If you’d like to explore the UV Mapping concept in a developer style with a little less hyperbole, take a look at AE: Projecting a Movie onto a Complex Surface where David van Brink walks you through his experiments and includes a sample AE project.

Pixel Bender is really exciting. A very accessible kernel-style image processing platform without the baggage and overhead of digging into the AE SDK. There is also a useful subset of the kernel language that works in Flash, like these 3D Normal Mapping experiments. Give it a try.

First of all, we create a Socket Object, and connect to our web feed. In this case we are looking for all photos tagged red referenced by this line

webConnect.write (' GET /services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=red HTTP/1.0\n\n');

We then fetch and parse the XML, and loop through looking for a link element with an enclosure attribute like so

for(entry in elements)
{

	if(elements[entry].localName() == "entry")
	{
		var entryNodes = elements[entry].elements();
		for(x = 0; x < entryNodes.length(); x++){
				if(entryNodes[x].localName() == 'link')
				{
					if(entryNodes[x].@rel.toString() == "enclosure")
					{
						pictureArray.push(entryNodes[x].@href.toString());
					}
				}
		}

	}
}

Once we've gathered up an array of links, we download the photos using system.callSystem() and a command line app called curl. There is probably a Windows version of curl, but it probably won't be installed on your machine which makes this a mostly Mac script. This code handles the download and import. Note, my version of Wordpress is really upset about using the keyword system in code listing, thus there is extra whitespace around the system.callSystem() call in the code listing below.

for(y =0; y < pictureArray.length; y++)
{

	var picNameSet = pictureArray[y].split("/");
	var picName = "/" +  picNameSet[picNameSet.length -1];

	var curlString  = "curl -O " + pictureArray[y];
	var retVal = sys  tem.callSyste  m(curlString);

	var fileToImport = new File(picName);
	var myProject = app.project;

	if(fileToImport.exists)
	{

			var my_io = new ImportOptions(fileToImport);

			if(my_io.canImportAs(ImportAsType.FOOTAGE)){
				try{
					myItem = myProject.importFile(my_io);

				}catch(e){
					alert('couldn\'t import flickr item with error: \r' + e.toString())
				}

			}
	}

}

I mentioned this code was slightly flawed. Network activities are by their nature asynchronous, our tasks go out into the ether and we don't now when or how they return. In this case I start the download and quickly check to see if the file is available. If it's not, I just skip it. In the real world of network activities this will never do. AE scripting by it's nature is a pretty synchronous activity, we do one thing and then another. As I explore this style of scripting I'm investigating work arounds on how to mesh the two styles of programming a bit better. For now, I just ignore it. grin. If you've got ideas about smart ways to handle asynch network scripting in After Effects, I'd love to hear about it.

Anyway, I run the script and import 20 or so photos matching the tag red. In this case I'm just discarding all the metadata and context information that make the photos really interesting, but it's a fun experiment and I get to see a bunch of cool photos. As I continue to explore, hopefully I'll come up with more robust network programming and more concrete tools for using web feeds in an interesting way.

zip download of db_flickrExperiment

This code segment outlines the basics.

webConnect = new Socket;
response = new String;

if(webConnect.open("feeds.feedburner.com:80","UTF-8")) {

webConnect.write('GET /current/currentpicks?format=xml HTTP/1.0nn');

response    =  webConnect.read(100000);

response = response.toString();

var xmlStart = response.indexOf("<?xml");
var xmlString = response.substring(xmlStart, response.length);

alert(xmlString)

webConnect.close();

} else {

alert (""unable to open webConnect via Socket"")

}

We open a Socket and connect to, in this case, a feedburner feed. We use the read() method to read in the XML, and since the Socket object includes the header we use indexOf to find the beginning of the XML and substring to read to the end of the line.

A couple of gotchas in the code. In this case the header tells us the document encoding is utf-8 so we explicity set it with

webConnect.open("feeds.feedburner.com:80","UTF-8")

Also, when Matt and I were initially exploring this we were just getting the header. It looks like a GET request with

response    =  webConnect.read()

allows a block response, and the later content was going off into the ether, If we used

response    =  webConnect.read(100000);

with a sufficiently large number to include all of the XML we got all of the contents of the XML file. This seems like a really bad idea, since we’ll never know the size of the XML file unless we munge some headers and setting it arbitrarily high also seems like a bad idea. Can someone who’s spent more time with the Socket object leave a comment or email me on how to handle the block response or alternatives to setting a big count for the read() method? I’d appreciate it.

Anyway, that’s the basic idea. You’d then parse the xmlString variable and do fun stuff with it. One heads up, the sample above includes namespaces, so be sure to read the section on namespaces in the Scripting Guide.

This will definitely make things a lot easier to develop tools, and it opens up a whole new slew of possibilites for Web 2.0 mashup tools and explorations when combined with After Effects Socket or new HttpConnection support. kuler explorer anyone? If you’re a scripter, you owe it to yourself to check out the ExtendScript Toolkit (ESTK) 2.0 there are a lot of features that sort of “hide” in Extendscript that aren’t obvious in the After Effects CS3 scripting guide(pdf link).

More experimentation with sampleImage(). This one relies on this expression.

target = thisComp.layer("layerToSample.mov");
samples = new Array();

var spacing = 10;
var w = target.width / spacing ;
var layerOrder = 1;
var h = 10 * layerOrder;

letters = "   .,:!-+=;iot76x0s&8%#@$";

for(x= 0; x < w; x++){
	samples[x] = target.sampleImage([x* spacing ,h],[spacing , spacing], false, time);
}

var string = '';

for(z = 0; z < samples.length; z++){
	var y = Math.round((0.299 * samples[z][0] + 0.587 * samples[z][1] + 0.114* samples[z][2]) * 100)/ 4;
	string = string + letters.substring(y,y + 1);

}

We loop through the row of pixels and place the sampled RGB pixels in the samples array, convert the RGB samples to YUV and grab the Y or brightness value for comparison against a rough gradient of ASCII values. For best results, use a monospace font to retain proper spacing. A more complete script/expression and breakdown to come.

sampleImage() is a new layer method expression introduced in After Effects CS3 that allows you to access a layer’s color pixel data. Combined with sophisticated particle systems like Particular, I think we’re likely to see some really interesting designer driven explorations a la Processing, but with more of a tinkering, let’s try things out approach.

I’ll have more scripts, and automated stuff as I explore further, but until then you might want to take a look at the reference and examples that Dan Ebberts is posting at the brilliant MotionScript.com

Paul was also kind enough to send me his upgrades and update to my Auto Rig Script for After Effects. I’ve posted his version of the script and I hope to make his changes permanent once I can get some field testing of it working out in all situations. So, I’d appreciate it if you’d download it and give me feedback if you have any issues.

Great work Paul!

UPDATE 04.24.2007

Paul posted a project (riggedCam_noXYZ.zip) set up to animate the null instead of the camera that will allow the use of motion paths addressed in the comments below. It also sounds like Paul has a lot of ideas about new features and is looking for feedback at the thread he’s set for the script at aenhancers.

UPDATE 06.09.2007
Paul has updated his script to version 1.1

Paul writes…
I’ve posted a new version of that AEtoC4D script that exports normal
AE cameras, and more.

AE to C4D

Unfortunately, the post was more of a tech demo of the kinds of things that were possible with After Effects scripting and less of a practical demonstration for non-technical users. I still urge non-technical folks to dip their toes into the scripting waters, it can be really rewarding, but the challenges presented in “rolling your own” in this situation may be a bit much. So, I decided to write a small application to provide a way for readers who don’t want to deal with the scripting hassle to use some of the techniques I described in the article.

FCPToAE (working title) is an application for OSX 10.4 and above designed to create a .jsx file from a Final Cut XML file for import into After Effects without the hassle of scripting the different parts yourself.

How to use FCPToAE

1. Download and run the application2. Open a valid Final Cut XML file exported from a sequence with File:Open. It’s important that you export a sinqle sequence from FCP and not a project or you will get an alert when you run the .jsx file. Any version of Final Cut XML (1-3) is fine.You should end up with something that looks like this:

For this version, the only column that is editable is the first column which allows you to make an individual clipitem active or inactive in After Effects. This is handy for not importing FCP native items like Bars and Tone and Slug, although there is rudimentary support for placeholder images for those items.3. Click the Export to After Effects button and save the exported .jsx script4. In After Effects, select File:Scripts:Run Script File and navigate to your exported script file.5. When I run from the above, I get something that looks like this:

In After Effects:Preferences make sure that “Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network” is checked and “Enable Javascript Debugger” is unchecked. “Enable Javascript Debugger” being unchecked allows us to substitute placeholder images if we are unable to get a valid path to your footage. You might want to enable it if you want to troubleshoot a path problem.FCPToAE is designed to work on the same machine that the project was created. If you run the exported .jsx file on another machine the script will attempt to use a placholder image which you can replace with File:Replace Footage in After Effects. If you run the script from Windows you will also need to replace the placeholderImagePath variable in the script with a valid Windows path and substitute the correct image and path in var placeholder in the import section of the script.

I’m not sure where this application will end up. I’m contemplating producing some shareware workflow applications and functionality from several of the small utilities I’ve released will definitely be wrapped in. I’m working on improving my Cocoa interface design and programming skills and slowly but surely feel like I’m approaching the point where there might be a product in there somewhere. I’d love to hear from readers about the kinds of workflow problems they’d like solved in creative workflow applications.

I do know what it is not. It’s not a replacement for Automatic Duck. Wes Plate has put years of work and effort into his product and it shows in the polish and constant new feature introduction with each version. If you use this functionality daily, you owe it to yourself to not try and cut corners and buy Automatic Duck. It’s really worth it.

UPDATE 10.11.2007 Today is the first public release of the AE CS3 stand alone version of FCPToAE. This version uses the native E4X xml parsing in AE CS3 to handle xml parsing. Move the unarchived .jsxbin to the scripts folder, run from the Scripts Menu and point the script to your exported FCP-XML file. New experimental features in this version include Cross dissolve support, and keyframed values for Scale, Rotation, Positon, and Anchor Point (keyframed ease is due in the next version). Since this is the first public release I would expect bugs and would appreciate bug reports.

CS3 and above script

deprecated legacy version for AE7

zip archive of FCPToAE(AE 7 )

Since my updates on this script have slowed dramatically I’m posting the source to the CS3 version of the script. If you make any improvements send them my way and I’ll integrate them. I’m also open to contributing to an open-source project for Final Cut to AE scripting if anybody wants to get the ball rolling on a code depository, etc.

01.30.2009-Chris Roe from croe design contributed sub-clip support and text layer importing.

Please send beta feedback and bugs to dale(at)creative-workflow-hacks(dot)com.
changelog of previous bug fixes and changes