donQmedia Weblog

The last year has been a busy one for me, and I've had to let donQmedia lay dormant. As I feel the site has some value to visitors, even if new content is not being posted…

In one sense the deadlines I set for posting on this website are arbitrary. Yet, anytime I say I will post something by a certain date and then don't, even if I give warning before that date, nags at me. Unfortunately, several issues have arisen which will cause a delay in my plans to post the promised tutorial…

Seeing as how my last front-page  post was March 15th of last year, I can understand if people were beginning to think that donQmedia had all but turned out the lights. However, if you have dived into the website, you might have noticed I've been editing pages off and on throughout the year, especially those in the glossary. So while the website has been in stasis…

Rainbox Laboratory is the non-profit arm of Rainbox Productions. It's run by Nicolas "Duduf" Dufresne, the co-founder of Rainbox Productions, and creator of Duik Bassel as well as other tools for animation and motion picture production.

In part two we explore the Extract and Tag buttons, as well as Duik's Pseudo-Effects options. The video's primary focus is on the difference between the two options given for the Extract feature, as this powerful…

In part one we explore how to create a controller using the Create Controller panel. It also explains the Select, Show/hide buttons, and the Edit Controllers panel which opens with the Edit button. The Edit Controllers panel allows…

When I decide on a topic for a tutorial, I usually create an outline of points to cover in order to get an idea of how long the video will be. As I'm trying to keep the Quick Tips brief, otherwise I would have named them Long Tips, I'm finding I will have to split some topics into parts. I posted my tutorial plans for May prematurely, as I had not outlined the next Quick Tip…

Just a quick note about upcoming tutorials. As the title of this post says, I'll be getting at least two tutorials out in May. The first one will be a DUIK Quick Tip and will show you how to use DUIK Bassel's Create Controllers Panel.  With it, you can change the standard icons used on controllers when using…

The Add Bones button creates guide layers so that you can animate vector points and their Bézier handles independently. You can use them with shape layers, including masks, as well as puppet pins, and…

If you're like me, you took no notice when Adobe updated After Effects's expression engine. This isn't about the change in the expression field, where different components of your expression are represented by different color text as well as some other changes. This is about…

While a minor bug that you may not encounter unless you use the Bake Appearance button on the Edit Bones Panel of Duik Bassel, I did want to publish this video explaining a work around in case anyone was unfamiliar with how to deal with expressions when they go bad. It will be fixed in the next release of DUIK in a few weeks.

Add Bones Panel bug to be fixed in next release

While working on the tutorial for the DUIK Bassel Quick Tips section about the Edit Bones Panel, I found a minor bug in the script. If you decide to use the Bake Appearance Button, which erases the scripts that allow you to change the size and color of the bone icons, the script doesn't do a complete job and throws you an error. I submitted a bug report and Nicolas Dufresne responded saying the fix will come soon in the 16.2.8 release.

Vimeo and donQmedia posting dates change

From this date forward I'll be posting my tutorials on donQmedia's website two weeks before making them public on Vimeo. In the past, I published on both sites simultaneously. I'll be using this short announcement format to inform you when a tutorial is in the works and when it will be released.

Next tutorial:

jmg

You can Get individual keyframe control over shape layer Bézier curves and masks in After Effects by utilizing scripts which create control layers over individual points. In fact, After Effects comes with a script which allows you to place nulls (guide layers) on each vector point of…

The term bone, in animation, refers to a structure that gives control and shape to an animated object. In a character puppet, a group of bones can resemble a skeleton-like structure, often referred to as an armature, but bones can also be as simple as a single point.

As followers of this website know, when I publish a video series schedule or tell you the date something will be posted I rarely miss that promised date. Unfortunately, this is one of those rare times. The irony is the promised tutorial is finished, at least the tutorial part

Bézier [BEH-zee-ay] curves are mathematically generated curves using parametric equations, which are equations that map out the point coordinates of a geometric object¹.

What is the Quick Tips section?

As the name implies, Quick Tips are very short tutorials focusing on one feature or concept. Most often the tutorial's focus will be around the use of After Effects and character animation. My goal is to make them less than 10 minutes long, and very much to the point. Occasionally, I will

As you can see by the posting dates, donQmedia has been inactive for quite some time (except for updates here and there which are hardly noticeable unless you happen upon an updated page). While it is normal for me to go months before posting a tutorial series…

The Duik Bassel manual

Besides the tutorials on this website, there are, of course, many other resources you can find to learn more about Duik Bassel. Some of the newest material has been created by Duduf (Nicolas Dufresne) himself. If you're looking for a manual, he offers…