HELP - Simple 3D animation : Gift box

Hi there...
I would appreciate if somebody could help me with this one.. I would like to create a simple animation of a gift box falling (let's say) from the sky. The problem is that I don't exactly know what is the easiest and more effective 3D software to do it. I'm attaching a pdf of the storyboard for you to get a better idea. I have never animated in 3D software, but I have animated in flash and am familiar with the basic concepts of animation. I would like to create something appealing, but not to complicated...

Thank you for your help.

G.

Hello Gasper,

The animation can be created in most if not all 3D applications.

You can try Truespace version 3 (an older version) for free:
http://www.caligari.com/products/tru...s/default.html

That looks like a cool concept, storyboard. I'd recommend using blender, but I'm not exactly sure personally how to create the deflection from the box to the floor. If done, I think gravity settings can take care of the last few bounces.

The mouse arrows are a bit more complicated.

Plus the gift box will be a little more challenging if you need a ribon or bow on it and if the bow would move at all during the drop. Seems like you could just say "ah skip the bow movement" but realism does matter even on simpler concepts.

This looks like a Xmas project, so I better not try to offer my services. I'm booked through the holidays at this point.

Not sure if the drop must be necessary, but just a slide in of the box before being noticed by the arrows could be cool too. Avoids the deflection requirements. Not that a trained person couldn't handle the bounces just fine.

good luck!!

If you are familiar (and competent) with flash animation I think you would be better off trying to do this entirely in flash. The motion isn't too complicated so it should be doable by tweening between static boxes. The arrows shouldn't be too difficullt either.

At the moment I'm really too busy to give it a go, otherwise I'd do it myself!

You haven't said what the final delivery medium is. It looks like a website animation and Flash is ideally suited to this.

It may well be worthwhile checking out swift3d (www.erain.com), which would allow you to do the animation and deliver as a flash file.

If you want small file sizes, hand animation is the way to go.

Good luck.

Paul

thank you all for your suggestions and help.. so far i have done some research and also played with Blender a little and Swift 3D as well..

I am supposed to create (and its "pro bono") animations for a small conference (due in February) on interactive media.. it will be something like:
- this animation plays on the projection screen in the conference hall for a couple of seconds, and then it introduces a static slide or a 2D animation of the topic that is going to follow, as well as the presenter.

I'm really not sure which road to take, flash animation or 3D.. I only know that when i choose it, I would have to stick with it so I appreciate your help..

I pretty much suck on both 3D and flash animation, but I guess I'm more familiar with animation concepts in flash, allthough it seems to me that it's more difficult to execute this in flash.. i don't know...

Also, I'm doing this on a laptop (Int. DualCore 1.73Ghz, Integrated graphics card, and a gigabyte of RAM, ) so if I go with Blender, or Cinema 4D i would probably need a renderer that produces cell shaded animation (or however it's called), right? I tried finding that for blender, but I couldn't...

please comment, thnx :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gasper

I'm really not sure which road to take, flash animation or 3D.. I only know that when i choose it, I would have to stick with it so I appreciate your help..

I pretty much suck on both 3D and flash animation, but I guess I'm more familiar with animation concepts in flash, allthough it seems to me that it's more difficult to execute this in flash.. i don't know...

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Hi gasper, in my opinion, I think you should tackle this in Flash. Only because, it doesn't matter if your "animation skills suck" as you put it, you can (as mentioned before) use tweening for most of the movement, then alter the frames to smooth out the movement. Also, from the drawing point of view, if you use the paintbrush to outline your design, you can trace this with the pen tool, by dragging the line and curving and straightening it.

Just go with what you're comfortable doing... I'm sure it'll turn out well! If not, then its all experience :)

Ps I would have a quick go at this, but I'm supposed to be studying >.<

Animation with Blender is "simple" enough (go through http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Ma...Minutes_Part_I
and
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Ma...inutes_Part_II

to get up to speed with Blender)

and when you're familiar enough, I suggest

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Rigid_Bodies

so you can simulate collisions (but not an obligation)...

"need a renderer that produces cell shaded animation"...

If I understand correctly, it is somewhat something like this (see picture) :

If so,

Button window - Scene (F10)
Output panel - Edge button

With the internal render, you'll get images like those (usually in the temp directory) and then you can use Flash to animate...

danifou

Here's a simple avi.jpeg example of i've done with Blender's renderer (5 minutes to setup...)

danifou