As CS6 creeps nearer, inevitably we get more scraps of info on the various products (or at least products that we simply assume will be in the final package) by various routes. The latest new product to join the ring (if, like me, you don’t care for Edge and Muse and don’t count them) is code-named Prelude. Obviously they didn’t really show that much, so speculations run high and everyone draws comparisons. To me it looks like a massively pimped amalgam of OnLocation and Adobe Media Encoder, combined with a new unified XML-based project and exchange format (but your grandma could have predicted it – signs and portents) and the usual ingredients like thumbnail previews for storyboard layout, all that metadata stuff and what have you. I’m still 100% sold on Avid, but if Adobe are serious enough, they could now at least be competitive in an area where they have fallen flat on their face all those years. Asset and footage management simply sucks even in CS5.5…

Ah, Adobe, what has become of thee? Aside from never seeming to truly fix their tools, now their marketing sucks just as much. One such feeblish attempt is this so-called sneak peek at Photoshop CS6. For one, it doesn’t really tell us anything that my mom couldn’t have predicted – after buying one or two companies over the last years that specialised in RAW conversion tools, it was only a matter of time to see this worked into a new Camera RAW module. Two, the only other thing it gives us is something about UI improvements. Okay, those things may look minor, but in day to day can be more valuable than any addition of grandiose new features. Still, nothing to write home about and ultimately, which makes this a failure alltogether, is the simple fact that just by watching this official video, you get a ton of hits with screen recordings from leaked prerelease builds, most of which present much more and more interesting stuff. Of course one can’t be 100% sure which development state those videos represent so you don’t know which of these features will actually make it into the final product…

Or to the less French-y people: Element is alive, at least according to this post. If it only has half the features that the images hint at (blobby surfaces, a shattering engine, subsurface scattering plus the already excellent looking rendering), this might become a classic as Particular or of course Video CoPilot‘s own Optical Flares.

Edit: A kind little bird informed me about some incorrect spelling in the title that didn’t make sense in the way I meant it. I guess that’s what you get for posting early in the morning when your mind still wanders and craves this first cup of tea to rev up….

One of my dirty little secrets is that I always have had and still have a keen interest in military aviation (and scale aviation modeling) and in my downtimes at hospitals or doctors’ waiting rooms I have quite gotten back into reading pertinent literature. Thus I have been following the ongoing plight of the Joint Strike Fighter quite a bit. Now I’m not going into conceptual arguments about military/ government spending, as it always ends up like that memorable quote from the movie Contact ("First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?") and the F-35 is an expensive piece of flying technology for sure, but I’m actually pleased to see the program move forward now. At least that way I’ll have something interesting to read for a while…

…obviously not always.

Watching the news yesterday brought something into focus that I wasn’t giving much attention to, but indeed it’s been 70 years since the Wannsee conference where the planned extermination of all Jewish life within the bounds of The Reich was sealed. Now despite being German I don’t over-obsess about our history – there are and were similar atrocities elsewhere – but what connects me here is that Conspiracy is still one of my favorite movies on the matter for how it portrays these things as an act of clerk-ism by people without conscience (mostly), which makes the whole thing so terrifying. On that note it shall be interesting, how publishing extracts from Mein Kampf goes down with the public, which after all provided the basis for all this insanity.

Inevitably the beginning of the year is quite uneventful, so it’s been one week since I wrote something here, but just for fun let’s see what happened this week.

Of course there was the big SOPA/ PIPA protest blackout on Wednesday. I will not waste too much time explaining the details, but suffice it to say that I’m opposed to these proposals as much as the next guy. I’m all for protecting intellectual property rights and having been a victim of IP thievery myself I can appreciate the irony, but legislation that would threaten fundamental rights and the infrastructure of a complex system such as the Internet is cannot be endorsed on any level. Also it’s not really about hunting down criminals – those will always find ways around technical blocks and evade the legal system – it’s merely another form of trying to protect old business models of dinosaur industries that still like to divide the world in regions.

Another dinosaur that finally bit the dust for good is Kodak. At the end, all their attempts at selling their patents or suing others over infringement had become so ridiculous, you could count the days when this was going to blow up. I’m not much into photography, but of course the movie buff in me is immediately reminded of their film stock which has made many films look so great. Also of course the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles is now host to Cirque du Soleil‘s Iris show (see my ramblings on the soundtrack), so at least that will preserve some memory.

Specific to Germany the demise of manroland, a printing equipment manufacturer, has made some waves. Normally I probably wouldn’t care, but since one of our clients is a rather big such company, well, you get the idea. Especially in a year when there is a drupa this is going to cause some buzz. I myself will be quite busy doing masses of 3D animations and visualizations in preparation for that event, so they actually have something to show on their screens.

Finally, and that has given me some WTF? moments, are some articles on the web and an ensuing discussion on the After Effects mailing list that once more discuss how Apple busted up FCP X and why people are moving over to competitors like Avid. What is so ridiculous about the matter is that those are the same people that one year ago would never even have thought about recommending anything else than Final Cut Pro and scoffed at anyone using Premiere Pro. They even have endorsed and recommended these things in their user groups, on their blogs, at conferences. It’s funny how things turn. After years of feeding the Brontosaurus, it has now grown big enough to shit on their heads. Don’t get me wrong: Apple products are nice for what they are – design pieces that on an engineering level also happen to be well-crafted and quite powerful computers – but for at least 5 years the divergence between their price and the real extra value you get out of them has been growing exponentially. You simply don’t need Macs anymore to get work done.

After the recent string of flare-themed posts, this will probably be the last one on this topic – for a while, anyway. While some will consider that good news already, it gets better! Yes, it’s that time where I’m giving away more stuff for free. If you feel like it, you can grab some more presets for your favorite GenArts product. I have also liberated the previously donationware Symmetrion and Radar projects. People didn’t seem to care before, but what else is new? Enjoy!

In the eternal story about Adobe‘s poorly communicated new upgrade policy it seems they have finally arrived at a decision that, while not making everybody happy, most people will be able to live with. Not all that surprising after the extension of the 20% discount offer until March, you can now upgrade your old versions to the latest until the end of the year – just without the discount (though fear not, someone or something is bound to come forward again). This means that you will have enough time to make an informed decision about whether or not CS6 offers anything you like or need. We are waiting with baited breath and wetting our pants in anticipation…

Guess what?! Yes, I did some lens flares again. These are part of the GenArts FX Central subscription January package. The best part is that not only you can use these in After Effects with Sapphire, but also in Nuke or OFX hosts with a respective version but also with Edge in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro or Vegas. You may just not be able to get as fancy setups as I did for the preview clip below and the images since naturally, you will have to make them work without the 3D lights and 3D layers I used here and there.