Friday, May 3, 2013

Dot Matrix Disorder

Finally got a good workflow in designing DMD-animations now.

The original plan was to use Flash to create sequences as I've seen a couple of people do on the internet, but the user interface is horrible. Downright awful.

So now I'm back to using proper video editing programs instead which is a much nicer experience!
Maybe it's because I'm used to it - but basically it took me a couple of hours to generate a simple video using Flash compared to just a couple of minutes using video editing. Not to mention the horror of altering something...

I've also got more or less a 100% preview possibility with a DMD-emulation "filter" than I've created, including properly pixelating the image and bit-crunching it. Can't argue with realtime feedback!
Now I'll just have to find a decent VFX library for smoke, explosions and lightning...

Oh, the irony of using high end video editing software, plugins and HD movie material to generate a 128x32 pixel sized 3-bit image sequence...