Tumbling animation?

[jstahl]

I'm looking to create an animation that looks like the 'Phantom Zone' in the Superman IV movie. You can Youtube it if you're not sure what I mean. If I play with some of the rotate animations, and set my shape at an angle, it is close, but not as close as I'd like. I'm looking for a more random tumbling, the rotate is too consistent. Any ideas?

[simsmj]

I think the only way to do this would be to create several short Rotate animations of the same tumbling shape but from slightly different viewpoints or with different preset angles, and then build up a sequence in XaraXtreme selecting frames from among them all. Not sure how well it would work, and would take some time.

Mike

[lwc]

I don't have XaraXtreme simsmj. Does XaraXtreme offer any FX capabilities for a GIF animation such as "rotate"?

If it does not, then a third party animation program may be an option.

[iamtheblues]

You can download an unrestricted free trial from here. By the way, I like your avatar a lot!
Bob.

[lwc]

Thanks Bob! That avatar was fun to make.

I was wondering if XaraXtreme's animation abilities included a "rotate" effects option as the tumble is not difficult with 3D6 if you can edit it.

This "Tumble" effect was made with a spin in 3D6, then another "rotate" effect was added using my animation program to approximate the "Superman" movie effect. I also used an animated (alternating the colors) gif background and another effect for the final lighting.

This example had 60 frames in the original but was culled and reduced to 127 colors.

Not exactly random, but it fools the eye a bit.

-Loyd

[jstahl]

Wow, lwc, that is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. Only in my animation, I have 7 different faces, so every time it turns around it is a different face (I play in a band, and there are 7 of us). Not sure if this would work for me. I might just stick with what I have (I used a rotate animation, flipping top to bottom, and skewed it at an angle so it looks kind of like it's tumbling).