It’s still early in development (read: it often crashes), but The Bean Machine applies nodal, patch-based development to Java. The interface is mysteriously close to Quartz Composer, down to capabilities, UI, and even the 3D cube tutorial. Personally, I use Java because it can do things Quartz Composer can’t, but it’s interesting nonetheless — and raises, again, the question of why we don’t see more tools that try to meld the capabilities of code and patches.

The cool bit: nodes are Java Beans, so you really could use this to combine the best of both worlds if it matures. No download yet, but we’ll be watching … perhaps it will inspire other developers, as well.

The project is labeled “experimental”, but could be worth a look. Developer Jerry Huxtable has lots of other goodies for Java-heads on his page, including lots of 2D image processing stuff and a map editor — Processing lovers, might want to pop this into your del.icio.us.

Bean Machine @ JH Labs

JH Labs main page with lots o’ projects

While After Effects is a 3D environment, it’s generally used in quite a limited way, being comprised mostly of 2D surfaces moving in 3D space. Steve Kilisky (After Effects Senior Product Manager) has recently posted some great work by designers pushing After Effects’ 3D capabilities to the limits:

AE or 3D looks at a superb animation (44MB download) by Chris Zwar, who has in the past been a CreativeCow contributor.

In terms of what was AE 3D- the answer is practically everything. The curtains drawing back at the beginning were a piece of stock footage but everything else was done inside AE. Even the curtains which don’t draw back are solids with fractal noise. The bouncing balls were CC spheres (with expressions to squash and bounce them appropriately), the “gun” at the end was a CC cylinder, the wooden blocks which form the rings and the “Challenge” pattern were just 3D solids arranged by expressions, etc etc.

CreamyOrange - Extreme 3D explores a similar fairground theme. Putting together a ferris wheel, roller coaster and spinny chair thing using AE, Photoshop and Illustrator. The final piece was comprised of 7000 3D layers, and seems to have triggered a rendering bug in AE (which Steve has comitted to investigating).

It’s great to see artists and designers pushing the limits of software, but even more refreshing is that the developers (and product managers) are blogging publicly to acknowledge the work these people are creating and troubles they’re encountering.

I’ve fallen behind. I apologise. These videos all deserve posts of their very own, but that will take mucho time, so instead I’ll just hang them out there and get on with whatever’s next:

MIT Sketching

Bugger the Jetpack, I want one of those! (via Wooster Collective)

WOFL on Motionographer. Simple animation that creeps up and tears out your brain.
Alpen - Start Now - some innovation in human-based stop motion. The frame morphing causes some unfortunate artefacting, but the rest of the production and photography are superb.
Make: Ruben’s Tube - Sound visualization… with FIRE! If you can watch this video without thinking “I wonder if I’d be able to bring one of those to my next gig”, you’re stronger than I.

I love mice. They’re still a great way to do many things, and while some may think they’re anachronistic, they still do the job for a lot of interface tasks quite nicely. But they’re also painfully awkward for many tasks in 2D and 3D graphics. The folks at 3Dconnexion have been rethinking input devices in ways that tailor them to the software we use, and they have some interesting-looking solutions.