[Ron Lindeboom]

Steve Roberts has given you some good suggestions and I will add one — less for your situation and more for the record for those searching the forum later — of a technique my son created which was quite cool visually and had a very stylized look to it.

He created a layer with a full-sized red solid on it and then duplicated the layer for the number of petals he wanted.

He then used the masking tools (with some of the mask points being bezier and others being sharp points), to simulate an organic “petal” look.

He then used the “Emboss Alpha” filter and added a lot of light to the edges to make it looked more rounded.

He then animated the layers to simulate falling petals in his animation.

In the end, it was quite pretty and looked a lot like a Japanese image style.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Le Coyote] “Of course AE already uses 2 CPUs. At least when rendering. It’s not using the full power in EVERY situation, but most of it. The Gridiron plugin helps when network rendering, which is not the same thing as having multiprocessors on the same computer.”

For those using multiple processors in the same machine, including multi-core processors, Gridiron has created the Nucleo

[Ron Lindeboom]

Thanks for your forthrightness and candor, Steve, I am sure that many users here appreciate it.

We have always subscribed to the belief that a sale is not always a good sale if the sale is made to a person whose expectations cannot really be met by the tool they *think* that they have bought. It is always better to be straight with people — especially in these days of the internet — as a buyer who buys based on realistic expectations will be a good and enthusiastic supporter of the tools they use and the company that provides them.

I think you have a real winner in Nucleo as there are many of us here in the Cow who have multiple processor machines that could benefit from Nucleo.

I have been thinking that perhaps we should develop a tutorial for optimising your system for using XFactor, pointing out things like the networking concerns and settings, standardising fonts and plug-ins, how storage effects the pipeline, etc., when using XFactor. Interested in helping us develop a tutorial like this? I think it would be very beneficial for our members.

Thanks, Steve, for participating here in the Cow.

Best always,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Ron Lindeboom]

Hi Steve,

At DV Expo, I had a chance to talk with one of my friends at Adobe about the Nucleo and XFactor plug-ins and to quote them: “It’s funny that I read some people at the Cow saying that they have issues, as I do demo after demo spread across multiple machines and have never had an issue. Even the guys at Pixar tested and were very enthusiastic about XFactor and Nucleo except for one thing: They are written to support smaller studios with 10 or fewer stations in the network; more than ten stations and issues start to arise. But for most of those in the Cow audience who have fewer than ten systems on their backbone and use AE, this is a great tool that is very useful.”

I will spare using their name just in case there is some issue that I am unaware of but I can honestly say that this person — whom I have known and trusted for a long time — was quite enthusiastic about the Gridiron acceleration tools.

Anyway, I just thought I’d throw that onto the stack as that was what I heard at DV Expo 2005 over the last few days.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Ron Lindeboom]

Hi Kim,

I apologize for the confusion, it’s just that I rushed through to get the newsletter done and meant to jump onto the contest page right after and simply got too busy with phone calls, etc., that distracted me. Ooops. Thanks for the heads-up and I will swap it out this morning.

Thank you also for your kind words about the Cow, we appreciate them.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

I just tested the link and it works just as it is supposed to. Perhaps your cache was corrupted or something but the link is fine.

Thanks,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Ron Lindeboom]

I would recommend writing zax@zaxwerks.com as he has a list of all of his customers; well, if you registered. You did register didn’t you? If you didn’t and you bought it from one of Zax’s retailers, then perhaps they can get Zax a proof of your purchase and then Zaxwerks may work with you to replace the discs. You do have your serial number, don’t you? If you don’t, then you are likely hosed…

Just a friendly warning: CreativeCow has a low tolerance threshold for people making posts like these as they are almost always illegitimate requests by those who are using illegally obtained copies. We tend to watch this stuff like a hawk and so please do not make posts with email addresses and other ways for people to contact you, as we always strike these kinds of posts from our boards.

Regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Ron Lindeboom]

The After Effects paint plug-in is a vector paint-based plug-in.

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Bob Cole] “I’ve suggested this before for the COW, but I would still love to see a forum on law as it relates to filmmaking. We need a place to pool our knowledge. Is there such a forum anywhere?”

We’d love a forum like this, Bob. But our wanting it and you suggesting it, isn’t going to make it happen. As of today, no lawyer has ever offered to participate in the Cow. Without an attorney present — and one that knows their stuff when it comes to the law as it pertains to media — there seems little point to adding a forum and calling it “Legal”…

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

Try these two tutorials to understand the process…

Part One:
https://www.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly1/index.html

Part Two:
https://www.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2/index.html

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom