Finally the Adobe team released the Hydra’s tech-preview package, available for download right here: reading the documentation, there are some cool things that aren’t expected to work in the Flash player, anyway Hydra signify a huge step forward for the Flash technology, enabling the next Flash Player for custom bitmap filters, blend modes and a bunch of exciting new stuff! Also, congrats to Joa as he wrote the first non-Adobe hydra filter!

I had some difficulties installing the package since it was keep asking to terminate another Adobe installation, anyway i managed to install the beast and give it a try: i wanted to simulate a “glassy look-through” effect (as you are watching something outside of a glass door): it goes without saying there is the need to use some of the “region needed” magic in order to crop the black borders out, but i have no time at the moment, so here it is.
In order to use this filter you’ll have to download the kernel source and these three images:

Basically, once you launched the AIF Toolkit, you load the hydra source, then the shower as the first image, and then choose one of the two normal maps as the second image, press F5 and try play with the parameters.

Tags: astro, hydra, kernel filters