liberation is about making a statement.
using director in an alternative context, which isn't really new at all: demos have been around for years on all kinds of computers and with always the same single aim - how far can you push yourself and the machine to achieve extraordinary, stunning results? this usually was achieved by a scene of kids with hardcore lowlevel programming skills, however, now this competition was about using a widely accessible mainstream authoring tool like macromedia director [shockwave] and taking it to it's limits. we are talking realtime graphic programming & special effects rather than flat animations or little scriptlets like we are used to from millions of flash sites. for me, demos are the real multimedia. you combine more or less traditional design with on-the-fly visuals created by code, all held and linked together by the soundtrack. none of the 3 makes enough sense on its own. it's about combining skills and getting new influences from each discipline:

code = design = music!

the first effect is realtime skinning of complex, organic looking surfaces (plasma clouds) which are defined by 4 sine waves. for the second part i used a greyscale pre-rendered 3d animation (12 frames only) of an infinite grid. the challenge was to create the dynamic rotation and pixelation effect by translating grey values into different sized dots (800 pixels/frame). this is followed by a shape morphing tunnel with fake lighting and fogging (250 polygons/frame) - all created in realtime. the credits screen features a lissajous particle system as the background animation and a sine scroller.

btw. the real "liberation" for me was the regained freedom of direct pixel access director offers now. the whole demo is pure imaging lingo, not one single sprite has been used...

be sure to check out the other competition entries at setpixel.com




downloads
mac version
pc (coming soon)
download source

shockwave player


links
www.toxi.co.uk
www.setpixel.com
www.macromedia.com