addition to Boris FX 7.0, vastly reducing preview you’re taken straight back to your timeline to see the and render times. The only problem is that render times finished results. It’s that simple. are wildly unpredictable, with some filters and effects As with many filter-based packages, you can’t help but rendering almost instantly, while others are incredibly feel that there’s a lot of excess baggage here. The colour slow, even on the fastest machines. If you were working correction tools, for instance, are so basic that whether on a paid job, with a tight deadline, that might not be the you’re using After Effects or Final Cut Pro as your host most comfortable feeling. application, you’d never need to use the ones in Boris FX 7. USEFUL FX? Having said that, the keying filters are better than those in Perhaps the most overrated aspect of Boris FX is the Final Cut Pro, and for beginners they may be easier than Natural Media Generator, which enables you to create such After Effects. You can pull and perfect mattes from DV naturalistic effects as marble, wood grain, fractals and footage quickly and without noticeable artifacts. For some reptilian skin. In truly creative hands, combined with other users, this will justify the outlay. filters and effects, these generators may be reasonably Despite the unnecessary extras in the filter department, useful, but they still look quite cheap and artificial. If you the new filters added to this release are some of the best

The ability to control light and shadow makes this pseudo-3D effect appear more realistic, and can help with more complex 3D composites, too.

80 Computer Arts_February 2004

Review

FEATURES

LIGHT ZOOM The best filter in Boris FX, bar none

Fire was a breakthrough filter when first introduced to Boris FX, but now it’s beginning to look a little tired and unrealistic.

There are many ways to make light rays, but Boris FX’s Light Zoom is one of the best. Although you can create similar effects with some clever After Effects toggling, or by buying standalone filters, Light Zoom has a professional look, feel and speed that trashes the competition. Whereas some ‘light rays’ filters tend to just add big blurs, Light Zoom creates the impression of real beams of light in 3D space. This works particularly well with ‘contrasty’ footage, creating the effect of hazy

atmosphere; it’s the sort of effect that would cost a lot of time and effort on set. Now you can create that look in post in no time at all. The light beams look particularly good when objects move in front of them; they shift angles and direction realistically, appearing to wrap and flow around objects. To get the most out of this filter, you’ll need to use After Effects to mask off foreground areas that need to remain free of light, but many shots work without this extra effort.

• OpenGL hardware acceleration • Faster renders • Over 20 new filters, including Light Zoom, Film Grain, Spiral, Radial and Z-Blur • Hundreds of new customisable animation presets for Natural Media • Vector Paint tools for advanced masking and compositing • Vector Spline editing for rotoscoping and masks • Spline Primitives, such as heart, wedge and grid shapes • Enhanced workflow • Motion Blur for all shapes • Animated gradients

3D shapes and layers are easy to control and illuminate, although they don’t intersect or interact with each other as fully as you’d hope.

really want to use natural media, get some stock footage or take your DV camera outside and shoot a tree. The new Vector Paint tools are unlikely to be useful for actual animation, but can help with masking and compositing. You can, for example, draw a shape around a human figure, and animate this as the character moves, to create a garbage matte. When you’re in a rush and need to create a shape without going to Adobe Illustrator first, Boris FX enables you to automatically create spline primitives such as hearts, wedges and grids. These vector splines can be animated to create masks and for basic rotoscoping. A welcome improvement is the ability to apply Motion Blur to all layers and shapes, which brings Boris FX into line with more elaborate effects applications. Again, the animated gradients are welcome, although hardly unique. 3D layers are quick to animate and look good, although Boris FX doesn’t create true 3D – your 3D objects won’t fly around each other or intersect. Effectively, it’s an illusion, although this may be good enough for some users. Nifty shortcuts, such as the ability to fly the faces of a cube away from each other, are also useful. It’s easy to put different video into each face, and the whole approach is far easier than in most 3D applications. The downside, of course, is that the 3D is quite limited, and you’ll quickly become frustrated when you want to create particular effects and discover that they’re beyond the scope of FX. The Boris FX user-interface is puzzling at first, too, although keyframes are clearly visible and easy to control. Shortcut buttons are minute and often difficult to use, but they remain on screen the whole time. By contrast, the Tool palette floats around, almost getting in the way. It would be good if things were the other way around.

BUYING DECISIONS Boris produces a wide range of effects applications, but unfortunately they tend to overlap in terms of functionality. Many of the Boris Continuum Complete filters are available

Film Grain is subtle, smooth and pleasingly quick to render. It’s useful when adding grain to DV footage or CGI elements.

The Light Zoom filter works particularly well with ‘contrasty’ images, creating the impression of real 3D backlighting.

in Boris FX, for instance. Similarly, when you’ve used Boris Red, you realise that FX 7 is virtually a dumbed-down version of the more advanced software. One way of looking at this is to say that Boris FX offers you a cheap way into effects work – and that you can always upgrade. The other way of looking at it is to say that when you go to the Boris Website, it’s difficult to know which app to buy, because they all appear similar, and no one app has quite everything you need. Boris FX has some good features, sure, but it’s basic when compared to its big brother Red 3GL, and a long way off from the sophistication of After Effects 6.0. Although there’s nothing particularly wrong about FX 7, it may be too basic for many professionals. If you want good filters, you may as well buy Boris Continuum Complete, and if you want to do advanced titling and effects, then you’ll need Red 3GL (or something similar). However, if you’re new to effects and want to add some extra touches to your footage from the timeline, without having to learn the advanced workings of After Effects, then Boris FX 7 is a good way to learn the ropes. If you want to do a lot of compositing, then go for a compositing application such as After Effects. If you’re keen to experiment with lots of filter effects, then try Boris Continuum Complete. If, however, you want a good introduction to effects, with some fabulous filters thrown in, Boris FX is good value for money.

Spline primitives can be created with a click, then quickly lit and coloured in the 3D environment.

Vector spline editing enables you to drag and reshape your splines, so that they can be used as animated garbage mattes.

Animated gradients are easy to generate and control. You can also manipulate them in 3D.

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Review

EDITSTUDIO 4

PC £59

DV The latest incarnation of Pure Motion’s budget video-editing app is fantastic value for money CONTACT Pure Motion Buy online www.puremotion.com

SYSTEM PC Pentium 500 • 128MB RAM • 4GB HD space • Win 98 SE/ME/2000/XP

FEATURES • Non-linear editing toolset • Unlimited tracks or l‘ayers’ • Keyframable effects • Keyframable titles • Title styles • Keyframable effect r‘ egions’ or selections • Optional MPEG encoding

FOR • Easy to use • Powerful • Great value

AGAINST • A little buggy • No import multiple files

VERDICT

★★★★★ EditStudio 4 is a fantastic editing tool at a very low price. Sure, you don’t have the bells and whistles of Avid, FCP or Premiere Pro, but for simple cuts, titles and effects, this is the best you’ll get for your cash.

The EditStudio interface will be familiar to anyone involved in video editing, and is also friendly enough for beginners to get to grips with.

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ditStudio from Pure Motion is one of those tools that sits in the background, not trying too hard to outdo its competitors in terms of features, but one that shouts value as loudly as it can. Those after a truly high-end video app, look away now, but those after an entry-level tool that brings a wealth of non-linear features at a price that is quite incredible, read on. EditStudio 4 brings a host of new features to the budget NLE, making it a more complete tool. For instance, the application now includes keyframe editing. This will be familiar to those involved in the video industry, as all industry-standard apps have this feature. However, EditStudio is the only program in this price bracket to offer keyframe editing. Keyframes enable you to animate a picture-in-picture effect, edit other effects over time, and animate titles and text. The workflow of the app has also been focused on, with the Preview window giving instant feedback on effects, picture-in-picture placement and titles. On the subject of titles, this is one of the areas where EditStudio has been seriously improved. Text now takes advantage of the keyframing tools in the app – meaning you can keyframe text motion for titles and the like. Text motion is automatically updated in the Preview window as you adjust keyframes, so you get a real-time idea of how your titles will appear. There are a number of title presets you can add to your video, and updating the font, colour, placement and so on is a simple affair. Title fills are neat, enabling you to add solid, gradient or bitmap fills to titles. Fill styles provide easy access to this feature. The timeline works like any other NLE, although the terms are more suited to the beginner; effects, titles and other elements that are applied on top of a clip are called t‘oppings’, and instead of tracks, you deal with l‘ayers’. Transitions are still called transitions, thankfully, and are easily applied and previewed (in real-time, depending on your CPU) in the Preview window. Also new to EditStudio 4 is what Pure Motion calls R ‘ egioning’. This is the ability to select part of a clip and

apply an effect to it, and then keyframe the region. It’s certainly handy for disguising moving objects in footage or hiding the identity of a shady character. Finally, EditStudio now has the ability to preview your editing on an external DV monitor. There’s an improved MPEG encoder, too (see the boxout below), enabling you to encode footage ready for DVD authoring applications – although this will cost you an extra £20. Under Win XP, we found the app a little buggy, quitting out when anything too processor-intensive was played back in the Preview window. That said, it’s snappy enough for most video-editing tasks. It would just be nice to be able to import multiple files. On the PC platform, you won’t find a better NLE for the same price as this tool.

MPEG XS Introducing Pure Motion’s own MPEG-encoding program Although EditStudio 4 doesn’t ship with MPEG XS as standard, it’s a worthwhile investment for anyone wanting to encode their footage into either MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files, ready for dropping into a DVD authoring app. The add-on will cost you £20, but plugs directly into EditStudio, making encoding as easy as possible. After editing your footage, you simply use the Build section of the Task menu to output to DVD. The app then guides you through the process of exporting your footage. There are a number of video-standard presets, or you can specify your own settings based on your desired output quality. You can then preview the clip before you export. The quality of clips produced is great, rivalling many pro-priced encoding tools. Fantastic value at £20.

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SILO

PC $109 (£63)

3D Is this new, affordable and easy-to-use 3D program worth a look? We put it to the test CONTACT Nevercenter Buy online www.nevercenter.com

FEATURES Polygon modelling Subdivision surface modelling ● Customisable interface ● Partial subdivisions for creased edges ● Simple light rigging ● ●

SYSTEM PC 400MHz CPU • 128MB RAM • 10MB HD space • Win 2000+ • Two-button mouse

FOR Easy to learn Intuitive modelling style ● Great interface ● ●

AGAINST ● ●

Occasional instability Selections not part of Undo list

VERDICT

★★★★ Silo is good value for money, offering professional modelling tools for a fraction of their usual price. However, if you want to animate, texture or render your scenes, you’ll probably need to buy other software, so think carefully about what you need.

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uyers of 3D graphics programs are often faced with a simple choice: cheap or good – the general consensus being the better the app, the more expensive its R&D and thus the higher its street price. Silo manages to avoid this problem by specialising in polygonal modelling, a clever streamlining move that makes it an ideal first step into 3D. Thanks to its focused approach, Silo is certainly a smooth package to use. The controls and shortcuts are similar enough to the major packages’ to be instantly recognisable, while the interface is clear and uncluttered. The problem with most lower-end 3D software is that it’s often hard to get to grips with your model because the interface gets in the way; this isn’t the case with Silo. It’s easy to get the hang of and – once you know the shortcuts – turns out to be a highly responsive tool. Your options are limited to polygon modelling, as the subdivision surfaces are not directly editable or exportable. Instead, Silo uses a polygon proxy to control your subdivision surfaces, which is a little disappointing. However, the subdivision surfaces are smooth and well implemented, giving you access to all the organic shapes you could ever want, but with the logical ease of polygon modelling. Although an experienced modeller will quickly find fault with Silo, citing a lack of variety in the toolset, there’s actually not much missing. For the novice, this is a good thing, leaving you free to master the skills that you can later build upon with more complex tools. The crucial thing here is that the tools you learn are similar to the ones you’ll encounter if you move to one of the high-end packages. It’s a smart move by Nevercenter. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t come with its own rendering module. Still, you can easily fix this deficit with the likes of POVRAY (which is free), or with any other thirdparty renderer. To accommodate this, Silo exports to most of the major formats, including DXF, OBJ and 3DS, but until you actually have a renderer, you can’t see exactly how your hard work is going to turn out. This brings us to the next problem: UVs. These pinpoint areas on a surface for textures to map. There are one or two

automatic UV layout commands in Silo, but these have unpredictable results, so you’re left with no way to ensure that textures will map correctly to your models. You could, of course, export to an app which supports UV mapping, or spend time pushing and pulling UVs directly on your model, but both of these are self-defeating. Once decent UV mapping is added to Silo, it will be a great piece of software. Silo doesn’t do much else, but it does model well – much better than its low price-tag would suggest, in fact. It may be cheap, but it’s efficient with it and boasts a good selection of well implemented tools, too. It’s ideal for those thinking of getting into 3D modelling, but who lack the budget for a high-end package. Be warned, though: it remains a little unstable and lacks the kind of functionality you’d expect from a full 3D package. ■

You can generate very complex subdivision surfaces in Silo, but you need to convert your model back to polygons if you want to export it.

The Silo modelling paradigm will be familiar to anyone who’s used any of the high-end 3D graphics packages currently available.

THE INTERFACE Customise your interface with simple-to-operate ‘button pages’ Unlike most 3D applications, with Silo there’s no plethora of toolboxes and menus to worry about. The basic set-up comes with one floating menu, consisting of several simple command buttons – a ‘button page’. This is a series of menus that you can tab through, and replace the menus at the top of the window. Silo also enables you to create your own custom buttons – and, from these, custom button pages. If you often use the same set of commands, you can make your own button in the Button Settings panel, then add this to your custom page. While button pages are the key method for customising the interface, changing the keyboard shortcuts to suit your taste is just as simple. Aimed at those with an established working pattern, this could be a valuable feature.

Review

PREVIEW

DVD WORKSHOP 2

PC

£299

DVD Ulead’s latest DVD authoring application takes on its more established competitors CONTACT Ulead Buy online www.ulead.com

FEATURES • DVD authoring toolset • Menu templates/creation • Tab-based workflow • Author to DVD, DVD-9, DLT, VCD and SVCD • Real-time motion menus • Button, Menu and Video library • Native import of layered PSD files

SYSTEM PC Pentium III 800+ • 128MB RAM • 500MB HD • Win XP/2000

VERDICT DVD Workshop 2 is a decent DVD authoring tool that makes it easy for those not so adept with the medium to get started quickly. Pros will appreciate the ability to output to DVD-9 and Digital Linear Tape.

Ulead’s DVD authoring solution may not be specifically orientated towards professionals – but it certainly boasts some pro-level features.

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he world of DVD authoring tools is growing by the day. Ulead DVD Workshop 2 is the latest, following in the footsteps of Adobe’s Encore DVD and Apple’s DVD Studio Pro 2. It’s a bit of an underdog really, considering the competition, but on face value it seems impressive for the £299 price tag. The first thing you notice is the simple interface, which gives the app a rather low-end feel; professionals will no doubt cringe a little at the blatant hand-holding. This is borne out by the tab-based interface – giving you options to capture, edit, add and adjust menus, then finally preview and burn your DVD. As you’d expect, the Capture tab enables you to capture footage directly from digital and analog sources. While those serious about the medium will undoubtedly edit and encode clips in another app, there are some who may want to capture clips straight into Ulead’s software – with automatic encoding into MPEG, scene detection and file naming, it’s certainly an attractive option for beginners. Once you’ve created a new project and the files are on your hard drive, the Edit tab comes into play. Again, it’s a quick solution, the tab providing tools for trimming your video. That said, there are options to import all kinds of still and moving image files, as well as audio formats. You can also decode Dolby Digital 5.1 audio files, but only encode to two-channel Dolby Stereo. Edit also enables you to add chapter points, and manage your audio and video tracks. These tracks aren’t placed on a timeline, as in Encore and DVD Studio Pro, but are represented as thumbnails. You can add up to eight multiple audio tracks (and adjust the audio levels on each track) and 32 subtitle tracks. Creating tracks, slideshows and menus is pretty much a drag-and-drop affair. Still in the Edit section, you create a first-play video by dragging a clip onto the first-play thumbnail. You can then import all your other clips by the

same method – dragging and dropping either captured or bundled clips into place holders. Menus and buttons can be created using templates (and customised accordingly). There’s quite a comprehensive library supplied with the app. The designs aren’t as professionally orientated as those in, say, DVD Studio Pro, but they are customisable. Links are made by dragging and dropping tracks or menus directly onto buttons. DVD Workshop 2 looks like being a decent enough tool for the enthusiast. Expect a full review in CA soon.

OUTPUT All major DVD outputs catered for One promising aspect of DVD Workshop 2 is its output options. In fact, considering that the tool is a pretty inexpensive DVD authoring solution for the PC, it looks likely to excel in this area. Of course, you can still use the app to burn your project straight to standard DVD+/- discs, but more professional options are also available. For a

start, you can now burn to DVD-9 (duallayer DVDs) and output to DLT (Digital Linear Tape) – so, if you have the facilities, duplicating DVD titles is extremely easy. In addition, there’s the ability to add CSS encryption, along with region coding and macrovision copy protection, as well as burn to miniDVD, VCD and SVCD.

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HP DESKJET 9670

PC AND MAC £399

PRINTER An attractive A3 device at a decent price, capable of great results CONTACT HP 0870 547 4474 www.hp.com/uk

FEATURES A6 to A3+ prints 4800 optimised dpi printing ● PhotoRet IV ● Four and six-ink printing ● Media weights up to 280g/m2 ● 150-sheet input capacity ● Duplexing unit ● 16MB RAM ● ●

SYSTEM PC Pentium 300 • 64MB RAM • 100MB HD • Win 98/NT/ME/ 2000/XP MAC G3 • 128MB RAM • OS X 9.1 to10.2 only (at time of going to press)

FOR • Great-quality printouts • Relatively speedy • Good text and graphics quality • Looks great

AGAINST • Swappable cartridge system • No Panther drivers

VERDICT

★★★★★ A decent enough A3 printer at a decent enough price. Not as fast as a Canon, but it holds its own when it comes to print quality. It’s definitely worth spending a little extra to get the PostScript drivers, though.

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he middle child of three 9600 series printers, the 9670 is a startling looking device with its smooth lines and simple design, very much like a cross between a DesignJet and a lower-end inkjet. The slightly sunken buttons on the front (power, paper feed and cancel) add to the sleek profile. It also feels extremely sturdy, as if it could take a battering in a busy studio. Capable of handling paper sizes anywhere from A6 to A3+, as well as media weights up to 280g/m2, the printer can also print borderless images. The included duplexing unit makes it possible to print on both sides of a page with ease, too. Setting up the printer on both the Mac or PC, via USB or Parallel connections, proved a breeze. As you can see, for such a relatively low price device, the 9670 certainly packs in the features. But all this would count for nothing if the print-quality wasn’t up to scratch. Fortunately, the printer delivers in this respect, too. The 9670 can output at up to 4800dpi; HP claims it can produce laser-quality text at 1200x1200dpi. In our tests – printing a borderless A3 photo-quality print – colour reproduction (calibration software is included) was excellent and output certainly vibrant and lively. However, our image did take over 25 minutes to print. Graphics-wise, the printer still impresses, again with accurate colours. Text, at its highest quality, is generally good, although this isn’t a printer you’d use for such humble day-to-day work. Printing A4 images at best-quality resulted in a 16minute printing time, but at normal quality on plain paper, this shot down to 53.8 seconds. Even at this setting, quality was excellent. It’s also worth noting that the ink in HP’s new cartridges claims to be light-fast for up to 73 years. Annoyingly, you have to change ink cartridges for different jobs. If you’re constantly printing photos, for instance, you’ll need the photo cartridge installed. But if you want to print out just graphics and text, you’d be wise to switch to the black cartridge instead. Why HP couldn’t

incorporate all these into one unit (like other consumerorientated units) and avoid this procedure is a mystery. Another thing: the HP Deskjet 9670 doesn’t work with OS X 10.3 at the time of review. Hewlett-Packard really should get its act together and release drivers asap – it’s very frustrating. By the time you read this, they’ll hopefully be available. Somewhere in between a high-end DesignJet and a lower-end inkjet, the 9670 is a relatively inexpensive backup A3 printer for the graphics pro. Attractive styling and some great print quality make it relatively good value at £399. ■

THREE LINED UP Are they all the same, really? The 9600 series comprises three A3 inkjets, all of which look the same, offer identical printing speeds and specs and use the same two-cartridge system. The only difference between the bottom-of-the-range 9650 and the 9670 reviewed here is the inclusion of a duplexing unit for double-sided printing. The bundled driver software with the 9670 makes it extremely easy to print double-sided docs with the minimum of fuss. The top-of-the-range 9680 features built-in PostScript printer drivers in the RIP software. This makes it the sensible choice for any creative professional working with PostScript documents. The 9650, 9670 and 9680 cost £349, £399 and £449 respectively. Depending on your needs, you need to make a decision about which one you can manage with. Naturally, we’d recommend the PostScriptcompatible model for high-end graphics work.

Review

USB INSTANT DVD

MAC £199

DVD Transform those old VHS tapes into DVDs with this bundle from ADS Tech CONTACT ADS Technologies www.adstech.com www.datavision.co.uk

SYSTEM MAC 256MB RAM •100MB HD space for capture/editing applications • 3GB HD •OS X •USB port

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his USB Instant DVD for Mac (and PC) is a hardware-come-software bundle that promises to help you convert old VHS tapes, or any other format that you can channel through an analog source, into MPEG format for DVD production. It’s basically a dolled up AV-to-DV converter, put into a package with DVD-centric software. Manufactured by ADS Technologies,

VERDICT

★★★ This won’t be of interest to professional DVD authors, but for those wanting a quick and relatively cheap way of turning old tapes into DVDs, it’s a decent enough solution.

Convert your home movies to MPEG format with the help of this handy gadget.

the company behind the popular range of PYRO FireWire cards and peripherals, it also looks pretty much like any other kind of converter box available from Canopus, et al. This Mac version comes with two sterling software applications – PixeDV and Capty DVD. Stupid names, admittedly, and the latter is only of use to those lacking iDVD (because it’s basically the same tool). The PC version comes with Tech Capture Wizard, VideoStudio 7.0 SE DVD, Movie Factory and Muvee’s AutoProducer. You control the convertor box using PixeDV – specifying video input, format (MPEG-1 or 2) and customising the bit-rate. Capturing footage is a simple process, with a huge Start Capture button holding your hand in a slightly patronising manner. In short, the tool is a little clunky, but works well enough, and our box was immediately recognised. The device also enables you to hook up composite video as well as S-Video, and transfer footage from analog sources to MPEG. But, and there is a big but, it connects via USB 1.1, which means transferring digital data to your Mac is very slow. Still, if you’re prepared to wait, the quality of MPEG footage is good and the converter box/software combination reliable. For users already involved in DVD authoring, USB Instant DVD probably won’t be your first choice. But if you have a load of old VHS tapes (or similar), sitting in a corner gathering dust, aching to be digitised to DVD, it’s certainly a quick and efficient solution.

IOMEGA USB 2.0 CD-RW/DVD

PC AND MAC £80

CD DRIVE Iomega’s bulky offering is hardly tailored for a sleek, modern office environment CONTACT Iomega Buy online www.iomega-europe.com

SYSTEM PC Pentium II •75MB HD • Windows 98/SE/2000/ME/XP •USB 1.1/2 MAC PowerMac G3 •75MB HD •OS 9.04- 9.1 •USB 1.1

VERDICT

★★ Not the ideal choice for a studio with varied backup requirements, but perhaps a viable option for the casual user with a USB 2.0-enabled PC. The drive is robust and once it’s up and running, the drag-and-drop CD-RW feature is nice to use. Hotburn takes some time to ‘bed-in’.

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his latest CD-RW offering from one of the big names in backup technology turns out to be a disappointment – a surprise given Iomega’s impeccable pedigree. The device is bulky, the software unreliable and support for the Mac doesn’t even extend to OS X. It may look prettier than its cousin, the Predator, but it’s a lot heavier (so you can forget about lugging it around). Still, the draw opens smoothly and stereo audio out is provided. Using the CD-RW with a PC, it took repeated installations before Hotburn Pro would access the drive, and even then burning CD-R discs remained a challenge. Once it’d settled down, we then had the task of finding compatible media… Cheap no-name discs? Nope. Maxell CD-R? Nope again. Verbatim CD-R? At last… Most popular turned out to be Golding CD-RWs, although these were still slow to format and copy (despite the admittedly cool drag-and-drop functionality). Iomega cautions on its Website that for those with only a USB 1.1 connection, speeds will be limited to 4x4x6x (as opposed to 48x24x48x). This is a real headache if you plan to use your new CD-RW device as a regular backup. And if you’re using a Mac, it’s even worse, because Hotburn only supports USB 1.1 on that platform. If your studio needs a versatile, reliable machine for backing up files from a variety of sources, quickly and

efficiently, our advice is simple: look elsewhere. On the bright side, if you have a new PC equipped with USB 2.0 and you don’t intend to alter your setup, Iomega’s re-writer could be a viable solution.

Forget the high specs – with Mac’s USB 1.1, you bumble along at just 4x4x6x.

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ATI RADEON 9800 PRO

MAC £293

3D GRAPHICS A top class graphics card on the Mac? You bet CONTACT Crucial Technology 0800 013 0330 www.crucial.com

SYSTEM MAC OS X 10.2.5 or later

VERDICT

★★★★ This superb all-rounder is undoubtedly the best graphics card currently available for the Mac. Power-hungry professionals, however, may be slightly underwhelmed by its limited AGP 4X performance.

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s a result of its gaming pedigree, the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro is undoubtedly happiest when handling fast-moving pixels. But its impressive capabilities extend much further than that. It’s equally at home throwing around 100MB files in Photoshop and rendering hideously complex geometries at breakneck speed. Strong enough to keep most people happy? For a while, yes, but not forever… A graphics card’s performance is always difficult to judge in isolation because so much depends on the quality of the host system – in our case, a dual 2GHz G5. The Radeon 9800 Pro is an AGP 4X card with 128MB DDR RAM and an eight-pixel rendering pipeline. The chief innovations are ATI’s Smartshader, Videoshader and Smoothvision. The former two facilitate on-the-fly rendering and high-end digital video; the latter, full-scene anti-aliasing. Perhaps most revealing is the card’s gaming performance. While running Unreal Tournament at 1600x1200, the 9800 doesn’t even bat an eyelid. It also more than copes with extremely heavy scenes in Maya 5. Despite full raytracing, transparency and the use of numerous lights, our test scene took a little over seven minutes to render. The same scene took 33 minutes on a dual 1GHz PIII with an NVIDIA FX 2000. Although less of a marvel, 2D and video performance is also outstanding. Running complex filtering work on large

HP SCANJET 4600

Now Mac owners can savour the pleasures of the Radeon 9800 Pro.

Photoshop files or scrubbing through convoluted video edits, there’s almost no clock time whatsoever. In a studio environment, this is what counts. ATI has worked very had to make the 9800 Pro a good all-rounder. There are, however, a few technical caveats, the major one being that this card is only AGP 4X on the Mac, which has serious speed implications. It’s great to see such a range of output options (TV out, S-Video), admittedly, but in some ways they’re counter-productive. Such connectivity simply confirms our suspicions that this device is trying to be all things to all people rather than the workstation-specific graphics card it should be. Given the IO capacity of the recently released G5, there’s still room at the top for just such a device.

MAC £149

SCANNER HP liberates the humble scanner from the hinges of flat-bed oppression CONTACT Hewlett Packard 08705 474 474 www.hp.com

SYSTEM PC Pentium II 233MHz •64MB RAM •255MB HD space • Windows 98/SE/200O/MEXP MAC Any Mac running OS 9.1 or higher; OS X 10.1.5 or 10.2 or higher

VERDICT

★★ A great concept, stymied by poor implementation. The Scanjet 4600 is a device you should take another look at in a year or so, once HP has ironed out the teething problems.

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he latest invention to come from the HewlettPackard corporation is a 2400dpi scanner that enables you to see what you’re scanning and can even be held up to a picture on a wall so that you can scan virtually anything you like within reach of the USB and power lead. Sure, it’s a great idea, but the design of the Scanjet 4600 hasn’t really been thought through. First off, because it’s a Brilliant concept; shame about the execution. HP’s device still needs fine-tuning before it can take the design world by storm.

CIS (Contact Image) device, it has a very narrow depth of field, which means that, unless the item you’re scanning is within a millimetre or two of the ideal focusing distance, the results always look slightly out of focus. Hardly ideal if you’re using the device to scan in irregular surfaces. Scans also output with annoying l‘ines’ that are impossible to remove – unlike some other CIS scanners, there appears to be no calibration routine. Again, not good. As with most of today’s budget scanners, the Scanjet 4600 is controlled via just four buttons on the front fascia. These enable you to set the scanner up as a copier or a direct scan unit. You can, of course, use the scanner as a regular flatbed and HP provides a document holder for just that purpose. Unfortunately, the retaining clips for the hinge mechanism aren’t strong enough, so scanning inevitably becomes a slightly precarious affair. So often, software maketh the scanner, and here too the results fail to thrill. HP Director is clumsy and offers little control, while a copy of ReadIris 7 will please those into Optical Character Recognition, but few others. Connecting via USB 2.0, the scanner proves to be pretty quick off the mark, but the lack of true functionality is disappointing considering the ingenious idea. We can’t recommend the 4600 just yet, but the concept has a lot to offer. Maybe a few iterations down the line, this will be the revolutionary peripheral it so wants to be. Until then…

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CREATIVE STUFF OUR ROUND-UP OF GREAT GEAR AND GADGETS

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90 Computer Arts_February 2004

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Review

SONY MDR-NC11

BENQ JOYBEE150

COLORWARE IPODS

PRICE £120 COMPANY Sony WEBSITE www.sonystyle.co.uk

PRICE £119 COMPANY BenQ WEBSITE www.benQ.co.uk

PRICE $365 COMPANY ColorWare WEBSITE www.colorwarepc.com

Think of noise-cancelling headphones and you usually think of huge cans àla Dave Lee Travis. However, Sony has come up with the answer for those wanting the benefits of 70 per cent noise reduction without looking like an 80’s DJ. The MDR-NC11 headphones, like other noise-cancelling models, sense outside noise with built-in microphones and compensate accordingly. Admittedly, they’re a little pricey for in-ear headphones, but still, as we repeat often in this section, you do get what you pay for. The included airplane plug makes these great for travelling, as well as drowning out those noisy neighbours.

1

MP3 players seem to feature prominently in this section, probably because music is so closely intertwined with design. This latest diminutive offering from BenQ delivers more than your average MP3 player, though. For starters, there’s an ebook reading function and a built-in FM radio. It also doubles up as a storage device with a not unrespectable 128MB capacity. More mirrored than Peter Stringfellow’s bedroom ceiling, the dinky Joybee 150 is light enough to slip into your top pocket and looks a treat – although you may want to swap the headphones with slightly slimmer Senheisser or Sony offerings.

2

3

IPODSAVER ART EDITION

IPRONTO

JVC MP-XP731

PRICE $25 COMPANY Madsonline WEBSITE www.madsonline.com

PRICE £1230 COMPANY Philips WEBSITE www.unbeatable.co.uk

PRICE £1643 COMPANY JVC WEBSITE www.jvc.co.uk

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We know we’re always banging on about the beauty and elegance of the iPod in Creative Stuff, but even we’d admit that it does mark easily. That’s why a good case is essential. And what better replacement for the boring black case that comes as standard than the iPodSaver Art Edition. The first in a series, this neoprene item features the artwork of Thomas Schostok (www.ths.nu), who, incidentally, recently contributed to Computer Arts. Other top graphic designers and digital artists are sure to jump on the bandwagon soon, making these cases completely collectable. Very stylish – and very different.

What a great name! iPronto isn’t from Apple, as you might expect; it’s actually from Philips. And this small LCD panel is responsible for controlling your entire entertainment system. Possibly the world’s most expensive remote control, the iPronto is easily programmable and also acts as a wireless Web-surfing tool. Whether you take your entertainment seriously enough to splash out on this u ‘ ltimate’ remote control is another matter. Still, it’s good fun and will prove to friends that you’re as tech-savvy as they come. We wonder if there’ll be Sellotape holding the batteries in a year or two down the line…

We all know that the iPod is extremely popular right now, so when we saw these fruitsome offerings from US-based firm ColorWare, we couldn’t help but take notice. Available in a plethora of colours, these custom-made devices cater for every taste. Sure, they’ll set you back an extra $65 on top of what you’d pay Apple (plus any duty) – but just think of the heads you’ll turn when you whip it out. ColorWare also does a range of technicolour computers (how about a nice red PowerBook?) and other peripherals. Check out the company’s Website for more details.

The world is obsessed with small things: hard drives you can fit in your wallet, stamp-sized MP3 players, Paul Daniels… The list goes on. This latest offering from JVC comes in the form of a Centrino-based laptop with the catchiest of names. Weighing 905 grams and less than 30mm thick, the Mini Note MP-XP731 comes complete with Centrino mobile technology for connecting to wireless networks and a 1GHz Pentium M processor. A widescreen 8.9-inch monitor is here, as is FireWire and USB 2.0, a 40GB hard drive and 256MB memory. It’s a bit pricey at £1643, though – imagine losing it down the back of the sofa…

Computer Arts_February 2004

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BOOKS

PHOTOSHOP TENNIS AUTHOR Mark Clarkson PRICE £32.99 PUBLISHER Sybex ISBN 0782141919

P

hotoshop Secrets Of The Pros doesn’t follow the usual showcase or walkthrough format that you expect from this kind of title. Instead, it provides commentary on ten g ‘ ames’ of Photoshop tennis. This phenomenon, started by Coudal Partners (www.coudal.com/tennis.php), matches two Photoshop artists with often varying styles, who then embark on a virtual tennis match involving images. Starting with a serve, images are bounced back and forth between the artists, each adding their own elements and changing the image to their own liking. The intro to the book does a good job of explaining the ideas and processes behind the game. The book is a running commentary, exploring each artist’s methods and the vision behind each v ‘ olley’ or image variation. Because the commentary is littered with

DARK AND MOODY

DIGITAL CARTOONS

AUTHOR Mark Snoswell and Leonard Teo PRICE $59 (£33) PUBLISHER Ballistic Publishing ISBN 0975096516

AUTHOR Steven Withrow PRICE £17.95 PUBLISHER Ilex ISBN 1904705014

his book has a lot to live up to. The sub-heading of Exposé 1 is The Finest Digital Art In The Known Universe – a grand claim indeed, and one that wears a little thin when you start flicking through its pages.

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quotes and actually describes the thinking as well as the methods behind images, the results are insightful, original and extremely useful right from the start. There’s something about the format of Photoshop tennis that makes it appealing to everyone. This could be the interpretation element – every designer featured in these pages takes a different angle on the creative process, either by coincidence or careful planning. Or it could be because of the immediateness of the whole venture – designers don’t get that long to work on each volley, so improvisation often comes into play, keenly revealing the designers’ true sense of composition. Players include Eric Jordan of 2advanced, Christine Smart of www.beingsmart.com, and our very own Art Editor Roddy Llewellyn, battling against John Henry Donovan of Aardvark Digital Media. Photoshop Secrets Of The Pros may be a little expensive at £32.99, but it’s certainly full of ideas. Author Mark Clarkson even finds time to slip in some amusing commentary now and again. We would say it’s ace, but we’re not into puns…

Computer Arts_February 2004

Don’t get us wrong. There’s some great work in here. But it’s mostly fantasy-themed and all feels very dark and moody. Digital art, it seems, is still categorised as either 3D (be it architecture or monsters) or eldritch Photoshop and Painter fantasy scenes. Production values are very high, with full colour throughout. The title has a certain tactility to it that makes you want to thumb through. Inside, you’ll find all manner of radiosityrendered characters, semi-naked digital beauties and some stunning architectural modelling. There’s also games artwork – an immediate entry point for many readers. We obviously understand that this is one of a series, so we hope the next Exposé will be a little more diverse in its content. If this happens, it could become a valuable reference for designers. It’s available from www.ballisticpublishing.com.

ere at Computer Arts, we think that people who don’t like cartoons are very strange. For those of you who join us in our toon enthusiasm, and are interested in the art of creating comic strips and cartoons digitally, Toon Art: The Graphic Art Of Digital Cartooning could be an ideal title. The book begins by going into some detail (although still not enough) about the intricacies of creating cartoons with all manner of software, including Flash, Illustrator and 3D software. Digital painting is covered, as is making word balloons – the latter section is perhaps a little trivial. After a disappointingly slow start, the title really comes into its own, showcasing work by a number of respected artists who are currently creating some of the best digital cartoons around. Again, a little detail is lacking, but this demonstration of

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talent is extremely valuable and useful for anyone involved in the medium. If you’re into cartoons, and into producing them digitally, this title is definitely worth buying. It provides some technique, but acts as more of a showcase than anything else.

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ILLUSTRATION BY OTTO GREENSLADE www.chaotic.co.uk

94 Computer Arts_February 2004

Group Test

GROUP TEST

CHARACTER ANIMATION TOOLS We test five of the most exciting packages for adding character animation to your 3D toolkit Character animation crops up in one way or another in most pieces of 3D work. It’s central to storytelling, but it poses a number of unique problems for the animator. Once you’ve produced a realistic character (usually in your 3D package), you’ll need to create a skeleton and skin it. This process of assigning each vertex of your character model to move appropriately with each bone has been streamlined over the years, but remains an onerous task – especially with complex models and difficult joints, like the shoulders or the fingers. The help a package can provide in this respect is therefore of vital importance. Another test is how easily the skeleton can be controlled – whether you can use both forward and inverse kinematics on it, and how easy the bones system is to master. Then, with the character’s skeleton in place, you need to define its facial expressions – usually with the help of morphs. A selection of facial expressions and speaking mouth-shapes is created, and loaded into the model as morph targets. You then simply animate the face between one expression and another, creating lip-sync sequences, or blending the morphs to produce new facial expressions. Finally, you have to set the body in motion. One of the buzzwords right now is non-linear editing. Animators discovered that if they needed to reuse movements at different times and in different situations, it was a major pain to either move all the associated keyframes and readjust them to the new situation, or to rebuild the animation from scratch. Non-linear editing enables you to define a motion – of either the whole character, or part of it – as a block. That block becomes part of a library of movements for your character. When you come to create a scene, you then simply pick up any block you like and place it on a timeline, adding more blocks to set up a sequence of movement. For example, a character can have a run cycle, a walk cycle, hand gestures and fighting moves in its library, and you can just fit them together in any order you like to create new sequences. Animation of longer form projects then becomes much easier, without sacrificing each character’s defining body language. In this test, we not only looked at how well the packages address these problems, but also how accessible they are to the new animator, or the user who doesn’t work full-time in character animation.

P96

MESSIAH:ANIMATE 4

£344

P96

CHARACTER STUDIO 4

£840

P97

MOTIONBUILDER 5

£576

P97

LIFE FORMS STUDIO 4

£286

P98

POSER 5

£185

Computer Arts_February 2004

95

MESSIAH: ANIMATE 4 PC $595 (£344)

Thanks to softbody dynamics and bulging muscles, everything wobbles with messiah

M

essiah:animate 4 is a clean-looking package whose smooth, professional working environment provides a truly powerful toolset. Non-linear editing has been present since v3, and provides a strong set of tools for putting together animated sequences. Softbody dynamics, ideal for various swinging and wobbling effects, are also in place. V4, meanwhile, introduces a new collision system for more accurate simulations. You can also create muscles and attach them to bones, flexing them to create bulges as a joint is moved. Morphing is equally versatile, controllable over the vertices of an object. In other words, you can make a smile spread across a face from the mouth to the eyes, or take only the eye and eyebrow movements from an angry face, placing lip-sync morphs on the mouth. You can even use bones and morphing on the same vertices at the same time. Control is much improved in v4, with the addition of Armatures; customisable controls you can set up to affect any function – the movement of an arm, the strength of a morph, even the app’s interface. CONTACT To avoid the painstaking process of pmG assigning weighting to the bones of a Buy online model, messiah offers the option of www.projectmessiah.com using Puppet Master instead of a traditional skeleton. This tool enables VERDICT you to prepare models in your own 3D ★★★★ package by slicing them into pieces. You place cuts at each joint and use messiah messiah is clearly laid out to sew them back together, using your and well thought through. cut points as bones for defining the way Although it doesn’t include the limbs bend. much in the way of preset messiah is compatible with Maya, characters or movement libraries, it does offer a 3ds max, Cinema 4D and LightWave – high degree of control, and each package enjoys its own freely generating soft, subtle downloadable plug-in. Plus a new API character animations, for v4 enables you to script your own courtesy of its morphing, additions to the package, controlling muscle movement and animation and adding modules for softbody dynamics tools. whatever you like. Overall, a highly versatile contender.

96 Computer Arts_February 2004

CHARACTER STUDIO 4 PC £840

The only character animation package in our roundup that isn’t afraid of crowds

C

haracter studio is the only package in our Group Test that’s restricted to a single 3D application – in this case, 3ds max. For all that, it’s probably the most widely used plug-in of any kind for any 3D program, and many wannabe animators buy it alongside their new copy of 3ds max as a matter of course. The tool started life as a footstep animator – and footsteps remain a powerful part of its toolset. You can make a character walk, run or jump, simply by placing footsteps in the viewport. Outside of the footstepdriven animation, you can also import motion-capture data and integrate it smoothly into your sequences. V4 introduces a non-linear editor to the mix. Discreet’s twist to this tool is to offer a Time Warp controller – for Matrix-style time-freezing effects. You can also mix parts of an animation onto parts of the body, and even fade motions in and out over time with a simple rubberband. Also new is the forearm twist – a simple addition that propagates the twisting of the wrists gradually up to the elbow, generating a more realistic movement. One of character studio’s unique features is its ability to handle crowds. You can set up multiple characters and run a simulation in which they have goals, terrain to navigate and objects to avoid. You can then give them CONTACT various walking, waiting and other Discreet movement animations to use when Buy online trying to achieve these goals. Running www.discreet.com the simulation sets the characters in motion, each individual in the crowd VERDICT animated according to its own rules – ★★★★ avoiding collision with its companions 3ds max users who do and so forth. The result is convincing character animation will crowd behaviour. probably have character character studio’s footstep-driven studio already. Integration system makes it less adaptable to multiwith the host package, legged creatures than other programs. simple footstep control Discreet has tried to solve this, but to and crowd control are its date hasn’t quite got it right. On the plus key strengths. On the side, the app’s integration with 3ds max minus side, it could offer is superb, and the program’s crowd better tools for characters behaviour is something that its interacting with each other. competitors singularly lack.

Group Test

MOTION BUILDER 5 PC AND MAC $995 (£576)

Real-time playback enables you to see exactly what your characters are up to

M

otionbuilder is designed not only for pre-rendered animations, but for real-time ones as well. This gives it a massive advantage over its rivals, because as soon as you’ve created your animation, you can watch it in all its OpenGL glory in real time. There’s even real-time motion blur and bump-mapping. Character animation often involves a lot of keyframes, particularly if it uses motion-capture data. Motionbuilder gets around the problem by enabling you to use layers of animation. For example, if your character’s involved in a fight scene and you realise you need to integrate a reaction to a blow from the opposing character, you simply add another layer of animation and place the keyframes on that layer. The rest of the fight will still be intact, but the impact-reaction will be in there, too, with its keyframes easily accessible and editable. Faces receive a lot of attention in Motionbuilder. There’s even an automatic system for analysing audio files and converting them into lip-sync. Pose-to-pose animation is well implemented, too; you can even store pose libraries, which can be quickly pasted onto your characters. Connectivity between Motionbuilder and your 3D app is very good. You can bring your models in from all the main packages, and even import weights for bones and mesh. This has an extra knock-on effect: without re-skinning, you can use the CONTACT same characters for animation in 3ds Kaydara max, Maya, LightWave or Softimage Buy online as you use in Motionbuilder – depending www.kaydara.com on which package works best for the VERDICT shot you’re creating. Characters interact well with their ★★★★★ surroundings in Motionbuilder and An excellent package, you can pass props between hands or full of good ideas, and characters without too much hassle. with enough supporting There’s support for quadruped material to get you started characters as well as bipeds, and a quickly. Real-time playback good non-linear editor, as well. The is a strong feature, and package also comes with a disc full of backed up well by the clip-art, including character models, rest of the program. poses and about 300MB of motions.

LIFE FORMS STUDIO 4 PC AND MAC $495 (£286)

Smooth and graceful motion is easy to create with this choreographer’s dream

L

ife Forms began life as a choreography aid for dance simulations and such-like – but now concentrates on creating realistic and fluid character animation, leaving lip-synching, skinning and rendering pretty much to your main 3D package. Focusing primarily on body movement, the app offers useful tools for blending motions together, working with motion capture data and setting up poses. One simple but effective helper is the ability to load in a still or moving backdrop. You can then pose your model manually to mimic the image. It’s a way of doing motion-capture without a motion-capture studio. Taking things further is the Range Editing tool. With this, you can apply a change in position for a joint over a number of frames, regardless of what other keyframes are in place. It’s a little like Motionbuilder’s animation layering, although the results aren’t as easily editable. Preset motions are a key aspect of Life Forms, and the package loads up with 750 animations you can drop onto whatever skeleton you’re currently CONTACT using. You simply browse through the Credo Interactive library, playing them back in a viewer Buy online until you see the one you want to use. www.charactermotion.com You can then apply either the whole figure’s motion, or just a part of it, to VERDICT your particular model. ★★★★ The Walk Generator tool is useful, Life Forms relies heavily too, enabling you to create and edit a on pose-based animation. walk without having to animate every It’s got more presets than keyframe yourself. The Snap tool Poser and its Snap function enables you to simulate the friction makes interaction between when objects touch each other. You can characters easy and snap feet to the ground, so they don’t accurate. It also prevents slide during animation, snap the hand of that age-old foot-sliding one character to the hand of another, so problem. However, it does the two move together, or snap the lack the range of some of thighs of two characters together for a its competitors, with their three-legged race. It provides a kind of softbody dynamics, facial physicality that’s lacking in packages morphing and highlike Poser, giving animations a much resolution models. more solid feel.

Computer Arts_February 2004

97

WINNER

POSER 5

PC AND MAC $319 (£185)

The LEGO approach to character animation: everything fits together quickly and cleanly CONTACT Curious Labs Buy online www.curiouslabs.com

VERDICT

★★★★★ Poser is undoubtedly the quickest and easiest way to start working with character animation. It concentrates on being robust, and getting things to look good and work immediately. You can get high-quality results if you’re prepared to work a little harder, but for quick visualisations it’s unbeatable. It lacks the precision of the other packages featured here, but makes up for it by handling skeletons, skinning, facial animation, clothing, hair, motion capture, animation, posing and rendering.

98 Computer Arts_February 2004

P

oser will get you working right from the day you start using it. It’s the most accessible of all the packages in our Group Test, and provides a set of powerful tools for the character animator, without assailing you with complex notions buttons and controls. The package approaches character animation with a set of simple and robust tools. It’s built on the premise that to tell a story, a character goes through a set of poses, moving between them one after another to generate a single, fluid motion. It makes those poses available at a single click from a library, and develops the idea by making that library transferable without fuss from one character to another. You can use the same technique to create suitable hand gestures, facial expressions and lip-sync. In addition, Poser provides libraries of characters, clothes, faces and hairstyles which you can customise, add to and swap effortlessly around with the poses and animations. The latest version includes real hairstyles which you can grow and customise, and dynamic clothing that moves and flows with the figure. Each figure is easily customisable, with a range of sliders controlling its body shape and facial features. The newly added Face Room enables you to create a face from a couple of photographs, modelling both the shape and the texture of the character from the images. If you’re looking for an easy way to model a famous character, or create a virtual stunt double, this is it. Because the package relies so heavily on libraries that you can add to yourself, the fact that the models are human and bipedal is pretty much irrelevant. The system works

just as well for other animals or any articulated object. If you can build it and give it bones, you can set up pose libraries for it. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can also give it facial morphing controls, wings, clothes and hair. The downside to all this simplicity is that it makes it easy to produce images and animations that are instantly recognisable as Poser content. However, this isn’t the app’s fault; it’s more to do with the fact that the content is there, usable and of high quality There’s no reason why you can’t create and import your own models, it’s just that taking the easy route in Poser is so tempting that doing it yourself begins to look like an awful lot of hard work. What characters spend most of their time doing, however, is interacting – and that’s something Poser really isn’t too good at. Even having more than one character on the screen at a time makes it feel clunky, and there are no tools to help you pass objects from one figure to another. Poser is so popular that there are plenty of add-ons to the basic package. People all over the Net are selling and giving away their own models, clothes and pose libraries, and the addition of a scripting language (Python) makes it possible to add all kinds of bolt-ons to the basic program. But while the basic setup is the cheapest we’ve seen in our roundup, the cost is deceptive – you will need to buy a plug-in to transfer your animated Poser figures back into your 3D package. This sturdy application is an ideal way to get into character animation. It may not provide unparalleled levels of precision, but it does offer a vast and varied number of options, and all in the one program, too.

Group Test

CONCLUSION

Ë

Each package has its own specialities, and each offers tools the others lack messiah:animate comes with great morphing tools and softbody dynamics. character studio has its crowd animation tools and its easy footstep-driven animations. Motionbuilder offers instant real-time playback of any character in any situation. Life Forms has its massive library of preset moves and its Snap function, which gives its animations a startling solidity. In this test, though, Poser comes out on top for its low cost, all-round strength and accessibility. The program’s jack-of-alltrades approach, along with the fact that much of its output is easily identifiable as Poser content, has lost it the respect of many full-time animators, and the package tends to be overlooked as simplistic. Indeed, if you’re using character animation full-time as part of a production pipeline, you might well find other packages here (most obviously the excellent Motionbuilder) to be more sophisticated and powerful. Some criticisms aimed at Poser, however, aren’t all justified. Poser work often seem generic because the models included are so good most people end up using them. Using your own character models is no more difficult in Poser than in the other applications – it’s just that they don’t offer a strong alternative.

The package now does hair as well as most 3D packages. It provides softbody dynamics. It handles motion-capture data and has a good range of built-in poses and animations. It uses nonhumanoid characters with the same degree of control as human ones. It goes beyond the remit of the other programs in our Group Test and it presents flexible tools in an easily understood way. However, a few criticisms levelled at the package do stick. Playback can be sluggish, transfer to and from other packages is flawed, character interaction is weak, and the editing of animation keyframes isn’t as straightforwards as it could be. There’s also no non-linear editing, although the ability to save and paste animation sequences amounts to a simplified version. Poser wins here because although most character animators wouldn’t want to rely on it as their only tool, most wouldn’t want to be without it. It’s not the most controllable, editable animation package on the market – not by a long way – but it presents the most complete solution, the fastest development times and the most accessible toolset. In addition, if you’re prepared to dig beneath the highly manicured interface, you’ll find a surprising degree of power. ■

PACKAGE

MESSIAH:ANIMATE 4

CHARACTER STUDIO 4

MOTIONBUILDER 5

LIFE FORMS 4

POSER 5

PRICE

$595 (£344)

£840

$995 (£576)

$495 (£286)

$319 (£185)

SCORE

★★★★

★★★★

★★★★★

★★★★

★★★★★

MOTION CAPTURE IMPORT Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

REAL-TIME PLAYBACK

No

No

Yes

No

No

FACIAL ANIMATION

Morphing and bones

In main package

Morphing (including auto lipsync) No

Morphing

SOFTBODY ANIMATION

Yes

In main package

No

No

Yes (clothes and hair)

COMPATIBILITY

Maya, 3ds max, Cinema 4D, LightWave

3ds max

Maya, 3ds max, LightWave, softimage

Maya, LightWave 3D, 3ds max, ElectricImage, Cinema 4D XL, Poser

Limited without plug-in to LightWave, Maya, 3ds max/dxf

SUPPLIED CHARACTERS

No

No

18

2

70

SUPPLIED MOVEMENTS /POSES

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

SCRIPTING LANGUAGE

Yes

In main package

No

No

Yes

WALK AUTOMATION

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Computer Arts_February 2004

99

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◗FONTS FACES LTD Whether you are looking for a single font, a complete library or a custom designed font, Faces offers you knowledgeable and friendly service. Fonts from the major foundries as well as new designers. Free confidential consultation for font licensing. Call for info and catalogues. Tel: 01276 38888 Fax: 01276 38111 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.faces.co.uk Contact: John, Carolyn, Melanie FONTWARE™ The Custom Font Specialists • customisation & conversions • digital branding solutions • individual fonts & collections • licensing • language • buy on-line Fontware Ltd Katana house Fort Fareham Newgate Lane Fareham Hants PO14 1AH Tel: 01329 221121 Fax: 01329 281145 Email: [email protected] Website: www.fontware.com

◗GRAPHICS CARDS GAINWARD Gainward’s "Golden Sample" products guarantee outstanding stability and performance at enhanced clock settings using hand selected graphics processors, carefully qualified Ultra-DDR memory chips, and advanced, proprietary hardware

Animation, imaging and post production for broadcast, interactive and print. Folio available on line or call for CD sampler. Studio 15 minutes from Victoria. Clients include:- Bray Leino, Citigate.A.F, DDB, Grey, JWT, Lowe, Masius, Ogilvy, OWN&P, Proximity, Publicis, RKCRY&R, Saatchi, TBWA, WTCS, WWAV. Tel: 020 8466 0655 Email: [email protected] Website: www.arcanadigital.com Contact: John Fox

◗RECRUITMENT CHANGE LTD Change is an agency with a difference. We have been providing a bespoke service to our customers for over three years and recruit exclusively for the Interactive Entertainment Industry. Change provides a friendly effective service to all sectors concentrating on the Gaming world. Our customers are loyal, which speaks for itself! Tel: 020 7241 4545 Mobile:07973 413060 Website: www.change-job.com

◗TRAINING SERVICES CORPS BUSINESS Recruitment and Training solutions since 1989. Training available in tailored & scheduled format. Authorised by Adobe, Extensis, Macromedia, Media 100, Maxon and Quark. Recruitment supplies staff on a temporary, permanent, contract and freelance basis. Tel: 020 7222 8484 Email: [email protected] Web: www.corps.co.uk ESCAPE STUDIOS – VISUAL EFFECTS TRAINING As Europe’s only dedicated school of Visual Effects Escape Studios courses provide the necessary skills to enter the Visual Effects and Games Development industries. Escape offer intensive day, evening and weekend courses in Maya, XSI, Shake, Combustion, Photoshop and RenderMan. Escape is a

certified training centre for Alias Wavefront, Discreet and Softimage. Tel: +44 (0)20 524 7570 Fax: +44 (0)20 524 7571 Email: [email protected] Website: www.escapestudios.co.uk METRO NEW MEDIA • London’s leading training Centre for web-design, 3D, Animation, Multi-media, Project Management and Programming • All trainers are professionals in their field • State of the art studios • All levels from beginner to advanced • Specialists in customised training • Discreet Accredited Tel : 020 7729 9992 Email: [email protected]

Web: www.metronewmedia.com

◗WEB DESIGN AZ*TECH GRAPHIC DESIGN Az*Tech Graphic Design is a Midlands based Web design agency. Specialising in Custom built software solutions for all of your online or multimedia requirements. Az*Tech has its own reasonably priced E-commerce and Auction solutions that can be attached to a site easily and add real power to your web presence. Tel: 07931 554073 Mobile: 07930 396444 Email: [email protected] Website: www.az-tech.co.uk

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Website: www.dedicated-servers.co.uk

NETCETERA Formed in 1996, Netcetera is one of Europe's leading Web Hosting service providers. Our services are biased towards Microsoft based Internet Technologies - Microsoft Certified Partner since 1999. Netcetera provides complete solutions for Web Hosting, Domain Name Registration, eCommerce, E-mail, Dedicated Server Hosting, Server-based Applications Hosting (ASP) and .NETpplaince. www.inetc.net Tel: +44 (0)1624 612948 Fax: +44 (0)1624 623385 Email: [email protected] Website: www.inetc.net

◗POINT OF SALE PROMOTIONS

◗PRINTING SERVICES

◗REPRO ◗SOFTWARE

TO F E AT U R E I N T H E C R E AT I V E D I R E C TO RY T E L E P H O N E B RY O N Y WAT T S O N 0 1 2 2 5 4 4 2 2 4 4

EXPOSURE SUBMISSIONS: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, United Kingdom 1 1 NAME Paul Culley JOB Designer & Illustrator CONTACT 07740 354 742, [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, FreeHand IMAGE TITLES 1. Accelerate, 2. Entity, 3. Integrity, 4. Escape, 5. Conceptual “After studying Art and Design at Newcastle-under-Lyme College, I’m now a freelance designer and illustrator producing work primarily for the print industry. I use a mix of software to create my style of illustration, which incorporates elements from Photoshop, FreeHand and 3D applications.”

GET EXPOSED Send your work to us, along with an explanation of your techniques and software, the titles of each piece, your telephone number and email. Images should be sent as PC or Mac TIFF or JPEG files, on CD-ROM or Zip disks. A hard copy is a great help. We will endeavour to return all entries that provide an SAE. All contributions are submitted on the basis of a non-exclusive worldwide licence to publish, both in printed and electronic form. Post hi-res files for print to: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW.

108 Computer Arts_February 2004

See Get Exposed, below, for full details

Exposure

2

3

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5

Computer Arts_February 2004 109

2 NAME Martin Quigley JOB 3D CAD Technician CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE 3ds max, Photoshop, Illustrator, AutoCAD Map 2004 IMAGE TITLES All from the Moston Lane project “These stills are from a 3D fly-through to show local councillors and residents what a new traffic scheme would look like when it was built. From early on, I decided to use cel-shading to give the models a modern finish.”

110 Computer Arts_February 2004

Exposure

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2

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3 NAME Irena Meglajec JOB Web designer CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, Illustrator IMAGE TITLES 1. She, Before The First Date, 2. He, Before The First Date, 3. His Dog, 4. Her Dream, 5. His Dream, 6. Her Dog “I’m continually inspired by the work of talented digital illustrators and designers from all over the world. I’m also inspired by photography and textures. Most of my work begins by finding a photograph I like and trying to make an illustrated version of it. Some day, I’d like to have the opportunity to work for a lifestyle magazine.”

Computer Arts_February 2004 111

1

4 NAME Paul Tysall JOB Magazine Art Editor CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, Illustrator IMAGE TITLES 1. Free2ski, 2. Writer In Subway, 3. Apartment 108, 4. Holo-edit “All of these images are commissioned pieces for various clients, including Computer Music magazine. The only non-commissioned piece is the graffiti writer in the subway, which was the starting point for my current mixing of media. The background is a digital shot, and the graffiti design was generated in Illustrator. The character was hand-drawn and coloured in Photoshop, where all the other elements were also composed.”

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112 Computer Arts_February 2004

2

Exposure

1 5 NAME Bardur Bergsson JOB Freelance Designer CONTACT [email protected], www.islandia.is/bardurb SOFTWARE Photoshop, Maya, Illustrator IMAGE TITLES 1. Bodylift, 2. Fumes “Several years ago, I started experimenting with 3D as a way to make objects for Photoshop collage work. I soon put collage work behind me as I dived into 3D and animation in Maya. My goal is now to fuse 3D, collage, animation and interactivity in my work.”

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6 NAME Brian Troffer JOB Illustrator CONTACT [email protected], www.thebombsquad.com/illustration SOFTWARE Photoshop, Illustrator, Streamline IMAGE TITLES 1. Bloody Mary Morning, 2. Morning Coffee “First, I do a small painting with acrylic paints, and then scan it in. I adjust the colour and play about with it in Photoshop before turning it into vector art with Streamline. I then open it in Illustrator and play around with it until the work is complete.”

Computer Arts_February 2004 113

RETROSPECTIVE ISSUE 28 FEBRUARY 1999 This time five years ago, there was much ado about workstations

EDITORIAL 01225 442 244 VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] RODDY LLEWELLYN ART EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] JON ALONGI CD EDITOR [email protected] MATT GALLIMORE SENIOR CD EDITOR [email protected]

CD PROBLEMS 01225 822 743

[email protected]

Contributions from Jason Arber, Mat Broomfield, Ryan Carson, Rob Chiu, Christian Darkin, Nils Davey, Dan Goodleff, Otto Greenslade, Karl Hodge, Identikal, Chris Kenworthy, Max Kisman, Derek Lea, Vicky Mitchard, Mark Penfold, Ed Ricketts, Jason Cranford Teague

A

bit of a vampish illo to accompany our feature on using Photoshop, Painter and Poser together, as we extolled the joys of a software pot pourri. In the news, After Effects 4.0 was imminent, while Dennis Hopper met his Easy Rider self from 30 years previous, thanks to those seminal Ford Cougar ads. Our chief excitement this month concerned Silicon Graphics’ new Windows NT-based workstations, incorporating all manner of proprietary hardware. Despite our excited gabblings, the euphoria sadly faded when we discovered the things didn’t exactly work too well and cost a packet. In the event, ‘normal’ PCs were soon much more powerful, anyway. Half of this issue’s profilees have scattered to the four winds. Acrobatix appears to have fallen off the highwire and is nowhere to be seen, while Roger Norling now runs design studio Paravoid. Andy Carne of TheLongDrop still revels in top CD and music design, but Modified has long since disbanded. Finally, a reader wanted to know why ‘K’ stood for ‘black’ in CMYK. We reckoned it was traditionally the Key colour. Anyone up for an argument? ■

PHOTOGRAPHY Simon Lees PRINT TPL Printers (UK) Ltd REPRO Radstock Reproductions Ltd

CONTACT Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW 01225 732 361 ISDN 01225 789 293 Overseas subscriptions +44 870 4448 455

ADVERTISING 01225 442244 LEE HAINES key account manager [email protected] GEORGE LUCAS sales executive [email protected] MELISSA WATKINS classified sales executive [email protected]

DIGITAL DIVISION JOHN WEIR publishing director SHEENA PITTAWAY publisher FIONA TULLY marketing manager CLARE TOVEY production manager PAUL MCINTYRE group art editor STEVE JARRATT group senior editor SARAH WILLIAMS software copyright coordinator

PRODUCTION DAVID MATHEWS ad design point of contact KATTY PIGOTT production coordinator MIKE THORNE commercial print buyer

CIRCULATION & LICENSING RICHARD JEFFERIES circulation manager RICHARD BEAN overseas licensing manager SIMON WEAR overseas licensing director Computer Arts has licences in China, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain

UK DISTRIBUTION Seymour Distribution 020 7396 8000 86 Newman Street, London, W1T 3EX

THE FUTURE NETWORK ROGER PARRY non-executive chairman GREG INGHAM chief executive COLIN MORRISON chief operating officer & managing director UK JOHN BOWMAN group finance director Tel +44 1225 442244 www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Computer Arts is a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Jan-Dec 2002: 30,024

FLASHBACK

ABOVE SGI’s short-lived

flirtation with Windows machines ultimately proved disastrous for the company. RIGHT Spare a thought for the lugubrious strawberry, courtesy of Peter Spinaze.

114 Computer Arts_February 2004

It’s no less than eight years since a small team of digital art enthusiasts at Future Publishing kicked off what we now know and love as Computer Arts, and it’s now the leading title in its field. That field has changed massively in those eight years – DVD is no longer a mystery, and Photoshop is now a household name. We continue our look back with 1999’s issue 28…

Computer Arts is the registered trademark of Future Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks and copyrights in this issue are recognised, and are acknowledged where possible. If we have failed to credit your copyright please contact us – we’re happy to correct any oversight. Material submitted is accepted on the basis of a worldwide right to publish in printed or electronic form. All contents © Future Publishing 2004. Future Publishing is part of The Future Network PLC. The Future Network produces carefully targeted specialist magazines for people who share a passion. We aim to satisfy that passion by creating titles offering value for money, reliable information, smart buying advice, and which are a pleasure to read. Today we publish more than 90 magazines in the UK, US, France and Italy. Over 80 international editions of our magazines are also published in 28 other countries across the world. The Future Network PLC is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FNET).

Your guide to Web development, design & rich Internet applications issue 02

MASTERCLASS MX 2004

THE BIG PAYBACK

ColdFusion and Dreamweaver: how they integrate to save cash and satisfy your client

MOJO FLOWS

Why ColdFusion offers the best solutions to Web agency Emojo’s sites and applications

THE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS • Studio MX 2004 gives you more data-driven muscle • Web development demystified inside

See Macromedia® ColdFusion® MX in a whole new light.

See for yourself. With the new ColdFusion MX 6.1, you can quickly build the new wave of Rich Internet Applications. Increase productivity with rapid server scripting and the powerful Macromedia MX 2004 development tools. Incorporate XML and web services with ease. Scale with a dependable Java™ architecture and deliver rich user interfaces with native connectivity to Macromedia Flash™ . You can even run your applications on leading application servers like IBM® WebSphere® and Sun® ONE. Try ColdFusion MX today and see what you can do now. For more information please visit www.macromedia.com/uk/buy or call Macromedia direct 0131 458 6766

Copyright © 2003 Macromedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Macromedia, the Macromedia logo, ColdFusion, Flash and Macromedia Flash and are trademarks or registered trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Third-party marks are the properties of their respective owners.

www.macromedia.com/uk

MASTERCLASS MX2004

contents

welcome

4 Choosing wisely What exactly is ColdFusion capable of and what software do you need to meet your clients needs? Find out here.

B

eing pretty doesn’t cut it any more. The Web is much more sophisticated these days. Clients want sites and Web applications that not only look great but that they can easily manage. They demand sites that draw data from separate systems, and they don’t want to be relying on you to do constant updates. In short, they want dynamic sites. For you, the developer, that’s great news. It means you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel for each project. This frees you up to find new clients, make more money and take a holiday! Check out With that in mind, we’re bringing you this 's Macromedia at a supplement in association with Macromedia ur — MX 2004 to soon. and Peachpit books to show you how o y city near u e 10 ColdFusion with the rest of the Studio can help Turn to pag you understand and build dynamic sites. In for more! these pages, you’ll learn about how the application can transform your work beyond the world of the front end, and how it surpasses the capabilities of its competitors for power, speed of deployment and ease-of-use. Welcome to the Macromedia Masterclass MX 2004 issue 2.

VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] GRAEME AYMER ASSOCIATE EDITOR [email protected] PAUL MCINTYRE ART EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] TWELVE:TEN COVER ILLUSTRATOR www.twelveten.com

CONTACT Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW PHONE 01225 442 244 EMAIL [email protected] SUBSCRIBE 0870 444 8455

We talk to London Web agency, Emojo, about its incredibly successful database app, driven by ColdFusion.

10 Working smarter with ColdFusion Get started with ColdFusion with this kickstart guide to components.

16 Win a trip to New York and more Two whole pages of special offers and a great competition.

18 Why bother? Leading Web designers on the advantages of working with ColdFusion.

Computer Arts [email protected]

EDITORIAL

6 Emojo baby!

DYNAMIC MOVES a word from Macromedia

W

hether you’re a designer, a developer, a content contributor or the business owner of a Web application, having a site that’s flexible and quick to update and maintain is key to your success. Dynamic, database-driven sites mean more up-to-date information for your customers, easier integration with other IT systems and better use of skills. Why spend time updating when you could spend time creating? With help from products such as Flash, Dreamweaver and ColdFusion, designers and developers today are already taking advantage of data-driven architectures to support rich Web client applications: making your site dynamic will help you keep up to date with future developments on the Internet. ANDI HINDLE Server Product Manager MACROMEDIA EUROPE

Macromedia Masterclass 02 3

overview ColdFusion may be a back-end application, but it’s not as scary as you think – you’ll find its range of uses extremely handy and versatile…

Choosing wisely A

s the Web evolves, so does the demand on Web developers and designers to create more ambitious services. Companies and third-party clients are realising that the medium can do far more than provide brochureware. Increasingly, they’re seeking

ever-richer application development. If you’re a ColdFusion user, you have the power to answer such clients’ changing needs with costeffective ease. We’ve outlined four possible scenarios for you to show you just how powerful and versatile the product can be.

Technical advice was given by Prismix, a London- based agency specialising in ColdFusion and rich Internet application technology. Its clients include the Chartered Institute of Marketing. It is also involved in the UK ColdFusion Users’ Group. INFO www.prismix.com www.ukcfug.org

Recommended reading Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides (AddisonWesley, 1994). Reality ColdFusion MX: Intranets and Content Management by Ben Forta (Macromedia Press, 2002). Reality Macromedia ColdFusion MX: J2EE Integration by Ben Forta, Drew Falkman, Bonnie Plottner, Kristian Cibulskis (Macromedia Press, 2002).

SCENARIO 1 Client requires an entertainment microsite BRIEF: Your customer is in the entertainment field. An act’s album has come out and they need a site to promote the teen idol while singles are released. They want an ongoing game to keep the teen audience coming back, plus promo material, ringtone download, etc. The game should have a leaderboard that’s always up to date with high score information. It must generate emails and text messages and enable any site admin and content to be updated rapidly. Data capture goes without saying, but it must be seamless so as not to put off the audience, and suit under and over 14s. DEVELOPER: You select Flash MX 2004, Dreamweaver MX 2004 and ColdFusion MX.

4 Masterclass Masterclass 02

ADVANTAGES ● ColdFusion has rapid deployment time. ● ColdFusion will enable you to build a database that tracks scores on the game as well as user data, automatically generating content as required. It can do this with fewer lines of code than other technologies. ● Integration between Flash and ColdFusion means data can be passed easily between back and

front ends. For any HTML elements, ColdFusion can dynamically generate personalised features, such as layouts from a set of templates. ● Flash provides engaging technology for the front end. It enables the overall application to gain richness using new features such as video as well as IM through AOL. ● OVERALL: Dynamic and rich site delivery.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS ● Ensure the site is designed well given constraints like bandwidth. Take care when choosing the architecture and CMS integration.

● SOLUTION: understand how to get the architecture right, choose suitable creatives for the right look and feel.

THE RESULT: The site and game are engaging with plenty of animation. The game is dynamically driven, so it can be deployed across territories. The leaderboard is automatically generated. Integration between Dreamweaver, Flash and ColdFusion mean it’s really quick and easy to deploy. Emails and text are automatically generated, saving time and money to the client and you. Besides this, it looks great.

SCENARIO 2 Client requires company Website BRIEF: Create a site to promote the company and provides rich Internet experience. Visitors must be able to register and view widgets, find information about company products and customise widgets on sale for size, colour, design and so on. The site should be able to track interested customers and email them automatically with information. The site must be easy to update. It should also be searchable. DEVELOPER: You select Flash MX 2004, Dreamweaver MX 2004 and ColdFusion MX.

ADVANTAGES ● ColdFusion enables rapid development and prototyping time for your database app. ● Native integration with Flash guarantees a rich experience can be delivered with some ease.

● ColdFusion enables a Web service-based and componentbased approach, potentially making the site easier to update. ● The overall approach saves development time and money in the short and long term.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS ● Ensure that qualified people develop suitable ActionScript. ● Getting to grips with Webservices based architecture may take some time, despite the longterm pay-off.

● SOLUTION: Research the best way to approach the architecture, and make sure the best qualified, most appropriate developers write the code.

THE RESULT A rapidly developed and deployed site, yielding the best possible return on investment for you and your client. All the benefits of Flash are included, such as accessibility and an innovative and engaging user interface. All aspects of the brief have been met. Data flow has been optimised by Flash and ColdFusion integration.

SCENARIO 3 Client requires Intranet BRIEF: Your client, a large company, needs a directory of internal contacts and an improved internal online system for better communication. Intranet should include a telephone extension directory and details of email addresses, job titles and departments. Some extra functions should be available to limited staff. For example, HR should be able to see staff salary details, addresses and other personal information. The intranet must not be dull or daunting. It must be accessible and highly usable, with a search facility. DEVELOPER: You select Dreamweaver MX 2004, Flash MX 2004 and ColdFusion MX.

ADVANTAGES ● ColdFusion enables rapid development time. ● ColdFusion use means you can deploy ColdFusion Components (CFCs). Doing this means you can build a layer that can adopt a multi-tiered architecture. This means CFCs can communicate with existing legacy systems such as employee records and payroll systems. These can then be linked to the presentation layer,

built in Flash and Dreamweaver. ● ColdFusion supports Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) natively, enabling more powerful data searching. ● A multi-tiered approach protects against upgrade and system changeover problems. ● Flash and Dreamweaver address accessibility issues and provide approachable UI. ● OVERALL: The fastest, most cost effective solution.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS ● Make sure the developers understand the logic behind creating a multi-tiered approach.

● SOLUTION: Select the most well-suited developers.

THE RESULT Quickly deployable Intranet that’s secure, password-protected for appropriate staff and can be updated easily. It is searchable and assists staff in various departments such as HR and accounts to do their work more easily. Because Flash and CF are combined, it’s data driven without being hard to use. Visually- and mobilityimpaired staff aren’t discriminated against. More visual than HTML.

SCENARIO 4 Client requires Extranet BRIEF: Your customer is a manufacturer with an extensive supply chain. Many companies create components for the end product and it would be more efficient if they shared a controlled online system. Each element in the Extranet system should be able to take advantage of offers as well as stock information for materials. Order tracking is also important. Warehouse staff should be able to stock-take using iPaqs. DEVELOPER: You select Flash MX 2004 and ColdFusion MX.

ADVANTAGES ● The project will be similar to that for the Intranet system, above, using business-class CFCs. ● Security can be protected using HTTPS or virtual private networks.ColdFusion Extensions can provide controlled access.

● Flash can be used to create a site interface for handheld clients that is perfectly integrated into the back-end database through wireless access. ● OVERALL: A rapidly deployable, secure system, which is good for desktop and mobile use.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS ● Make sure the developers understand the logic behind creating a multi-tiered approach.

● SOLUTION: Select the most well-suited developers.

THE RESULT UI is user friendly while also being dynamically driven, due to ColdFusion use. iPaq application is easy to deliver because of ColdFusion’s ease of use and Flash’s suitability to the project. It answers the brief while being deployed quickly and costeffectively. Turn to page 11 for an in-depth look at working with ColdFusion.

Masterclass Masterclass 02 5

case study

Roger Gordon and Stefan Karlsson understand the importance of ColdFusion to the success of Emojo’s flagship content management system, Affino

INFO EMOJO, www.emojo.com

6 Macromedia Masterclass 02

ColdFusion in action

EMOJO BABY!

From left to right: Fashion manufacturer, Diesel, relies on Affino to build, manage and maintain its Propaganda site, a resource for anyone with an interest in the brand, from journalists to students Using the ColdFusion-based Affino, Mastercard Iceland can manage its extensive presence online easily The ability to develop Affino rapidly and easily helps Emojo keep costs down and deliver to low budget, publicly-funded bodies such as the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Emojo’s in-depth knowledge of ColdFusion and data-driven applications has saved itself and its clients – which include Wrigley, Diesel and MasterCard – time and money

D

esign and development go hand in hand, but it’s not always an easy partnership. After all, design implies that the business of building sites should rest with a few creative types who snatch inspiration from great names and apply an individual style that’s been coaxed through design school. Development, meanwhile, focuses on automation, speed, time-saving and the words that many fear: databases and servers. Despite these differences, there are good reasons behind the greater uptake in the use of automation to do Web design. First, it is more cost effective for the customer to have dynamic sites. Second, it is easier for larger clients to unify and maintain a dynamically-generated site. A few years ago this might have meant cutting

the developer out of the profits of managing updates. Now though, it is seen as a very positive move, for anyone from small studios to large agencies. Take London firm Emojo, for instance. Back in 1998, the company’s big idea was to create a ColdFusion-based content management and generation system called Affino, and it’s still going strong today. Affino is the brainchild of Markus Karlsson, co-founder of Emojo. When the Web was breaking ground in the mid 1990s, he thought up a way to enable inexperienced users to build and maintain Websites. Affino uses a number of modules that cover core site needs such as layout templates, design skins, accessibility features, calendar capabilities, even messageboards. More importantly, the system is designed to be managed by those with little technical ability.

Emojo uses Affino for its own Website. “I don’t have any development experience,” admits the company’s marketing director, Stefan Karlsson. “But if you look at the Emojo Website, that Website is designed by me, built by me and I think you’ll find 99.7 per cent of the content on it is by me too. So that’s basically what we’re about.” It’s also used by clients, which include the Royal Opera House, Nevada County, UKTV, MasterCard Iceland and Diesel Italy. What attracts these companies to Affino is simplicity and low cost. “If you look at MasterCard Iceland, there are six Websites, on a huge scale of complexity that are pretty much managed by just one technical guy and one editorial guy,” explains Stefan. “Of course, there is expertise to be found within certain consultancies, and it varies as to how good a designer the client is or how good a wordsmith or copywriter

>

Macromedia Masterclass 02 7

ColdFusion in action >

they are. I’m not saying that it completely removes the need for external expertise, but it removes the dependency. And if you have a good skills base in-house, you can train those resources quickly.”

The ColdFusion key The key enabling technology behind the product’s ease of use is ColdFusion. Affino has always been based on the Macromedia application. Its current form is based on the most up-to-date version, ColdFusion MX. “We use ColdFusion because it’s a compact development framework and it has a rapid development curve,” says Stefan. “In our experience, it lets you build complex applications faster and more robustly.” That’s not to say ColdFusion is the only player in town. Of course there are other technologies that would have enabled

Emojo to put Affino on the market. There are database products such as Oracle, or Microsoft’s .NET framework. However, ColdFusion was chosen for Affino because it offered Emojo considerable advantages. ”ColdFusion allows us to focus on creating functionality for the application without having to worry about the individual details of how a query is passed to a database,” explains developer and senior database architect, Roger Gordon. “When I started developing back in 1990, everything was custom built. More recently, looking at the alternatives, we found that ASP, for example, wasn’t really a contender for us. “ColdFusion avoids that and enables the developer to be more productive and focus on the client’s concerns. One other thing that is brilliant about ColdFusion is that we’ve built a system that allows our clients’ in-

Case in point Emojo’s Affino has won the hearts and minds of California’s Nevada County, even out-competing offerings from Silicon Valley, next door… It’s strange that for its content

Using Affino, California’s Nevada County was able to create a Website with 400 channels of information

management system, California’s Nevada State opted for Emojo and Affino as its application of choice. Only a short car ride away is the Silicon Valley, headquarters of many a technology firm. Yet in contrast, ColdFusion-based Affino is the product of a small company located half a day away by aeroplane. Nevada County required a

The county had 90 days to

While Nevada County’s

system to overhaul its Internet

get its site up and running.

site cost $25,000, Stefan

communications as a

Emojo admits this was a tough

Karlsson says a neighbouring

participant in a local

call, but a week-long training

county, which took an entirely

government initiative, The

trip to Britain enabled the

different route to its content

California Counties Internet

office’s Webmaster to launch

management system, wound

Access Project (CIAP).

the first elements of the site in

up spending something in the

no time.

region of half a million dollars

Nevada County had a tight budget of $30,000 for hardware

Nevada County adds

on equipment and consultancy fees over a six month period.

and software. That put most of

departments almost weekly –

the products in the market out

its site currently features more

of the picture. In the end, Affino

than 400 channels of

has got a better site. It’s better

beat three competitors, to win

information and has won six

regarded in the industry and

the contract.

industry awards.

content is up there faster.”

8 Macromedia Masterclass 02

He adds: “Nevada County

house developers to extend our product without our input.” Stefan cites the case of the Webmaster at the Royal Opera House: “He had HTML and Dreamweaver experience, but when he came to Affino, we pressed him to train in ColdFusion and in a short space of time he was doing moderately complicated scripts. The important thing is that he was able to achieve a huge amount of customisation on his Website with our system and then used ColdFusion to fine tune certain parts of it.” To the Webmaster’s relief, the training wasn’t a long, drawn-out process – it involved just a couple of days of in-depth training, followed by some hands-on guidance with the system, from Markus.

Going multiplatform For Emojo, there’s another important factor to consider concerning ColdFusion. “One of the exciting things that we’re doing with Affino is creating something that is database agnostic,” says Gordon. “We use both Linux and SQL Server and at some point we’ll have Oracle and IBM DB2. ColdFusion allows us to extract away from having to worry about the individual connections. It provides a common framework for us to be platform agnostic as much as possible between Windows and Linux. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” Stefan says: “If you look at the Microsoft strategy, once you start buying into one part of it, then you need another part and another part, and before you know it, you’ve remortgaged your house.” Roger continues: “At some point, if we want to run Affino on a Sun Solaris, ColdFusion will run on a Sun Solaris. ColdFusion runs on Linux. ColdFusion runs on Windows. Those are the big server platforms we need to worry about and we made the decision to ensure our clients will not be limited to a particular platform. That’s the direction in which Emojo is moving.” An advantage of this is in keeping development costs down. “We have a unified codebase: that is the key,” says Gordon. “That means we can focus our resources on fixing a bug, testing it, and finishing. We don’t have to keep testing on two different kinds of codebase systems.” ColdFusion’s ease of use also helps to keep Affino’s cost down, as a small

case study development team can write and update applications and functionality quickly. “If you take equal coders, you’ll have significantly more lines of code written in ASP and VB, I think,” Roger suggests. “.NET is an equalization, but that comes about because it has a glitzy front end, more than the actual coding. What ColdFusion compiles down to is actually equivalent to .NET, but Macromedia has a superb compiler in ColdFusion. The language that’s used in ColdFusion is easy to learn, it is extensible, it is well documented, it is backwards-compatible and the server is robust.” To Emojo, this reliability within Affino is important. “You don’t care about the walnut panels when your car doesn’t run; you’re buying the engine,” he points out. Emojo offers the high functionality at reasonable prices: the system starts at £3,500. All in, it’s £17,200. These prices enable Emojo to compete in the growing and lucrative government contracts market, which is governed by limited budgets and extensive demands. Affino is not just a public service tool, though. Private companies with a broad array of microsites also benefit. Take UKTV, for instance. The broadcaster operates lifestyle television channels in the UK, including UKHistory, UKStyle, UKFood and UKG2. Before UKTV became an Emojo client, the process of putting content for each of its channels online was a drawn out and expensive affair. It involved employing several subcontractors and agencies for a range of functions including interface design, content management, even managing the messageboards. UKTV had to pay for the expertise as well as software licences. Furthermore, its staff had to do a great deal of de-duping; searching for duplicated material and whittling it down to a single entry. In all, Stefan estimates this system cost UKTV something like a six or seven figure number to develop and maintain. Emojo’s Affino was able to reduce UKTV’s costs by around two thirds. The full system cost £17,200. In contrast, for one customized and specific section of the site, UKTV pays a design agency around £30,000.

Flexible and extensible Affino is not just easy to use, it also encourages people to come back to your site, thanks to ColdFusion’s extensibility through scripting… In the early days, Affino was a

providing context for products

standard content management

and services on clients’ sites. This means that as well as

system, needing lots of consultancy know-how for its

product information, clients can

implementation. However,

draw in and embed product

pretty early on, the team

reviews, competition

realised that most clients

information and other material

wanted same sort of things

authored using Macromedia

from their sites, such as site

products such as Flash movies.

registration, forums and a way

This increases site value by

to manage user access to

encouraging return visits. “For us, the only

different areas. The team set about modifying Affino to deliver a content-managed, dynamic site in a box.

For Roger Gordon, ColdFusion is capable of producing great results with less code than its competitors.

anything in Websites is long term repeat visits,” Stefan says. “If you get a high volume of

Stefan Karlsson says: “We thought, for us to be successful,

benchmark that’s worth

That functionality was

returning customers, week in

we needed to get the client to

delivered by ColdFusion, but

week out, that is a sign of

do most of the work, then we

with another advantage:

success. Anyone can put out an

could sell an infinite amount of

extensibility. Using scripts,

ad out during the interval of the

Affino because we wouldn’t

ColdFusion enables Affino to

superbowl and get a million

have to sit through every single

pull in material and content

hits – but will any of them

site implementation.”

from all over the Web,

come back?”

“Before, it went to a lot of little design houses for all kinds of generic functionality which Affino can now do for free,” says Stefan. “Instead of handing over £30,000, £20,000 or £10,000, UKTV can now internalise all those costs.”

Returning your investment Of course for applications of this kind, ColdFusion comes at a price. Users of Open Source frameworks like PHP see this as a disadvantage. “Well, you can download ColdFusion for free, and you can do development on it ,” counters Roger referring to the trial downloads programme run by Macromedia. “The thing that is important about it is that it has been around. It has a user base. It has proven value. You can find people with expertise when your business expands. It’s a recognised industry standard.” But getting a return on your investment isn’t just about what’s available free and

what you have to pay for. In ColdFusion, Emojo has an application with a rapid development curve and one that is an industry standard with a large user base. Furthermore, Karlsson and Gordon point out that the language used by ColdFusion, CFML, is mature and reliable. Also, the server is robust – and the clients love it. “That’s why we use ColdFusion,” Stefan sums up. “It enables us to meet our specific needs: being quick to market and giving good value, offering flexibility and empowerment. It’s one of the easiest development languages for clients to learn. So you can take control of your Website and do different tweaks, and you don’t need to invest that much time. You save all the way down the line.” Roger concludes: “You can do relatively simple things very quickly, and relatively complex things with ease.” To see Affino in action and browse more of Emojo’s sites, go to www.emojo.com.

Macromedia Masterclass 02 9

Peachpit books EXCLUSIVE MACROMEDIA STUDIO MX 2004 UK WORKSHOPS! See Studio MX 2004 in action at this exclusive series of seminars held by Macromedia’s experts To accompany this fantastic Masterclass MX 2004 series, Macromedia is running free workshops all over the UK. Here, new and experienced designers will be able to see how they can use Studio MX 2004 to create cutting-edge Internet experiences. Register today to find out more and beat the rush. www.computerarts.co.uk/ macromedia/masterclass

Choose one or all of the following seminars at the events below:

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10 Macromedia Masterclass 02

Hands on with ColdFusion MASTERCLASS MX 2004 Dive in to see exactly how Dreamweaver makes ColdFusion one of the easiest ways to create Internet applications…

On the Computer Arts CD This article is an extract from Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Demystified. On the Computer Arts CD, we provide chapter 21 of this official guide in full (see the Peachpit folder on the root of the disc). Also, turn to page 16 to get 30 per cent off this great book.

WORKING SMARTER WITH COLDFUSION

D

reamweaver MX 2004 is designed to be a complete solution for developing ColdFusion applications. Unlike other server models supported in Dreamweaver, ColdFusion is a ‘tag-based’ language for developing dynamic applications. Rather than using a scripting language, such as PHP, ColdFusion reads embedded custom tags in the page’s regular HTML for the server to execute commands and return data to the browser. From within Dreamweaver, developers can access all the tags available in ColdFusion from the insertion bar. Dreamweaver has several ways to access ColdFusion tags. The most basic way to work with ColdFusion is to use builtin server behaviours and application objects. These insert one or more ColdFusion tags into your code with one dialog box that makes it easy to create complete blocks of code to accomplish particular tasks. Another ColdFusion feature available in Dreamweaver MX 2004 is the ability to create and use ColdFusion Components (CFCs). These are pieces of ColdFusion functionality that are broken out from your main application and that are available to multiple applications. CFCs make your applications more robust and re-usable and are the preferred way to design applications professionally.

COLDFUSION OBJECTS IN THE INSERTION BAR Developers can access all tags that ship with ColdFusion from the insert bar in a ColdFusion page, within a ColdFusion site. Most of the common ColdFusion tags have their own icons. Some of these are available to insert from the More Tags dialog box.

Server variables Server variables are tremendously useful constructions that return information about the environment of the browser, the server and the page that is requesting information. You can use server variables to return information to the screen when the server variable is wrapped in a CFOUTPUT tag. You also can use the variable in a query to insert data into a database. When you click the server variable icon in the CFML insert bar, you can select one of several variables from a drop-down list, as shown in Figure 24.1. You can insert as many server variables as you like, but you have to insert them one at a time. The server variables are as follows: ● ALL_HTTP – Returns all the HTTP information for the request from the browser. ● AUTH_PASS – Returns the password that the user logged in as, if the server supports user authentication.

Figure 24.1 The Server Variable dialog box.

● AUTH_TYPE – Returns the authentication method used to validate the user, if the server supports user authentication. ● CONTENT_LENGTH – Returns the length of the content. ● CONTENT_TYPE – Lists whether the query is using GET or PUT to interact with the server. ● GATEWAY_INTERFACE – Lists the revision of the CGI on the server. ● PATH_INFO – The return path to the requested page from the root of the application. ● PATH_TRANSLATED – Returns the physical address of the page on the server. ● QUERY_STRING – Displays the query information following the ? when a form is submitted. ● REMOTE_ADDR – The IP address of the

>

Macromedia Masterclass 02 11

Hands on with ColdFusion >

remote browser that is hitting the page. ● REMOTE_HOST – The host name of the server that is hitting the page. If the server does not have this feature enabled, it returns the REMOTE_ADDR. ● REMOTE_IDENT – If the HTTP server is configured to support RFC 931 identification, this returns the remote username from the server. ● REMOTE_USER – If the server supports user authentication, the username that the user used to log in is returned. ● SCRIPT_NAME – The path to the script that is executing. ● SERVER_NAME – The name of the server, IP address or DNS alias from the server. ● SERVER_PORT – The port number that the request was sent to. ● SERVER_PROTOCOL – Shows the server’s protocol and the version number. Usually this is HTTP. ● SERVER_SOFTWARE – Returns the server software and version of the remote server. Inserting the HTTP_ALL server variable inside a CFOUTPUT tag looks like this: #CGI.HTTP_ALL# and returns this: HTTP_ACCEPT:*/* HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE:en-us ➥ HTTP_CONNECTION:Keep-Alive HTTP_HOST:www.3981.com ➥ HTTP_REFERER:http://localhost/ test/TMPwtv0nhbkmb.cfm ➥ HTTP_USER_AGENT:Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows ➥ NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) HTTP_CONTENT_LENGTH:13 ➥ HTTP_CONTENT_TYPE:application/xwww-form-urlencoded ➥ HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING:gzip, deflate HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL:no➥ cache Note that you get the host, the URL of the page that called the page with the server variable, the user agent or browser type, and the version all in one server variable.

Application panel. When you insert the CFQUERY from the Insert menu, many more attributes are available to set, but you don’t have the query builder or the ability to test the connection. The general attributes for CFQUERY are as follows: ● Query Name (required) – The query’s name. This is how you reference the query in the code to display data. The query’s name should not have spaces. ● Data Source (required) – The name of the ODBC datasource that you have set up in the ColdFusion Administrator. ● User Name (optional) – The database’s username, if one is set. ● Password (optional) – The password for the database, if there is one. ● SQL (required) – The SQL that goes between the opening and closing CFQUERY tag. Inserting the CFQUERY tag produces code like this:

SELECT * FROM employeetable

This code returns a set of data of all the records in the employee table in the employee database.

CFOUTPUT CFOUTPUT, as shown in Figure 24.2, is the tag used to display information from a query or other operation to the browser. Figure 24.2 The CFOUTPUT dialog box.

CFQUERY The CFQUERY tag is inserted when you create a Recordset (Query) from the

12 Macromedia Masterclass 02

The attributes for CFOUTPUT are as follows:

● Query Name (optional) – The name of the query that contains the data you want to display. When you add the name attribute, you create a loop in which each returned record is output in the order in which it was received from the query. ● Group Field (optional) – The name of the field you want to use to group your results. For example, a query that gets the information for all the employees in a database lets you group the results by department or last name or some other field you specify. ● Start Row (optional) – The row of data from which to begin showing data. If your result set of data from the query has 30 records, setting the Start Row to 100 displays only records 100 through 130. This attribute requires that the name attribute be set. ● Max Rows (optional) – Sets the maximum number of records shown from the result set of data from the query. If your query has 30 records with Start Row set to 10 and Max Rows set to 10, the output shows only records 10 to 20. This attribute requires that the name attribute be set. ● Group Case Sensitive (optional) – SQL query results are generally caseinsensitive. Use this attribute if you want to group your results and respect their case. Inserting the CFOUTPUT tag produces code like this:

To display the results in the browser, you would reference each field name you want to display, wrapped in # signs between the beginning and end of the CFOUTPUT tag: #LastName#, #FirstName#, #Department#


The result in the browser looks like this: Smith, Bill, Accounting Wilson, James, Accounting Washington, Martha, Accounting Russell, Dave, Engineering

Mugler, Sarah, Engineering Louis, Ben, Engineering Brown, Matt, Executive Staff Davis, Karen, Human Resources Davis, Andy, Human Resources Lyons, Aaron, Human Resources

CFINSERT CFINSERT inserts data from a form into a database table. This is shorthand for a SQL insert query. The attributes for CFINSERT are slightly more confusing than other tags. There are more attributes available than you should use. Dreamweaver MX 2004 allows the development of ColdFusion documents for ColdFusion MX and earlier versions. The dialog includes attributes for connectString, dbName, dbServer, dbtype, provider, and providerDSN. These are all deprecated and should not be used if you are working with ColdFusion MX. For the CFINSERT tag to work properly, you need to have the form elements named the same as the fields in your database for ColdFusion to map the data from the form to the database. Why would you use CFINSERT rather than a regular SQL update query? Because it is easier to type the CFINSERT tag, and it allows less room for errors than an insert query, which can get messy. However, it has the limitation of not being able to insert into multiple tables, and cannot accept any input that doesn’t come through a form. If the table you are inserting data into has a primary key that is not autogenerated, CFINSERT must have a field from the form passed that is inserted into that key, or it generates an error. If you have a key that is auto-generated, it works fine. The CFINSERT attributes that are valid for ColdFusion MX are as follows: ● Data Source (required) – The datasource into which you want to insert the record. ● User Name (optional) – The username, if one is needed, to access the database being inserted into. ● Password (optional) – The password, if one is needed, to access the database being inserted into. ● Table Name (required) – The name of the table you need to insert data into.

● Table Owner (optional) – An optional attribute for databases that support table ownership, such as SQL Server and Oracle. ● Table Qualifier (optional) – An optional attribute for databases that support table ownership, such as SQL Server and Oracle. ● Form Fields (optional) – A commadelimited list of fields you want to insert into the datasource. This attribute is optional. If you don’t specify the form fields attribute, CFINSERT processes all the form fields. In effect, you use the Form Fields option to limit the fields you want to process to only the fields that you list. Here’s an example:

This code takes the data entered in a form that has fields named FirstName, LastName, and Department and inserts those values into the employees table of the employee datasource.

COLDFUSION COMPONENTS Designing your ColdFusion application generally starts when you have a particular problem to solve. For example, maybe you need to build a shopping cart or build a system to take care of your human resources information. You have one problem and a solution designed specifically for that problem. However, as your site grows and the functionality becomes more complex, having applications in multiple places that need access to the same data or that need to perform many of the same functions becomes a liability. You end up with more and more processing pages in different locations that all do the same thing. If you need to make a change, you end up having to change multiple locations. One solution that ColdFusion provides is ColdFusion Components (CFCs). CFCs are files that encapsulate your application’s information or functionality into separate

files that can be maintained and accessed separately by multiple pages and applications. For a detailed look at ColdFusion Components, check out Macromedia ColdFusion MX Web Application Construction Kit by Ben Forta et al. Dreamweaver enables you to build CFCs quite easily by adding them as a document type that you can select from the New File dialog box. When you select Dynamic Page and ColdFusion Component, Dreamweaver opens a new page and inserts the necessary code framework:





The CFCOMPONENT tag starts the file just like starts an HTML file and indicates that the file is a CFC. Each CFC can contain multiple CFFUNCTION tags, each of which is a method of the component. Each CFFUNCTION can accept one or more arguments that are data passed to the function. It also returns some information that is handed back to the page that called the CFC. A simple CFC would be one that gets a list of employees from a database and lists them with their departments. To make this interesting, though, the CFC also allows you to pass a variable from a form to limit the search to look for employees in a particular department. This is the CFC you will create in the exercise for this chapter.

EXERCISE 24.1

Make sure the workstation is properly set up You need to have ColdFusion MX installed on your machine, and the service needs to be running. You also need to have a Web browser installed and running. You can test this by starting the ColdFusion

>

Macromedia Masterclass 02 13

Hands on with ColdFusion >

administrator and checking the Data Sources. You should see that a data source named cfsnippets is installed. It comes with ColdFusion MX. If you see all that, you are set up correctly.

Set up your site If you don’t have a site set up for ColdFusion, set one up now. If you have a ColdFusion site defined already, you can skip to the next section. You don’t need any supporting files for this exercise. You will create the entire project from scratch, so you don’t need to move any files around for this exercise. 1. Expand the Site Files panel, and choose Site > New Site to open the Site Definition dialog box. In this dialog box, bring the Advanced tab to the front. 2. For Local Info, set the following: ● Name – SearchEmployeeExercise ● Local Root Folder – Create a new folder. Call it SearchEmployeeExercise. Set it as your local folder. 3. For Testing Server, set the following: ● Server Type – ColdFusion ● Access – Local/Network ● Testing Server Folder – Browse to the SearchEmployeeExercise folder. ● URL Prefix – http://localhost/SearchEmployeeExerci se/. 4. Click OK to close the Site Definition dialog box. The Site panel now shows your site. Note that the left portion of the panel shows the testing server, not the remote site, which appears when you’re working with static sites (unless you have changed your preferences to change the locations of the panels). 5. When you’re working with a dynamic site, Dreamweaver uses the files on the testing server for previewing in the browser. Because you will create everything from scratch, you don’t need to move anything around.

Create the ColdFusion Component 1. Select File > New. 2. In the Category column, select Dynamic Page, and in the Dynamic Page column, select ColdFusion Component, and click Create.

14 Macromedia Masterclass 02

Your page should look like this:





Save the file as EmployeeDataCFC.cfc in the SearchEmployeeExercise folder. You now have the basis of the CFC created and ready to modify in Code view. To edit CFCs, you need to stay in Code view. 3. In the CFFUNCTION tag, change the name of the function to GetEmployeeFunction. You can have multiple functions in one CFC, so naming them with as much information as you can is helpful. 4. In the CFFUNCTION tag, change the returntype to query from string. This function returns a query that the calling page can use to display. 5. In the CFARGUMENT tag, change the name to SearchString, and delete the type attribute. 6. In the CFARGUMENT tag, set the required attribute to No. You want to be able to call the function whether or not an argument is passed from the calling page. 7. Delete the CFSET tag following the CFARGUMENT. 8. Change the value of the CFRETURN from the placeholder myResult to SearchEmployees. You are ready to add the code to actually do something in the CFC now that you have the framework for the tag ready. 9. Place the insertion point between the CFARGUMENT and the CFRETURN tag. Click the CFQUERY object in the CFML insertion bar. 10. In the General tab of the Tag Editor for CFQUERY, enter the following: Query Name – SearchEmployees Data Source – cfsnippets User Name – Leave blank Password – Leave blank SQL – SELECT * FROM employees

ORDER BY LastName Click OK to close the dialog box. Your code should look like this:



SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY LastName



You now have a query that selects everything in the employees table and then returns it to the calling page. This works fine for cases when your user wants to return all the records, but with the CFARGUMENT, the component is set to accept some input to limit that search. You need to add that condition to the query. 11. Place the cursor after the FROM employees line, and press Enter to create a new line. 12. InClick the CFIF object in the CFML insertion bar. You need to enter the condition to check. In this case, you have an argument in CFARGUMENT called arguments.Search String, and you need to see if it has a value. Enter the following: arguments.SearchString NEQ "" You are asking if arguments.SearchString is not equal (NEQ) to nothing. This is the same as asking if it is equal to anything. If it is equal to anything, the CFIF is true, and the code in the CFIF is executed. 13. Move the cursor to the end of the CFIF and before the /CFIF. Press Enter to create a new line. 14. On the new line, type WHERE Department LIKE ‘%#arguments.SearchString#%’ Save the file. You have added a WHERE clause to the SQL that limits the search to records in which the Department is like the variable

arguments.SearchString, which contains whatever value is passed to the component from the calling page. Your code should look like this:



SELECT * FROM employees

WHERE Department LIKE '%#arguments.SearchString#%' ORDER BY LastName



If you want to, you can reformat it a little to make it easier to read.

Create the Search Employees page You have created the CFC that executes the query and returns the result, so now you need to make the page that calls the CFC. 1. Create a new ColdFusion page from the New File dialog box. You don’t need a CFC, just a regular ColdFusion page. You should be in Design view. 2. Save the page as searchemployees.cfm. 3. From the Forms insert bar, insert a form in the form type: Enter Department: 4. On the same line, insert a text field from the Forms insert bar. Name the text field department in the Property Inspector. Press Enter to create a new line. 5. Insert a Submit button on the new line. 6. Save the file. Your page should look like Figure 24.6. 7. Change the title of the page to Search Employees. 8. You have the form for the user to enter the department to search. Now you need to invoke the component you built and set up the page so that if it is called without any

Figure 24.6 Searchemployees.cfm.

form input, the component is not called. This is the case when the page is called the first time or from any link directly to the page. However, when the page is called from itself with or without any input, the component is invoked. 9. Switch to Code view. 10. Place the cursor at the end of the form tag. Press Enter a few times to give yourself some space to work. 11. On one of the blank lines, insert a CFIF. 12. In the CFIF tag, you need to test to see if a form variable is being passed to the page using the IsDefined() function. Type IsDefined(“Form.department”) 13. Place the cursor between the CFIF and the /CFIF tags. Press Enter to give yourself more space. 14. Open the Application panel group, and bring the Components panel to the front. Select CF Component from the drop-down list at the top left of the panel if it is not showing. 15. You should see an entry in the panel for SearchEmployeeExercise, as shown in Figure 24.7. Expand the entry to see the CFCs available. 16. Select the query called GetEmployeeFunction(SearchString) in the EmployeeDataCFC in the Components panel. Click the Insert button (the second from the right at the top of the panel) to insert the CFINVOKE into the document. Your code should look something like this:

Search Employees

Enter Department:

You need to add the CFARGUMENT to the CFINVOKE tag to specify the name of the variable that is passed to the CFC.

Figure 24.7 The SearchEmployeeExercise CFC in the Components panel.

Read more of this book This is an extract from Chapter 24 of Laura Gutman’s Macromedia Dreamweaver Demystified, The Official Guide to Using Dreamweaver MX 2004. (Peachpit Press, 2004)

Macromedia Masterclass 02 15

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Creative Collection 03 is a fantastic selection of the best tutorials, tips and features from Computer Arts and Computer Arts Projects magazines over the last year. Featuring expert advice for Flash, Dreamweaver, FreeHand, Photoshop and more, this is the ultimate guide to leading creative software. If you subscribe or renew your subscription to Computer Arts before 29 Feb 2004 you’ll be eligible to receive this superb collection. You’ll also get 13 issues delivered to your door, including all CD-ROMs and supplements. UK readers can subscribe for £54. US, Canada and EU readers can subscribe for just £73.53. Readers from outside the EU and North America can subscribe for £86.53. Call our hotline today on +44 (0)870 444 8455 or email us on [email protected]. Please quote code COAMX02. Offer ends 29 February 2004. Offer available by phone or email only, not available with online applications.

£300, to one reader. These ten great new books contain everything you need to know about using the MX 2004 range of software. See full contents below. THIRD PRIZE Win a subscription to Computer Arts and Computer Arts Projects. By providing industry insight and expertise to everyone interested in digital art, design and animation, these magazines are essential monthly reads. Our third prize winner will get one year’s supply of both magazines – that’s 26 issues, including CD-ROM and delivery, for themselves or as a gift.

PEACHPIT’S TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE LIBRARY IN FULL All this valuable and in-depth knowledge could be yours with this huge library – free to one lucky reader. Flash MX 2004: Training from the Source, Dreamweaver MX 2004: Training from the Source, Fireworks MX 2004: Training

from the Source, Flash MX 2004 Actionscript: Training from the Source, Flash MX Professional 2004 Application Development: Training from the Source, Flash MX 2004 Actionscript 2.0 Dictionary, Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion and

PHP: Training from the Source, Macromedia FreeHand MX: Training from the Source, Macromedia ColdFusion MX: Training from the Source, and Macromedia ColdFusion MX Web Application Construction Kit.

To be in with a chance of winning, answer the following simple question: what traditional colour are New York taxis? a) Green b) Yellow c) Blue To enter, register at www.computerarts.co.uk/macromedia/ masterclass to access the competition link. Alternatively, to enter by post, send your answer on a postcard to Macromedia MX 2004 Competition, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. The closing date for entries is 15 April 2004. Competition terms and conditions: This competition open to UK readers only. Employees or freelancers at Future Publishing, Macromedia Inc or Pearson Education and their families are not eligible to enter. The first-prize winner will be responsible for travel insurance, spending money and transfers to and from airports. If any books are unavailable, the winner may choose a book from Peachpit Press, Macromedia Press or New Riders to the same value. The winners will be selected from all the correct entries on 16 April 2004. There is no cash alternative. The editor’s decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into.

Macromedia Masterclass 02 17

why bother? In your clients’ eyes, good value means more work for you, in less time. Keep them happy with dynamic and interactive sites and Web applications. Here’s how ColdFusion can help with this in-house and agency work… HIGH PRODUCTIVITY AND LOW MAINTENANCE Name: David Bishop, creative director Company: Front Media Web: www.frontmedia.co.uk

“As a Web developer, your return on investment is measured simply by how much quicker you can turn out reliable and robust systems that deliver your client’s requirements. These systems also need minimal support. “Simply put, ColdFusion results in high productivity for a developer requiring negligible support. ROI is high and the company and clients benefit in a very short space of time. “You can build robust Web applications with far fewer lines of code than ASP, PHP, and JSP, and the pages are served quicker. The use of custom tags helps to streamline code re-use. Speciallybuilt tags, that are used for standard log-in and security procedures, content management interfaces, news modules and shopping systems, can be a huge time saver.

“As designers, we’ve found that the code in a ColdFusion page tends to be less cluttered and more easily comprehensible than its rivals. This means adjustments to page layouts can easily be implemented, even after a programmer has added dynamic functionality.” ORGANISING OASIS: FROM WEBSITE, TO FANS, TO GIGS… Name: Matthew Logan, managing director Company: Ophidia Ltd Web: www.ophidia.co.uk

“One of the biggest ColdFusion projects undertaken by Ophidia was the development of a content management system for the world-famous band Oasis: www.oasisinet.com – the official band site. “We inherited the design from the previous site developers. Given the scale of the information on the site, and the need for the management team and record label staff to update such items as tour news, release news and other Simple Thinking’s ColdFusion-driven Website. “ColdFusion offers a significant benefit to us as a team. Our designers understand and can work with the display code to alter templates without needing help from the technical team.”

18 Macromedia Masterclass 02

information, we decided to build the system in ColdFusion. It allowed for a totally scaleable site, with a content management console that was simple to use by the staff who were charged with looking after the band. “It went live just before the band announced its online sale of tickets for the Finsbury Park shows, which sold out through the Website in one weekend. Its ease of use meant the site administrators were able to keep fans totally up to date with how fast the tickets were selling – and even announce the addition of an extra show due to popular demand.” SPEED, POWER AND SECURITY AT YOUR FINGER TIPS Name: Ian Simmins, Web developer Company: BECTA Web: www.becta.org.uk

“It’s easy to get going in ColdFusion, because everything is tag-based. High development speed and easily extendable functionality makes CF a very powerful technology. Also, it offers better security than certain other Web development languages.” CRACKING THE CODING ISSUES Name: Alister Lilley, lead developer Company: Simple Thinking Web: www.simplethinking.co.uk

“We chose ColdFusion as our primary development for a number of reasons. With the introduction of ColdFusion MX came ColdFusion Components (CFCs): re-usable code objects, which we create and store in a code library. “Building up this code library is a key investment of time and resources that benefits our clients. We can provide powerful Websites, built in comparatively short development timeframes and using proven and tested technology. “As a development platform, the key advantage that ColdFusion MX allows is the separation of function from

display. This offers a significant amount to us as a team – our designers understand and can work with the display code to alter templates without needing help from the technical team. TALKING THE SAME LANGUAGE Name: Chris Rice, senior developer Company: 192.com Web: www.192.com

“ColdFusion has enabled 192.com to rapidly develop, deploy and maintain one of the leading UK business and people finder Websites, with minimal outlay on training due to its relative ease of use. “The simplicity of its tagcentric environment allows developers who are familiar with other languages to quickly begin writing complex code.” PICK UP THE BASICS IN A WEEKEND Name: Heather Peters, Web developer Company: National Maritime Museum, London Web: www.nmm.ac.uk

“In my opinion, it is the easiest to learn when looking at producing databasedriven sites, given that it’s based on a tag structure similar to that used in HTML. “The basics can be learned in a weekend, and Macromedia’s ColdFusion forum site is a phenomenal source of information. “In terms of productivity, the introduction of components in CFMX has led to a vast improvement. It has meant that you can build generic code, based on object orientated programming rather than functional programming, which can easily be re-used in different projects. “For example we have an image re-sizing component built in-house, which is used in at least three different Websites. Although we are still in the early stages of using components we can already see that it has led to a definite reduction in time spent building our Websites.”

Peachpit Essential books for the creative community

Improve Your Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Skills TIME SAVING TIPS AND TECHNIQUES Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips By Joseph Lowery and Angela Buraglia 0-735-71379-0 • £30.99 Dreamweaver MX 2004 Web Application Recipes By Joseph Lowery and Eric Ott 0-735-71320-0 • £38.99

INSPIRATION Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic By Massimo Foti, Angela Buraglia, Daniel Short et al 0-735-71378-2 • £23.50

IN-DEPTH REFERENCE Dreamweaver MX 2004 Demystified By Laura Gutman 0-735-71384-7 • £34.99 Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Databases By Sean Nicholson 0-735-71370-7 • £34.99

Announcing Macromedia® MX 2004: New versions of Dreamweaver®, Flash™ , Fireworks® and Studio. This is for you.

The hardcore, the dedicated, the enthusiast. The one with a passion for figuring things out. The one who builds things … and takes them apart again.

You give us new ways to see things. You show us things we never saw in the first place. You make things better. You make us better.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it.

For more information and to order your copy of Studio MX 2004 or Studio MX 2004 with Flash Professional, please visit www.macromedia.com/uk/buy or call Macromedia direct 0131 458 6766.

Or as readers of Macromedia Masterclass MX 2004, why not take advantage of our special offer, available for a limited time only! Call 0870 730 6996 to receive 10% off the RRP of Studio MX 2004 or Studio MX 2004 with Flash Professional.

Register to attend one of the Macromedia Masterclass workshops. Visit www.macromedia.com/uk/events/masterclass/workshops for more information.

Macromedia MX 2004. Run with it. Copyright © 2003 Macromedia, Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Macromedia, the Macromedia logo, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, and Macromedia Flash are trademarks or registered trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other marks are the properties of their respective owners.