Import flash puppet into toon boom animate [Part 1]

A few days ago I posted an image of a robot puppet work in progress. Before I spent more time finessing that one puppet though, I needed to figure out it is going to come into Toon Boom Animate Pro without any hiccups. So, I spent a good part of the weekend and today trying to figure out how to properly import a flash puppet into Animate Pro.
I started off by importing one of the finished puppets from my digicel 1 class final project from August 2010. I had intended for this to be entirely animated in flash and thus went all out. There were movie clips with effects applied to them nested inside graphic symbols. The graphic symbols themselves had different poses on different frames that I could select. So far, I only knew that Animate Pro had a pretty slick drawing substitution implementation. I was hoping the importer would be smart enough to figure out the flash substitutions just fine. However, the importer was far from smart. Saying "It did not go well" would be an understatement. Here is what my puppet looked like:

Yes, he was half naked, missing his glasses, and hands. Few things stood out immediately.

• Toon Boom Animate Pro will not import symbols that are movie clips and have effects applied to them.
• Animate Pro will not recognize your flash 'alternate drawings' or drawing substitution. The drawing substitutions panel is outright dumb. Observe exhibit B: A shoe substitution for the backpack.

The others however, I was left guessing at. I first tried shorter symbol names. I removed guide layers in the symbols, and I removed excess frames from inside my hands since I wasn't going to be able to use them anyways. I flattened the artwork (I have a habit of working in layers) and made all the symbols (even with multiple colors/shapes) one layer. But still, this:

• Remove excess frames from inside the symbol timeline.
• Remove guide layers
• One layer artwork.

Here, I had just one layer for the hands; just one fill and one outline. To further simplify it, I took the darker outline out of the hands. Even though it made them look like amorphous blobs, I just had to get something in there. And I succeeded. (I removed the backpack and water bottle because they weren't necessary here)

• Remove outline
• No masks/Masking

The glasses and the eyes were the final piece of the puzzle. I did way too many things with the glasses to list here. And the real value is in telling what my big discovery was. It didn't matter how many colors or layers there were in the artwork, the problem was with lines. Once I used "Modify > Shape > Convert lines to fills" in flash, it imported just fine! Who coulda thunk it?

• Toon Boom Animate Pro cannot import flash artwork that has lines.
• Animate Pro will only import artwork that is all fill.

So even if you just sort of skimmed through the article, if you only remember the bulleted points, you'll save some of your hair from turning grey when you're trying to import flash puppet into Toon Boom Animate Pro.

Because I think this is already enough information to type(for me) and swallow,(for you) I will post part two of this tomorrow or something.

Nokia E60 is irRemote for nikon D40

There's this application called irRemote for nokia phones that lets you use your cellphone as a universal remote. Only, Its a paid program and I didn't want to pay. I like to steal.

To install the app on my cellphone for free, I first need to override all permissions on my nokia E60. I want to keep things brief so I won't go into they why's of every step here. but if you have a question, feel free to ask.

So I downloaded a symbian application that's called TRK. If anyone needs the download links, ask me personally. I ran that software on the phone. TRK, when launched, searches available bluetooth devices and finds my macbook pro. But I don't want to connect via bluetooth. So I cancel that, go to settings and change connection to USB. Then leave the port number to 1. The configuration is now done.

Now that TRK is set up, I transfer hellocarbide.sis to my phone and install that. I also need to put a .exe file in the C directory. So I connect the phone to my macbook pro in data transfer mode, and put the file in the E directory. Then I install X-plore so that I can move the file from the memory card to the phone memory. After Hellocarbide.exe is successfully moved, its time to actually override the permissions.

I removed the cable and re-Connected it to my macbook pro, in PC Suite mode. In vmware, I was running windows xp lite. I click the little USB icon and then click connect my phone. I had already installed python 2.5 and PYserial. I open the Hack_Perms file using notepad and edit the place where it says ser = serial.serial( ) and add which in my case is 2. and save it.

On the phone, launch TRK and just select options>connect. Now on my mobile screen I get,

Status: Connected
PDD: NONE
LDD: EUSBC
CSY: ECACM
Port Number: 1
Baud rate: 115200

Oh yeah, I think I also installed activepython. Just to be safe. Then I just double click the .py file, the console/command prompt pops up, its python.exe and it runs some script, and boom! I can now access the system folders on my E60.

Right now, the permissions are temporary. I need to go in and replace some sys files in C:/ to make this permanent so that even after restarting my phone, I can still access the private folders. But, I don't have permission to write in them. So I had to run the thing again. This time, I unplugged really carefully.
Then I had to install the capsON and capsOFF tools with which I can change the permissions on the fly at any time.

Then I installed signsis by leftup. This is what will help me sign unsigned .sis files. Now to transfer the sis files I will need to install irRemote. First I execute irRemote setup. It also installs a DRMcommonsolutions component. But I will install the signed one and replace the version installed earlier, which is actually a higher version. First, it said the file was corrupted, so I deleted it and transferred the file from my computer again. While installing, it said some applications need to be closed and I pressed ok.

Now to open SignSis to sign the 'crack' file. I made the file available on my memory card, then selected it in SignSis. then options>selfsign. It creates a new, signed app in the same location, and the extention is .sisx

I kept my fingers crossed the while I was running the new .sisx file. Everything went smoothly. Now to test irRemote! I opened it, went to licences, and it says unlimited license! yay!
But there's one more step before I can use it to control my digital camera. I have to transfer the D40 device profile to my phone.

And although the D40 profile didn't open, I got the remote to work with the nikon D70 profile, and IR mode set to 6. I was also making a video of this when imovie crashed. So for photoproof, you can keep an eye on my flickr page.

iphoto nuiances

I was not very sure how to start this blog entry So I'm just gonna link you guys to this post where I discussed the problem with leopard and jpegs managed with lightroom. Yesterday, I was so happy that I could finally use iphoto now, because in the 10.5.2 update of leopard, Apple finally fixed the aforementioned problem.

So I started to import all my photos into iphoto, but I had set the preferences to keep the files in their original location. This way, My internal hard drive will not be filled up with stuff, and I would get better speeds when doing other stuff while using iphoto. But just a few minutes ago, I noticed that the iphoto library in pictures folder was using up 362 MB! This was not acceptable, and I decided to go digging.

I opened the container, by right clicking on the library and selecting 'show package contents'. I sorted by file size, and in view options, checked 'calculate all sizes'. And I was pointed in the right direction. There's a folder called modified that is occupying 174 MB. It contains many random pictures from the albums. I say random because I haven't even touched a lot of the photos (In iPhoto that is). I wonder why its doing that. If someone has any idea, please let me know.

The next folder using up a lot of space is the data folder. I guess this is a necessary evil. It has all the pictures, in small thumbnail sizes. Maybe this is what facilitates the quick skimming in the events view. So I guess I will have to live with this folder occupying upwards of 110 mB.

I also saw the new version of aperture, and I have to say, with all the guided tours and video tutorials on the apple website, they sure do make their applications look cool. Its not that I want to stop using lightroom now, I just wish there were some of those great features in Lightroom. Like the incredible integration with the other leopard applications. So go check out Aperture 2 Guided tours.

Bea tunes BPM estimate is bullshit

I have been trying to make a smart playlist in itunes that has all my upbeat songs so that they keep me awake and alert when I'm working late. But it hasn't been all that successful because not all my tracks, have BPM assigned to them. BPM, is beats per minute. Oh... that could have been a bad typo! beat sperm in LOL..

So I downloaded trial of a software called beaTunes. I was really impressed by its facility of cleaning up typos in the ID3 tags automatically, in a batch. It really helps organize your music a little better. But I wished there was a way to exclude podcasts from the search. Because a lot of podcasts keep changing the hosts or the people involved.. And I don't really care for the names etc, because they are organized by podcast anyways. 

But where this utility fell short was in the Beats per Minute category, which was my sole purpose in the first place! You see, in the analyze window, it shows you the option to 'Estimate BPM'. Instantly, I go, "Its a software, its a machine, its supposed to calculate the precise BP

M, not give me a shoddy estimate!" Actually, its best estimate would have been fine too, but where it really gets skewed, is the range drop down menu.

It gives me an option to specify an ideal range for the BPM of the selected track, or 'tracks'. First, how am I supposed to know the range of bpm? Isn't that what this software is supposed to do? Now lets say, I select a range that I 'feel' is appropriate, the software does its calculation, and gives you a BPM in that range. But there's no guarantee that its correct. If you change the range, and analyze it again, you get a totally different value! 

To test whether it gets the right value when given a correct range, I used a trial version of tangerine! to check the bpm of the song. It gave me, 157. So I set the range to 90-180 BPM and moved the quality/accuracy slider to precise. Still, the BPM I got was 98! So this whole BPM thing just blows! At least until the music distributors start mentioning bpm on cds or digital downloads/online stores. I wish there was a software that just went online and fetched the correct BPM from a database on the internet. Anyways, I guess that's my rant for today.

Lightroom managed images crash finder

From digg: Properly written EXIF Data in images are causing Leopard's Finder to lock up.I have lightroom v1.3.1 on my mac running leopard. a.k.a. OS 10.5.1. My whole collection of photos is managed from within lightroom. But because of the awesome integration of iphoto with the rest of the OS that apple advertises, I decide to try and import the same photos in iphoto. However, when I try to import them into iphoto, the process goes on for ever! Even if I try to import only one photo, the import will not complete. To look into it, I went into the photos folder in finder, and there were no thumbnails leading me to believe that the photos had been corrupted. I tried quicklook but finder crashed! I tried opening them with preview.... still didn't work. But these photos are working perfectly fine with adobe photoshop, bridge and lightroom. So its all of apple's lousy products in 10.5.1 that are causing this to happen. Get your act together apple! Fix this ASAP! I feel like I want to downgrade to tiger too!

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