After Effects API Zone

No more SDKs for me.

With the completion of the CS3 launch, I've moved full-time to my new responsibilities as Engineering Manager for (formerly) Serious Magic products (OnLocation, Ultra and Visual Communicator).

Continue reading "Passing the torch" »

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Give them a try.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry, folks. It's been too long since my last post.

There has been plenty of action on the AE API front, but all if it NDA'd. Now the public preview is up, and you can see for yourselves what the team has been up to.

Marvelous.

Okay, back to getting this suite out the door...

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Regardless of the answer to such philosophical questions, I wanted to fully endorse and support Apple's XCode 2.4.1 as a development environment for After Effects plug-ins.

Apple fixed the issues the After Effects team was having (and which were blocking me from using 2.4, and supporting you folks' usage of 2.4).

Onward and upward!

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to the efforts of the folks at Apple, it is now safe for After Effects developers to move to XCode 2.4.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For the (completely hypothetical, you understand) next release of After Effects, we will NOT be moving to XCode 2.4, for a variety of reasons into which I will not publicly go. Suffice it to say: Known Issues™.

Stick with 2.3.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yikes, has it really been a month?

Steve Warner (Director of Engineering for our group) and I just had a fantastic trip back to Stockholm for customer visits, and then to Amsterdam for the IBC trade show. I'm digging out of my inbox now, but I wanted to post to say "Thank You!" to the customers who spent time with us, and to the AE developers who made the IBC show worthwhile.

Sorry folks, didn't bring a camera or the family; more pictures soon!

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let me know if this helps.

Download file

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So, if you're developing on a MacIntel machine, and testing with AE 7.0, you'll need to add "PowerPC" to the architectures to build, in each sample project's settings.

Sorry.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Release 2 of the AE SDKs are now available:

http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/aftereffects/devcenter.html

While there are still some rough edges, XCode 2.3 projects are provided for OS X, as are Visual Studio .NET 2005 projects on Windows.

In compliance with revenue recognition regulations, no new functionality is present in the updated SDKs.

I've received some feedback that posting irrelevant personal photos was distracting. I made sure that, in this irrelevant personal photo, I'm at least wearing an AE hat.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's tough to "aim" the After Effects SDK; it could be used for so many different things.

One could learn the rudiments of C or C++ based image processing, just fiddling around with the samples. One could learn about workflow automation just reading through the headers (AE_GeneralPlug.h would make most integration engineers' mouths water).

The SDK Guide could be a reference manual, a cookbook, a tutorial...

What do YOU hope to get out of the next After Effects SDK? Besides the XCode and .NET 2005 samples, I mean?

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Wouldn't an AEGP project diff tool be slick?

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hullo!

Amsterdam and Stockholm were fabulous. Thanks to Jens, Nils & Peder for their offers of hospitality and assistance around Stockholm. I could visit Stockholm at one end of my IBC trip; let me know if you'd like to meet. I know this place that serves awesome reindeer...

___

My prediction of new SDKs containing XCode and .NET 2005 samples was overly-optimistic; the Jell-O is still setting. I'll let everyone know when they're up.

I quite enjoyed this year's NAB (my 9th); very pleasant this year. Adobe's booth looked wonderful, standing room only. The Plug-in Pavilion had traffic and the Adobe-adjacent position seemed ideal. Over the next month or so, I plan to meet with multiple Adobe VPs to discuss improvements to how we work with developers.

Your input is appreciated.

And now, the content that made me flag this with the "irrelevant" topic:

Noel:

Me, looking thoughtful (and furry):

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, there's a U2U forum for AE plug-in developers. Cool!

Haven't yet figured out a way to block the use of graphical emoticon substitution in postings.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a better understanding of why you should update your effects to be 32bpc (and, of necessity, adopt the new-fangled SmartFX API messaging), read this bit about After Effects 7.0 and the possibilities for 32-bit color fun.

Posted by Bruce Bullis at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)