November Notes

No… this isn’t about being environmentally conscious – although that is a good idea. 

Everyone remember my buddy Shelly?  She’s got a small video thing going – and from time to time she hits me up for ideas.  This time its a small Halloween Zombie flick and she’s been having problems getting a good clip of a virus growing out of control.  So I ask her to get online and I share my desktop so I can see what’s she’s been doing.

Let’s go over what she’s tried so far… clips of blood cells floating and even going disease ridden.  Good – but they look a bit too much like the same clips of blood cells floating by you see all the time – and very… 1960’s Fantastic Voyage – not really able to build any tension when you see them – because you expect Raquel Welch to float by in scuba gear any second.  Then… there’s Clips of viruses from CDC and other places …which… looked a bit too much like something from a High School Health Class once again – about all the menace of well… virus videos from health class.  She tired zooming in to make the virus grow, adding filters, colorizing – all kinds of stuff and it just didn’t get the menacing look she wanted.

We talked about it – and I pointed out maybe what she needed was just a good animation of an organic texture that grows.  We started out with … and yes she told me I was nuts… a fireball. 

Now, why a fireball?  Because they have this lovely growing and snarling growth pattern.  There’s something incredibly feral about fire – so we started with a fire.  We opened after effects – and we added a solid, then added the fireball footage I had, and used that as a texture on this lovely blood red solid.  So that the texture grows incredibly fast in all it’s firely furry. 

Now – when you make fire a texture you get this very 2 dimensional flat almost sandstone look… and at this point Shelly’s pretty much decided I’ve lost any touch I ever had… and here’s the 50,000 dollar tip for the day about making a slick organic from a texture.  The glass filter. ‘)

Glass filter has this wonderful ability to smooth and add a sheen to the texture.  Makes it very blood / liquid like.  Now she sees what we’re up to…  organic looks are really all about this very uneven growth pattern that looks – controlled.  Flames do that very well – as do water – even explosions – heck try several things and play around with it you’d be surprised at the results. 

Now – here’s the full sequence for those who want to try this… I used a flame – but you can choose any video clip you want.  I’m totally about playing around with different clips and see what kind of weirdness you get.

1) Video Clip (Fireball)
2) AE Solid > Color it how you like.
3) Texture the Solid with the Video Clip.
4) Apply the Glass filter to the Solid.
5) Apply Color Correction > Curves and adjust to your taste.  (Higher contrast gives a lot of drama)
6) Apply Text and other filters of your choice…. enjoy.

As you can see this gets you a very nice organic look – like flesh growing out of control.

In this case – I added a very simple timer and slapped the name of the virus for text, then added a video camera look to it using scan lines… and as the virus grows out of control we flare the light, adjust the focus with a blur, and eventually – even drop glass shattering like it’s broken the slide it’s under from growth.   An effect that I always loved – going back to old 1960’s movies like… the Fantastic Voyage… okay it’s hokey but it’s fun – and as long as it’s very short it works.  As with almost everything here – this is a project that will take about an hour of your time, it’s quick, and its from nothing but reused / recycled footage – which I’ve preached the glories of several times.  (Always keep your old stuff – even if it’s not useful for the project because you never know what it’s good for!!  :D)

Here’s the final:

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Everyone's talking about money these days.  How much the salaries have dropped and how much companies have dropped in what they’re offering prospective hires.

And the fact is – companies are offering less… for re-hires and we’d expect that.  The economy has tanked, and after all a company’s gotta make a profit.  Or… is that actually the real picture?  Good question.  Here’s some actual numbers for what’s been reported in for the IT sector anyway when it comes to what I do (and no… I do not make anywhere near what Salary.com reports and never have.  In fact I think I know 3 people in the business who make even close to the middle of that … and they’re some major names.  The reason why Salary.com’s numbers are inflated is they take into account benefits and stock options and so on… many of which really don’t exist anymore, but Salary.com is counting them as part of the salary.  Thinking that having 800 shares of Lucrative technologies stock is worth $42k of salary is laughable since I think they’re offering a lot of stocks for them out there in boxes of cereal as a free prize.  But that’s why Salary.com’s numbers are so high.)

If you look at the chart below from Indeed you’re looking at actual salaries reported over the last year.  It shows the period of the worst of the economic crisis – and that’s pretty clear.  The #’s dropped to the floor – and anyone who could get a job at that time basically took whatever they could get.  Then an odd thing starts happening just recently – the totals start to trend up. 

And they trend up almost as sharply as they dropped off.  The reason for this isn’t because the economy got better, or because employers suddenly had an epiphany that they were really underpaying… or that suddenly half the overseas and outsourced workers getting 1/4 of the wages here dropped out of the running.

It’s because well qualified, well skilled employees couldn’t afford to live off the salaries being offered  – and they started actually saying “I’d love to take the job but I’m already in the poor house with my mortgage, my car payments, the fact that I have an insurance bill that’s insane… so the answer is no.”. 

Bottom line – is people in the IT industry hit their bottom line.  Companies began to realize that if anyone was paying what they should have been paying for these jobs – then the employees they have were flooding out to the smaller shops which were willing to drop the dollars for rock stars.  Fortune 100 and 500 companies had to start playing match the dollar figure.  Let’s face it – working for Microsoft is cool and all but it’s not as cool if working there costs you your house.

So the players began to do what they do best… which is get in play.  That’s where we’re at now.  I’m seeing more and more offers coming across the table here at close to my old wage of a year and a half ago.  Which is good – because taking a 20%-25% cut in pay was killing me and everyone else I knew.  We’re not back to where we were and I really don’t think we ever will – but we’re getting to where we can survive without selling everything we have just to do the job we love.

I mentioned that Salary.com’s numbers were inflated – because of the fact that they’re including bonuses and other incentives.  This scales regardless of the size of the company.   Basically – the salary increases, based on the size of the company.  Mom & Pop shops paying the least – and megacorps  with 15,000 employees or more paying the most.  But… if the salaries themselves that get into your paycheck each month (see the Indeed.com numbers) don’t scale based on pay then where does that money go?  Why is it that the money you make as an employee from a Mom & Pop matches relatively closely to a MegaCorp according to Indeed but Salary.com says the MegaCorp pays you more?

Technically it does.  Just… you don’t see the money because it’s in bonuses or it’s in other “incentives”.  Just so we’re all on the same page here … I did check the bonuses offered, etc., and yes Megacorps do offer more perks.  But not that many.  There is one perk they offer (which due to their size they can offer this) that Mom & Pops can’t.  It’s insurance.  The bigger the company – often the more they pay on the employee’s plan.

Insurance offerings in most of the better IT firms offer great health care that they match in whole or in part.  So if you factor that in – you can see the difference between the totals above from Indeed – and the totals from Salary.com.

In the 10% category you’re seeing a difference between a company that provides basic health care – as you scale up to around the 75% scale you’re seeing health care benefits that are paid almost in full across the board.   So as the healthcare debate heats up you can see why so many insurance companies are fighting a public option.  They stand to lose billions.  Not just from IT but also from every other industry because these numbers tend to track pretty closely with other occupations.  Where the company pays more health care – the salary goes up.  But the employee never actually sees that money – the health care providers do.

Imagine half your salary – one way or another going to Health Care companies.  Think about that.  I did some number crunching.  Over my life I’ll pay out not one – but at least 3 million dollars in health care insurance.  I’m hospital phobic (seriously) – you can’t get me near an emergency room unless I’m dying… but I’ll pay millions.  As we all will – unless something is done to curb these costs.   Over 75% of the cost of healthcare in America is not the actual care of the patients.  Its for administrative costs… which is basically the filing of paperwork.  Endless paperwork (another phobia of mine) – which often leads to coverage denials.  So essentially you’re paying someone to refuse you service you just paid for.  That’s insane.  

If the economy is to improve, the cost of health care has got to be reined in.  It’s killing the small businesses – it’s killing the larger businesses – and it’s killing the people that work for them.  Just… my thoughts for what their worth.  My research is hardly scientific and there’s most likely a few holes in it I’m sure.  But based on what I’m seeing there’s something to it.

Anyone remember the Kings Row Taxi Service?  Of course you don’t.  Well you probably don’t unless you were playing City of Heroes on the Infinity server a couple years ago.  They were a group of superheroes in the City of Heroes MMORP that I used to hang with.  To say that the Taxi’s were awesome to hang with is an understatement.  But the problem with COH was it’s basic limitations. Eventually between work and other pressures I stopped playing.

The main limitation to CoH and what led to a lot of players leaving (myself included)–  was the role that the NCSoft the parent company had in constant “balancing'” and driving game design decisions of the game not on playablity but what became obvious as business decisions that had less to do with balance than wringing more dollars in player time.    This led to a series of nerfs followed by a series of power ups – well it’s an old story with any MMO that if you’ve played one we’re all familiar with.  I got to the point where it was the same battles over and over, the same powersets, and I’d been through every variation on every powerset and no complex banking/auction crafting was going to make up for the boredom of play.

Some urged me to get into WoW, others this or that… but frankly the whole having superpowers thing was fun and it gave me something to connect to my son with. 

One of the coolest things about CoH was the incredible accessibility of Jack Emmert – who wasn’t just one of the primary architects of the game but a regular player.  Jack and his team “knew” what people wanted even if they didn’t always let him give out his full vision.   He – and the rest of the team at Cryptic had legitimate gamer cred being old school all the way back to the RPG Champions.  In short, had NC left Jack and his team alone – CoH would have grown into something brilliant that would have given WoW a run for it’s money.  In many ways all CoH really needed was more of the design teams understanding of play mechanics – and a good solid reboot in design to get rid of all the trappings that NC had brought to the game putting more effort into playability and less effort into figuring out how to make everyone play another 15 minutes more.  Cryptic clearly had a vision – but they were stupefied by the framework they were forced to work with, the very limitations of how CoH had grown.  This isn’t to say CoH isn’t fun – it still is. Most players, like myself would leave for several months and come back.  But the doldrums of having “been there and done that” over and over would wash over us and we’d leave again.

Recently Cryptic entered into an agreement between Microsoft / Marvel Entertainment and Cryptic to create the Marvel Universe MMO.   Due to the nature of legal agreements it’ll probably be years before anyone knows the full story of why Marvel Universe never got out of the gate – but their loss was Cryptics gain. Since Cryptic had sold off it’s interests in City of Heroes many assumed that they’d be out of the SuperHero MMO game… but in true superhero fashion they pulled off a last minute reversal against the powers of boredom and dropped the bomb that since they’d based CoH on the online rights to Champions … they still owned those rights. 

And Jack’s one time vision of creating an MMO unfettered and to the fullness of the Champions RPG was going to come into being.   Using much of the knowledge they’d learned doing work on the ill fated Marvel Universe, and their vast knowledge of the Champions RPG, and experience in real world game mechanics for heroes learned from CoH… Champions Online came into being. 

Now… everyone who’s ever read anything about MMO’s knows that Cryptic has the ULTIMATE in toon creations – with more features, more options, more customizations than any other game design.  No one – from WoW to most standalones touches the character creation options you get with CoH, and since this is Cryptic – if you’re into customizing your toon you of course will not be disapointed.  If anything – it’s a bit too much now.  Just creating your character can take a good 2 hours.  

Champions – true to it’s RPG roots does not limit you to specific roles like “Tank” or “Blaster” or “Healer”  - your ability to pick and choose like menu items for powers I really I have to be honest didn’t think was going to work.  But the detail of thought that Jack and the Cryptic people have injected into things really shows here allowing people to literally get as wild as they want – not just with looks but with the powers themselves allow you to totally customize your character.  Looks, powers, you name it. 

I’m currently up to level 11 – and the play feels less like grinding but not a “Monty Haul” give away that others had thought might happen.  Part of this is due to a couple of very unique design options that Cryptics put into the game – the first is tossing away the concept of “leveling”.  Yes, you still level – but in a way you’re leveling constantly – so you add new powers or boost existing abilities constantly.   Add to this the crafting skills that allow even more character power and appearance customizations and you really get a game where leveling isn’t the goal.  The concept of “drops” is still there but it’s cleverly hidden as something you can build yourself – very powerful add-ons to your character cause no two toons to be cookie cutters of each other with different costumes.

This goes way beyond just appearances like being able to customize your powers and abilities colors and animations

  The way you slot your abilities based on drops and crafted items completely alters play.  Being able to mix and match builds on the fly – even between battles changes this up even more.  There’s tons to this very vast world that Jack and the team have created.  As I progress through the game I’ll keep updating and discussing features… but right now it’s late  - I’m tired – and the servers are down for maintenance.  :D

had someone ask me why they hadn’t seen me do anything with video or actually “post” anything but writings and musings in a while – and rest assured I will post more stuff very soon – so here’s the beginnings of some of the effects for a side project I’m working on. 

This is a bit of the standard glowing warping portal – and this is the pt 1 version – before all the toys have been added so to speak. 

It’s really only 4 layers – 2 particle layers that have had turbulent displacement applied, one which has a shine effect applied to generate the white/wispy/glowy globlets – the other uses the turbulent to give it the liquid look.  In this version – it’s appearing before it’s cover effect so you can see that early on in the shot.   If I didn’t have a cover effect coming – I’d probably drop in a gradual progression so that it kind of fades in – possibly even with a dissolve like Star Trek transporter type look to bring it in gradually.

Just for reference – I’ll probably be using a variant on that as a cover effect – or perhaps a ground pounding blast – hard to say – I want to see what I can bring out of the image and I’ll know more.  Since I’m dealing with a realtively bright natural light shot it makes it more difficult to sell effects.  Go too much – and they get cartoonish – go too little and they lack impact or look cheesy.  It’s a hard balance in unforgiving light values.  The upside to doing effects with natural light is of course that they also can help you sell the effect. 

In this case, I’ve duped the video layer with Haakon and I – created a nice matte, and then applied turbulent displacement to that, and by varying the opacity and using an expression to handle that layers turbulent displacement – we use the natural light to help sell the effect by warping whatever comes into the “field” of the portal.   Notice how we’ve got that nice '”pop bottle glass” warping illusion as I enter the portal?  That’s all that is. 

In fact all of the effects work on this clip here was done in about 30 minutes or so – using some footage I had been playing around with of just Haakon and I on the drive in front of the house.  To remove the shadow of me as I enter the portal (yes my shadow warps and fades out too) was nothing more than using a gradient alpha on the photoshop’d still frame I used to cover me up.  I use another photoshop element here – and you can see the momentary bump – to freeze Haakon and hide me walking back to the camera.

Mind you the finished version of this will not use this footage.  In fact, the finished version of this effect will most likely be stored as an object I can reuse for a variety of effects – but the finished version of the demo here will be completely different footage.  The effect – I’ll be able to basically drag and drop on to footage and use when i need a portal or something along those lines and I’ll keep repeating that until I see it happen.  :-D

All joking aside – I realized that much of the video effects I’ve done I can reuse on other footage so I’m trying to create a small library of good effects that can be reused and this is one of them.  I’ll get them posted when I’m done so people can play with them if they like.

Just when you thought it was safe… I drag you back into cXML validation! Hey – put down the torture devices…. it’s not what you think!  Remember a few posts back – we built a quicky validation tool?

Well had someone ask if I actually use that, and the truth is – no I don’t.  The actual tool that I use is the one shown here.  But all of this began as something very similar to the code you saw here.  There’s a lot more exception handling – and slew of features added into it since we / I use this for all kinds of cool eCommerce tests around work.  

As you can see the initial purpose of the tool remains the same, which is to validate cXML documents.  With this I can load the documents into the tool – and using any of the pre-populated addresses – it is capable of process an actual file, which is to say round tripping where we begin with the PunchOut set up request and go all the way through the Purchase Order (OrderRequest) and even the POOM (PunchOutOrderMessage).

It was built completely on the free VB Express system from Microsoft so it cost literally nothing to build.  Were I to sell this – I’d probably charge around $500 to $1200 depending on the added features I’ve put in there and people would I have no doubt pay that for it.  (I know because I’ve been offered that much for it).  So there’s no reason that with a bit of ingenuity someone looking to really add to their portfolio or even just make a few dollars can’t do this. Which is kind of the point to the exercises that I put up here. 

With the economy currently in shambles for the tech industry there’s a lot of things you can do for very little cash that can reap some good rewards.   You don’t have to spend $$$ or have a lot of start up cash, software or hardware.  What you need is to sit down and say, “What tools need to be built?”, “What do I need to do my job better?”. 

There is always a better mousetrap out there – and even if your budget is nil – all it takes is some very basic coding skills to make something that you, your department, your boss really needs.

Thats the root of it really using your skills to their best advantage.  If you happen to make a really great whatever so much the better.  And you’ll note I don’t use some exotic code – I use the very basic, very simple Visual Studio Express and a bit of code here and there to really  create a tool I need for my job.  This one was built because we didn’t have any test tools like this where I work.  Once again – you see a need – you build a tool.  The more you build the more indispensable you become.  Don’t wait for your job to out pace you  … out pace the job.  Create things.  Get messy.  Have fun.  It’s when we do this that we stand out form the crowd and get noticed.

Just some food for thought… take care until next week.