I’m always amazed when I meet After Effects users who don’t know about or utilize expressions. I’m no scripting guru, but the few expression tricks I know get used constantly. A couple of simple expressions are extremely useful for visualists, allowing you to quickly pump out incremental clips by just changing slider values.

The creatively titled “After Effects Expressions” (Come on people, Google Juice isn’t the only rationale you need to consider when naming your blog) starts with the basics, but quickly gets into conditional expressions and slider-driven animation, which is visualist gold as far as I’m concerned.

In After Effects, an expression is a Javascript based script in that can either modify a parameter or drive the parameter entirely, like position, opacity, or perhaps a Gaussian blur level. We can add an expression to any parameter that has a stopwatch icon next to the parameter. The exclusion to this rule are Masks parameters like Mask Shape, Mask Feather, etc.

This stuff is coming from Graymachine’s Harry J Frank, who is also involved in AE Freemart, so you can expect plenty more goodness to come.

I received my Arduino today, and in preparation I’ve been saving up some Arduino/Wiring/Processing links of interest to a newbie physical-computerer.

If you haven’t Arduino’d before, here’s Todbot on why it’s a rocking little microcontroller. Tod also tells us how to make an Arduino Breadboard Shield, for quick circuit prototyping.

You should probably familiarise yourself with the Arduino Board, then have a look at ARDUINO meets PROCESSING - physical computing and computer graphics site: Projects containing the basic physical interactions mediated by an Arduino board.

The Arduino meets Processing project intends to make it as easy as possible for anyone to explore the world of physical computing. All you need is an Arduino board as well as the Arduino and Processing software, which you can download on their project websites.

Some of the pages seem a little incomplete, but it contains basic circuit information and code for: Pushbutton, Switch(es), Tilt Sensor, Accelerometer, Potentiometer, LDR Light Sensor, NTC Temperature Sensor, Joystick, Ultrasonic Sensor, Piezo Element.

Of course the Arduino Tutorials page has loads of examples. Of major interest to VJs may be:
Blinking LED.
Dimming 2 LEDs (RGB colour mixing).
LED Driver makes use of an LED Driver in order to control an almost endless amount of LEDs with only 4 pins.

Both Peter and I have Arduinos now, so you can expect things to be getting a little more physical in the future. Don’t be scared, we’ll be gentle.

It doesn’t surprise me that so many discussions of technology have to do with tools rather than “art.” Odds are, you know what art you want to make — it’s the tools that may or may not help you get there. On that note, I want to point to an interesting chat I’ve been having with subbasshead on the forums:

Best tool for QT random frame playback/output?

Jitter is an excellent tool for doing what he wants to do here; it’s perfect for creating custom video patches that do what you like. My focus lately has been on building all my VJ apps in Jitter, not to impress anyone, necessarily, but because even for simple playback they do everything I want and nothing else.

Subbasshead comes across one of my favorite sets of Jitter sample patches to play with, the “Jitter Recipes” by Andrew Benson. Andrew’s name is all over the Jitter example content, too. (Speaking of which, I find a lot of people don’t actually know how much example content is included in the Jitter install. Aside from the tutorials, there are folders full of example patches in the [Max folder] > examples > jitter-examples folder. Many of these cover topics you won’t find elsewhere in the documentation. I wish some of them had better contents or were more simplified, but they’re useful nonetheless. Andrew has been taking these the extra mile in updated recipes online:

Jitter Recipes Book 1
Book 2
Book 3

If you haven’t checked book 3 since May (I hadn’t), you’ve missed two new patches, including an homage to the legendary Video Toaster. (Ah, Video Toaster.) Some of Andrew’s crazy results are pictured above.

I promise we’ll have some ready-made video tools covered here on CDMo, too, but for those of you adventuring into Jitter, we’re here to help you make sure those escapades are rewarding.