It’s that time of the year again: FITC is coming to Amsterdam! In order to be prepared, I gave it a quick look which session I’ll be attending.  Here’s my list:

Day 1

• Multiplatform 3D Content Development Made Easy with Tom Higgins
• Either InterACT with Koen De Weggheleire and Wouter Verweirder or What The Flux? with Seb Lee Delisle
• Either ADHD FTW, LOL! with Grant Skinner or Making Contrast With Details with Mc Bess
• Keynote (I’m not sure if I’m going to attend… Adobe will just tell you how fast Flash is spreading, show some Molehill demo’s and tell you once more how amazing Flash on Android is… *yawn* )
• TRON GFX with Gmunk
• HOW DO YOU TURN THIS THING ON? with Ben Radatz (from MK12)

Day 2

• Harnessing the Abundance with Mike Creighton
• Steel Wires and Treadmills with Thomas Wester
• Self Initiate with Simon Page
• Speech: Tangible Intangibles with Richard Jewson and Oskar Sundberg
• Brass Monkey, Seriously Fun Control with Chris Allen
• Open Source, Viral Media and Art that Isn’t Boring with Evan Roth

As you can see, I’m still a bit unsure which sessions to attend on the first day. Got any suggestions reason why I should go to one or the other session? Let me know! Feel free to post your own schedules too!
Give me a heads up if you’ll be there! Would be great to meet up, right?

V1

A few weeks ago, in Amsterdam, Ralph explained a bit about it during his session. And then finally yesterday (actually the day before…), I bit the bullet and spent the evening making it happen. Only 4 hours later I had a first version that got pretty close to it.

Check this very first edition on the following URLs. The text is generated using AS3, so you can just make it show any text you want. Just change the URL params

• Particle fun V1 (with blur)
• Particle fun V1 (without blur)

The particles move to a perlin-map (red & green) with text in front of it. The color of each pixel is used to determine whether the particles has to move up,down,left or right and how far. Not how fast… That left all particles moving almost equally fast… Which is kind of a minor downside to me… Seeing how it almost was 6AM, I felt it were a good idea to catch some sleep…

V2

When I woke up a few hours later, I felt the irresistible need to improve the effect of the particle swarms and optimize some code in order to squeeze a few more frames per second out of the code.

I ruined the rest of my day coming up with another version. This time the perlin-map’s color would not just serve as a guide who tells the particles where to go and how far. The map would actually act as a force field: Each pixel would accelerate the particles on both the x and y-axis. As a result: we have now very different speeds of particles! And it looks pretty cool too! Example below. The text can be controlled using the URL parameters.

• Particle fun V2

Watch out! Nerd time!

This final version (well… final…) looks pretty good in my opinion. A few details about it:

• 25000 particles (1 particle = 1 pixel)
• runs up to 85fps (Capped this at 50fps, otherwise it the animation would be too wild)
• The bitmapdata object’s dimensions: 750 x 350

Most important things

During this experiment I learned a lot about optimization. A few things that might come in handy some time:

• Instead of using setPixel() for every single pixel you wish to animate, only update the bitmapdata once using setVector(). You can get the vector of pixelvalues from the bitmapdata obj using getVector(). Then change the values in the vector. When done, appy the new values to the bitmapdata object using setVector(). This will give you some valuable milliseconds (believe me: every millisecond counts when doing 25 000 loops per frame)
• Instead of looping through long arrays  (or even vectors) use linked lists: They’re easy and fast!
• Bitwise operations might look very unhuman, but they can buy you a great deal of milliseconds! Make sure you check the bitwise possibilities that there are out there. A lot of great minds have shared ‘common’ calculations in the form of bitwise operations that turn out to be just a bit faster.
• Think a lot about what kind of calculations you’re going to make and most importantly: When? For example in my first version: I get the pixelvalue from the perlinmap every iteration of the loop (times 25 000). However in version 2, after generating the perlin map, I immediately calculated the forces of every pixel and saved the values in a vector. I then request those values in the loops. This kind of precalculations will give you valuable milliseconds per frame and thus more fps.
• When editing pixel per pixel, make sure to lock()/unlock() your bitmapdata. That will prevent the bitmap from updating after every change. Again: giving you more milliseconds for your viewing pleasure!

I can’t really post any technical optimization tips (since I really just got started myself) but there are tons of articles out there on this topic. I suggest you check those out for more practical optimization tips.

I’m looking into doing more experimentation regarding particles. If you have any optimization techniques that I should know off, don’t hold back to educate me Either way: I really love this, so stay tuned!

Sources: Click (Flash Builder 4 project)

Day 1

I thought it would be a good day to keep my habits going in Amsterdam, so I turned up 15 minutes late for the beginning of the first day. Happily I didn’t miss much new stuff. In fact, I didn’t miss a single thing.

Ever since I started going to conferences, they always began with the Adobe Keynote. Today would be no different. Adobe would come on stage and talk about their latest numbers and how fast the latest version of the Flash Player is spreading among the internet’s users. 2 years ago, I would listen with full attention and be amazed by all those details. However on monday: I couldn’t be bothered. It’s great how fast the player is spreading but it’s really not worth half of the duration of the Keynote…
The rest of the keynote would be about the Flash Player on mobile devices. I think it’s a great step forward and I’m looking forward to future development on that aspect of the platform but the guys on stage just couldn’t interest me. So I left the keynote early.

Weirdly for the first time in Ronny-history, the second session of an event would not be Aral Balkan-branded… Which was odd to me. I kinda took it for granted he would be there… Which he wasn’t.

At this point of writing I realize I could just summarize the whole event and while most people might want me to do exactly that… I don’t think it’s worth it.

While being there, watching the sessions, I realized that in fact conferences/festivals have changed. Or at least my vision on this has changed. I ended up going from session to session and listen to various people talk about their past projects. And while some of those sessions really dazzled me, most of them didn’t. In fact I got bored a few times (and as a result I left the session and I honestly think that’s pretty rude of me for the speaker at hand).

I didn’t come to Amsterdam to watch you show me all your work of 5 years ago, which were just a few images taken from your portfoio. I did come here to see new stuff. New ideas. Your latest revelations. Your ‘best of 2009′ so to speak.
At some point I was sitting in a session, listening to somebody talk about ‘what he liked 10 years ago’. Not to be rude, (because this CAN be interesting): I don’t care. What does interest me is: Why did you like that 10 years ago? Have you changed your mind ever since? What did it do to your life as an artist? How does that inspiration reflect in your work? But those questions weren’t answered.

I can see all kinds of stuff on the internet. What I’m here to see is what nobody knew! Everybody can see your portfolio on the web. But now you’re on stage, talking to the very people that came from far away to listen to you. Make sure it’s worth the journey. Inspire us, educated us, challenge us. Do anything but to make me realize that this is a talking portfolio.

So I stopped going to the sessions that looked interesting to me (since I made all the wrong choices to that point) and ended up going to sessions that -at first hand- didn’t look all that fascinating. I ended up having my jaw dropped to the floor multiple times.

Talks that really did the trick

Hoss Gifford – Things I’ve learned
I first met Hoss in Kortrijk, a few years ago, at Multi-Mania where he talked about the narrative of an application. And while the subject was really interesting, Hoss kind of went over the top and labeled himself with ‘bad presenter‘ and ‘boring‘ for years. I would not go to his sessions because of what happened that day in Kortrijk.
However being there and making different choices, I decided to go to his session anyway. And god, did he make a comeback. Hoss turned up all relaxed with very simple slides. He talked about the things he learned. And not in a very enthousiast and screaming way most of us expected. He was all serious and personal during the complete session. It wasn’t boring, but it wasn’t entertaining. It was something deeper. It seemed as if he tried to teach us about how important life is. He didn’t mess about. He was very mysterious and yet completely open… It’s pretty difficult to express how great his session was. If you have the chance to attend his talk anytime soon: Please do. You’ll end up feeling like a better person. And for that I’m grateful, Hoss.

Ralph Hauwert – Skunkworks
I’ve been to Ralph‘s sessions before. Last year he talked about PapervisionX and how he experimented with Alchemy and Pixelbender to get the best out of it. Since experimentation and exploration is really my cup of tea, I just had to go. And just like last year, Ralph didn’t disappoint. He revealed a few secret tricks (the most interesting one being how he did his Bloom part) and one of his latest experiments. He really went a long way explaining a lot of cool and interesting stuff to show his final demo and with that to conclude his session.
One thing I adore about Ralph is how he knows the exact amount of time to keep you looking at something boring before blowing your mind with the real shit. That’s exactly what he did during the last few minutes of his session: He started the final demo, good music came out of the speakers, but the visuals weren’t all that mindblowing. We were seeing some kind of 3D lightmaps (I think those should serve for raytracing, but I can’t really remember. I’m not all that great with 3D… Don’t hate me for not exactly remembering it, Ralph), which didn’t look very special. After some time (the exact time before you would get bored), the real magic kicked in… And with that the entire room echoed a sudden bang that sounded a lot like dropping jaws. Really dope stuff, Ralph (no, really! ‘Wow’ is all I can say). Looking forward to seeing where you’re heading with this.

Jared Tarbell – The strangest things I’ve seen
Another session I went to, which normally I wouldn’t. And again: Golden. Jared is a very different man when comparing to most speakers at FITC. Most people would blow your mind with insanity in a box. Jared makes you look around and realize how amazing life is. As a relatively young man with lots of bad experiences, I am grateful for the fact that I ended up having a very good live with lots of possibilities and opportunities. Jared emphasized that feeling in the blink of an eye. Sometimes you have to be told how great something is, before you see it yourself. That’s exactly what Jared did. And he’s amazingly good at it. Jared is the kind of man that takes grace in every single thing he encounters. He seems to be easily delighted by life. To me , Jared’s facial expression seemed to be what ‘happiness’ would look like if you could see it. Afterwards, I walked away from that session, wondering why I never looked at life the way he did. I felt a different person.

MK12 – From DIY to 007
Never having heard of MK12, and having misinterpreted the title of the session, I sat down hoping to see a few cool DIY tricks that would look as if the results were taken from a 007 movie. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. But I ended up having a great time. Shaun Hamontree would talk about past projects and reveal how they did it. Quickly after that, he told us the story about how they fought their way into the latest Bond-movie.

For the longest time I’ve been taking on projects with only one mindset: “If I can think it, I can make it“. Turns out the people over at MK12 believe in something similar. They were determined to be part of that movie and they pushed every little opportunity to the envelope. They went through a great deal of hard work to only get opportunities… And it resulted in headshots. 1 chance, 1 victory. What started as a little project (that had yet to be selected by the directors of the movie) ended up as the main movie Bond-credits-intro and the interactive computer walls in the movie.

MK12 proves the concept of “If you really want to make something happen, you can“. I have great respect for that.

GMUNK – Munko’s grip
I knew about GMUNK, and how they create awesome motion graphics and other cool shit. I didn’t go to any of his sessions yet. However this seemed to be a great opportunity to give it a shot. So I did. GMUNK showed off his latest projects and talked about the process to make it happen. It’s great to see a man really involve himself in his work. He talked about how he loved doing anti-smoking campaigns and how he didn’t want to create visuals for a car he didn’t even remotely like. I respect people that put love and soul in their work. It sets them apart from the people that only enjoy the money (and believe you me! They are out there!). GMUNK proved talent and dedication and made me realize that we were pretty similar (only does he rock where as I totally don’t )

The Cool shit hour
The session title kinda says it all. 60 minutes of cool shit. A few members of the community were asked to show off something cool they made. So they did! The 2 topics that really caught my attention were Star Wars Trench Run and a Demo-invitation.
The demo invitation was actually about going retro using Actionscript. The presenter (which right now turns out to be nameless to me… Somebody help me out here, please) Peter Nitsch showed a few experiments using Alchemy and ASCII-art and ended with the mindblowing Actionscript based animation he created. I loved his presentation because of the spontaneous approach. He didn’t go into boring details and sticked to fun stuff instead.
The other part I really liked was Chris Allen showing Infrared5‘s latest creation: Brass Monkey! Brass Monkey is framework that enables multiple devices to connect to eachother over WIFI and talk to eachoter with no servers involved (I can’t remember if Brass Monkey is written in Objective-C or another language).
To show off this cool part of technology they updated their existing Star Wars Trench Run game (both the web and the iPhone game). The result was the iPhone connecting to the laptop (over WIFI) and turning the iPhone into a game-pad for the in-browser game: A full game experience for less than 5$ (3,99$ for the iPhone game, 0,99$ for the game-pad update). He was looking for a volunteer to proof it’s really responsible. Seen as nobody seemed to be up for the challenge, I decided I’d use the force and give it a run. I had the greatest time, standing in front of a 400 people audience, playing a browser game on a big screen projection over WIFI using an iPhone game-pad. How cool is that!? I’m really looking forward to see more cool stuff like this! This is what I call ‘creating better experiences‘!

Personally I think the combo of Brass Monkey, iPhone Dev and Unity3D could become a (small) rival for the Wii. The graphics are great, the responsiveness is perfect and the production cost is way lower. Not to mention the low buy-in cost for the consumer (buy the iPhone application to enable the game pad on your device for a few bucks and start having fun).

FITC Amsterdam 2010 was pretty great. I did miss a few great names like Joshua Davis, Aral Balkan and Keith Peters. And the parties (oh yes, I really enjoyed those last year!). But altogether I had a great time. I met so many new people, I saw so many cool things and I really felt inspired again. It was really fabulous!
I am already looking forward to FITC Amsterdam 2011 (and I secretly hope it will be a bit hotter than this year). See you in 349 days all!

During the conference I attended Joshua Davis‘ session which really inspired me. I’ve never seen Joshua Davis present, nor did I know his work. Let me be as crystal clear about this as I can be: The man is a freakin’ genius!
During his session he showed a few demo’s of bezier animated stuff. I felt like trying that myself, and this is what I came up with.

The basic concept is to create a bezier in Actionscript and animating movieclips using the bezier as its motion path.

• Basic principle (this is actually just a basic pentool (without the option of adding new points ))

The following versions use the same concept as this one, except instead of fixed anchor points, they all use random points defined in 2 planes. This makes a bit of variety possible allthough the main animation stays the same and that’s absolutely cool!

• Animation fun
• Animation fun V2

I added a few keyboard controls to give you some control of what is happening

• spacebar = show the handles
• r = clear the bitmap
• p = pause the animation
• n = randomize handles
• b = blur more

Monday

• Keynote
• Aral Balkan – The future is so bright, I gotta wear shades
• Ralph Hauwert - Professionally Pushing Pixels (with Flash 10)
• Niko Stumpo – Unique Experiences
• Seb Lee-Delisle – Papervision3D, simplified
• Joshua Davis - New Works

Tuesday

• André Michelle – Boing Bumm Tschak!
• Keith Peters – Art from code
• Mario Klingemann – The Tinkerer’s box
• Jared Ficklin – Seeing sound
• James Eberhardt – Introduction to iPhone SDK for Flash Developers
• David Carson – The rules of graphic design

I really must admit, there were some hard choices… The FITC schedule is packed with intresting topics… I wonder if they’ll record the sessions and release them to the public afterwards.
If you happen to be going to one/some of the same sessions: feel free to let me know in the comments. I’d love to meet up!

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