.
Click here to play with the interactive 3D model.
Here you can see a real reflective material effect placed on our Hummingbird logo.
You can see just how much improved this new gold material effect is over the last time we updated on this topic:
Material effects like these are only possible because Hummingbird, our Flash-based 3D modeller, utilizes the powerful open source Away3D flash engine.
Why did we choose Away3D to power Hummingbird when there were other very competent 3D engines like Papervision3D and Sandy available?
Simple: Technical realism is a must. Hummingbird will be used to render realistic 3d photo objects for use in other Aviary tools (like Phoenix). Away3D supports features like corrective z-sorting, ensuring us that pictures will be rendered correctly, with polygons appearing exactly as they should. Add incredible real-time material effects previously unseen in Flash and it was perfect for our needs.
Update! More interactive demos:
- Reflective directional lighting
- smooth shading
- transparent reflections
A quick wrap-up on the last few days of excitement here:
Book deal!
We're thrilled to announce that we have signed a deal to create a book of image editing tutorials with a focus on using Aviary's Phoenix, the image editing tool of our suite.
The best part about this book is that we're including a free full version of Phoenix on AIR with every copy, along with source files for every tutorial inside. 
The book will also be useful to users of the GIMP and Adobe Photoshop, as the naming conventions, techniques and tools described in the book are universal in nature to tools used in those programs.
The book will be crowd-sourced, meaning it will be written by our talented community of image editors at Worth1000.com.
The book will be sold in major retail outlets like Barnes and Noble, Borders and of course can be ordered online through Amazon.com and BN.com. More details and a link to preorder will be posted soon.
New logo
We've made a slight change to our branding. We have a new logo, though we may be tweaking it further before our official launch.
New domain
For all you lazy folk out there, you can now access Aviary at a.viary.com:
http://a.viary.com/.
Of course you can continue accessing us at CreationOnTheFly.com.
One of the new Flex-based design tools we recently demonstrated at the TechCrunch40 conference is Woodpecker, a smart image resizer. 
Woodpecker is the newest addition to our growing list of web-based design tools and also serves as an interesting experiment for us, in that it is the first application to be built using the Aviary Framework. Although it is being built specifically to be included as a part of the Aviary suite, we are also using it as a prototype for the platform model we ultimately hope to enable: Namely to let developers profit from the tools and additional functionality they build into our framework.
Woodpecker is based on a concept called Seam Carving, pioneered by the brilliant Dr. Ariel Shamir, now employed by Adobe. Seam Carving is a method through which an image is cropped without harming the important content of an image.
Without any advanced editing on the part of the user, Woodpecker can take you from this:
to this:
We considered this a really neat addition to our growing suite of web applications, and a quick one to develop as well. Our development team was able to build Woodpecker onto our framework in approximately 20 man-hours. Here's a quick tour of Woodpecker in action. Of the few Flash demos of Seam Carving that have gone up, Woodpecker is the most complete to date.
Woodpecker allows for precision control during mask painting (for protection and removal of specific items in an image). This means that you can protect (or auto-remove) specific parts of your image just by painting them green or red!
Woodpecker allows for multiple methods of seam carving (including novice and expert modes), which is very useful because not all images will display good results when carved using the same methods. 
It allows for pixel addition as well, which means in addition to being able to remove pixels from an image, Woodpecker can also enlarge an image without warping the important content! Imagine the possibilities when trying to fill a specific sized frame, to not have to rely on the clone stamp tool in Photoshop (or Phoenix) to get a natural looking background.
Woodpecker will also be available on AIR as a stand alone desktop tool. We're giving out beta access to it (just sign up for image editing beta invites).
If you're currently at Adobe Max in Chicago and would like to see Woodpecker (or any tool in the suite), drop us an email at aviary( a )worth1000.com.
To learn more about seam carving in general, here's a (pretty viral) video of seam carving using Dr. Shamir's desktop tool.
Some of our team is planning on attending Adobe Max next week and would love to meet up with anyone in the graphics or tech industry who wants to grab some drinks. Drop us a line at aviary(a)worth1000.com if so and be sure to watch the keynote addresses on opening day and you'll hopefully see a glimpse of Phoenix and Hummingbird on AIR.
In other news: team member Michael had the pleasure of demonstrating Phoenix on AIR at Adobe's On AIR tour stop in NY on Monday. We had a blast - Adobe really puts on a great show.
We can also add to the press that Aviary received with this video interview posted on InfoWorld. Watch
We've returned and recovered from the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco (and a quick stop in Seattle) where we got to demonstrate our suite of tools and marketplace to the public for the first time.
The reaction was fantastic! Industry people with any kind of background in the arts really loved what we are trying to accomplish with Aviary and requested beta invites.
We even got some press interested too. Here's some coverage from the first day of the conference.
The San Francisco Chronicle said:
"For those on the creative side of things, a new tech platform called Aviary was being touted by representatives of Worth100 LLC, a privately held firm in Long Island, N.Y. The reps said the site has "rich Internet applications geared for artists of all genres." That includes people who do image editing, typography, music, video and so forth. Apply to participate in the beta version at www.creationonthefly.com."
Ars Technica said (while discussing their favorite picks of the conference):
"Aviary.... a surprisingly capable cross-platform image editing, 3D modeling, and vector editing suite, Aviary is written completely in Flash 9. The 3D modeling portion of this suite also allows users to sell and market their creations."
ABC 30 in San Francisco said (while discussing their favorite picks of the conference):
"The creators of Aviary, an online graphic arts site, came here to learn and also for the exposure.
"We'd like to see what other people who are in the industry think about our tool, and we'd also like to get some feedback on ways we can improve it and are also here to practice our pitch for later on."
Other trip highlights:
- We saw MC Hammer walk by our booth, dress like a normal human being. He's funded a dance social network.
- I checked out ImageKind's cool Seattle digs.
- I spent a few hours with Ryan Stewart from Adobe and let him play with Aviary. It was like watching a kid in a candy store. (You'll all know the feeling soon).
We'll be joining Adobe's On AIR Tour tomorrow for their New York City stop and plan on showing a demo of Phoenix on AIR at around 6:00 PM. The audience is already sold out, but if you're planning on attending please do drop us a line and let us know at aviary(a)worth1000.com.
[Sidenote: We really lucked out with our bird metaphor working so well with the AIR brand].
Peacock was originally conceived as an Adobe Flex-based helper tool for Phoenix and Hummingbird which would allow users to easily create new tilable textures and patterns to paint with or to layout on 3D meshes. We quickly realized that the tool was so innately limitless in potential that it deserved a full spot in our tool suite.
In my first time playing with the alpha I was able to make a stitched weave pattern (useful if you're creating a photorealistic couch), and a few patterns that I'd love to have on a tie. Here are some tie examples (admittedly my taste is probably awful).
So how does Peacock work?
Essentially, it's a math based creation tool, which means that you don't need any innate skill to create new effects and works... just some patience to play with the settings and sliders and watch all the cool effects and patterns it can generate. Peacock acts a lot like a stack of effects: Each item in the effect stack alters the contents of the canvas (created by previous items in the stack).
What kinds of patterns can Peacock make?
- Organic patterns, such as wood, marble, electricity, clouds, water and fire.
- Tiling patterns, such as kaleidoscoped images and artwork.
- Artificial patterns such as plaid, pinstripes, drapes, weaves, sewing, bricks and mason work.
- Trippy patterns like waveforms, plasma effects and fireworks.
- Honestly... it's essentially unlimited.
So what kinds of uses will Peacock have?
- Users will be able to paint with custom brush patterns and texture meshes that can be used in other Aviary tools.
- Users will be able to create tilable wallpaper.
- Users will be able to create custom fabric patterns (i.e. creating your own tie fabric and custom clothing) through our marketplace.
Finally, some more examples of the fun I had while writing up this post. :)
Funky tie pattern
Red drapes
Persian rug pattern
Edit: Peacock is currently under development and is only available for private alpha testing. To see it live in action, please sign up for a beta invitation - set your interest as pattern generation
One of the few non-flex based tools in our tool list is Eagle, a server side program we developed which is used to identify the specific camera used when an photograph is uploaded to our server. I am not referring to being able to identify which model camera an image came from (something anyone can easily extract from the EXIF data).
I am referring to identifying a specific camera.
Every camera in the world is unique, even digital cameras. Microscopic imperfections in the makeup of various camera parts leave each camera on an assembly line with a subtle, but completely unique "fingerprint" that is passed onto every image a camera takes. You just need to know how to extract it.
Because of the existence of this fingerprint, we realized that we could allow our members to upload a library of stock photography and actually prove that they owned the cameras used to take the images. In other words, we could establish and validate a base on our ownership chain, right from the raw unedited images uploaded to our system.
We view photographers as an extremely important part of our planned ecosystem - possibly the most important - as they are the verified source providers that others will edit their images from (or use those images in books, magazines, etc...).
Beyond the technical workings of the software we developed, the process is fairly simple: Photographers who want to become photo providers and sell their images in our market as verified works will need to register their cameras with us.
Registering a camera is a simple two step process.
1) Photographers upload some raw unedited images taken from their camera to us. Eagle then extracts and stores a fingerprint for that camera.
2) As a safety precaution, photographers are also assigned to take some control pictures of different random subjects with the same camera. Once taken and uploaded, we manually verify (by human) that the images have the requested subjects in them.
The second step prevents a plagiarist from registering another person's camera by just going to Flickr and downloading a bunch of their works.
We do plan on releasing a separate API for Eagle, one we hope will be used by webmasters of many photo sharing websites online to help prove ownership and combat plagiarism. We hope that Eagle will become the OpenID of digital cameras and help everyone prove the authenticity of their works across the web.
Hackers and geeks, ahoy!
We've gotten quiet a few requests for more in-depth information on how the system and our API will work. Adobe has also asked us to elaborate more on the underlying structure of our system (i.e. the fact that we're Flex based and will run on AIR). As we're close to releasing the first API for Aviary, now seemed as good a time as any to discuss some of the geekier bits of our system.
Our first API will allow developers to use and extend our GUI interface, basic components and store data in our file system. In future releases more code functionality will be accessible so anyone interested could join the project easily or develop their own tools. An example of the functionality the second API would bring would be using our built in undo/redo or ability to parse certain file types (such as .TTF, .PDF or .3DS).
How the whole system works
Aviary is developed in ActionScript 3 using Flex (and it will also run on AIR). It was developed using the Cairngorm design pattern created by Adobe engineers. The Aviary Framework is developed with interaction in mind; any developed application has to be able to merge trasparently into the suite, allowing the developer to focus on providing additional functionalities without worrying about building a GUI or framework. To achieve this goal the whole Aviary Suite has been built using a modular approach:
A user will only need to open one application (Aviary), which serves as a launcher. All of the tools are really just powerful independent modules that will be managed by this launcher application. Aviary will load and unload applications as needed, leaving the data available for another application and providing seamless interoperability between all of the tools.
The user workflow will be as smooth as possible. A user won't need to open separate applications to edit all the assets that will compose his final document, as the individual tools will be automatically loaded and unloaded by the Launcher to provide the functionalities needed to edit each asset. The Aviary framework will manage the synchronization to restore the tool which requested another tool for editing.
Graphical User Interface
The Aviary framework will provide a full set of custom components that can be used to implement homogeneous user interfaces between all the tools. Those components will also be styleable and skinnable, so developers can customize the appearance of their tool. We're also including support classes for the user interface: for instance a user customized workspace could be saved on our server and restored the next time the user will be online.
You will be able to create and customize different palette types and menus:
1) Left palettes (the tool palletes that affect very specific aspects of your workspace).
2) Right palettes (the global palletes that affect general aspects of the workspace).
3) Bottom palettes (also global palletes, but laid out horizontally).
4) Menus (a simple menu system reserved for common functionality that needs to be accessible at all times, such as UNDO / REDO, and copy / paste)
Your tools will even be able to support multiple workspaces (for example if you want to provide a simple and advanced version of your tools).
We will also provide developers with a library of button icons to use in the GUI.
Finally, we have prepared our GUI to be able to support multiple languages. You can easily add new language configuration files for your tools and if a user specifies to work with that language in their preferences, it will be displayed.
Connecting to Rookery, our file server
One of the best features of our API is that it includes a full, free filesystem for you to permanently store and retrieve user data. Our API will include a set of classes needed to access the server and retrieve data from it as needed. With those APIs a developer can access informations related to a given user, retrieve a list of assets that can be used in their program or share a creation with the community. In other words, there is no need to build a back end for storage.
Our file system, rookery, is a distributed redundant network that uses Amazon S3 for backup and failover. It can also be accessed independantly of Aviary, if wanted.
We save all work files with the .egg extension. Developers simply need to have their applications pass their completed work file data to our class, where it will be automatically wrapped with additional "egg metadata" used by our filesystem to store and track ownership of files. All files have protective shells. We automatically scramble the egg data (yum) so the integrity of file ownership shouldn't be compromised, even when users download the work files to their desktop.
Logging and session recording
One of the coolest aspects of Aviary is that it allows users to automatically create text-based tutorials and record a video of their workspace, to share with other users as tutorials. Using those APIs a developer can automatically log messages or record sessions so they could be replayed later or used to build a tutorial. We're also planning on releasing a chat module so multiple users can view and comment on a single users' workspace in realtime as they perform work. This will be useful for live tutoring sessions (which theoretically could also add another form of income for users of our marketplace).
AIR applications
We do plan on releasing an AIR version of Aviary, as well. We'll have a separate blog post on how this will work shortly.
If you're a developer interested in building your own Aviary application or otherwise want to access our marketplace, please drop us a line at aviary_api (a) worth1000.com.
In our experiments with Raven, our Flex-based vector editor, our programming team needed to find a way to convert fonts into editable outlines. This meant being able to parse True Type Font (TTF) files and read their contents into editable vector graphics. We accomplished this task and realized that this experiment had another very useful application: allowing people to edit and create original font files in their browser (or as a downloadable AIR application).
The best part is that we are now half way to completing the tool, even before we knew we could add it to our suite! The only major hurdle we theoretically have left to putting out a tool like this is to recompile the file with the edited data.
So we can now introduce a new planned tool into our suite of Rich Internet Applications: Horus, a browser based font editor.
We have decided to name the new tool Horus, given the associations of Egyptian hieroglyphics with fonts and writing (and the association of Horus with falcons). 
You can see the rough results of our team's Flex experiment into parsing fonts into outlines. (Open a font from the top File menu and then drill down into and enter the glyph folder to select and play with the shapes).
And because Horus shares most of it's code base with Raven, development on one essentially means we are further along with the other as well (which is how we have been developing all of our tools to date).