How to create a multi-text cube...

[simsmj]

See mini tut below, Part one creates a fully-rotateable 3D cube in Xara3D, but is not a true Die, as any pair of opposite faces share the same dot number. The animation was built up in XaraX from frames in X3d, but as I will explain in the next tutorial, as a new face comes into view and its opposite face moves out of view, there is a point where both faces are invisible, allowing me to seamlessly replace the relevant shape with the correct one for the next frame.

Mike

[zee]

Mike,
Thanks for the mini-tut. I got pretty close, but have problem when setting line spacing to 0%. For some reason, the dice sides on the 3 cubes intersect inside so that I end up with a white cube. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[simsmj]

Zee,
the settings I used worked fine for me, but when I was working on Part 2, I had occasion to replace some of the faces, and the effect you are complaining of happened to me, too. I transferred a 200-pixel square from XaraX exactly as I did before, but the new face was slighly too big. I had to reduce the bevel from 33 to about 15. To keep the image consistent, I had to replace all the faces and readjust the settings. I have no idea why I should have had to do this.

When you have the line spacing at 0%, and the faces are oriented correctly, readjust the bevel and extrusions with the cursor off. Try setting the bevel to none to start with, then adjust the extrusion. The extrusion needs to make each shape longer than it is wide, so each cube projects a little beyond the sides of the other cubes. The corners of the die should then appear incut. Then apply the rounded bevel, and increase it until the corners round off and merge.

I'll post the second part of the tutorial later this evening.

Mike

[simsmj]

Part 2 as promised.

Mike

[esanabri]

John Rayner
posted May 05, 2005 06:14 AM
"but it was very easy." - Mike Sims

Half of your easy stuff is brain surgery for the rest of us... You definently push the envelope Mike.

Yep... BRAIN SURGERY http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[simsmj]

Ernesto,
I think creating the 3d cube as in Part 1 was pretty straightforward, and I can see that making the animation afterwards was more complicated, in the sense there were a lot of repeated steps, with a few interventions at certain points, but like any problem, breaking it down into small chunks makes it easier to handle.

I didn't start at a blank screen with the whole sequence of steps to a finished animation in my head, I just started with XaraX, made only three shapes and copied them to X3D, then played with the Rotate2 animation to rotate the faces to fit together. I knew that would work, because I had played with similar ideas before.

I was a bit more concerned about getting the faces to show properly, without interference from the other shapes. I hoped a suitable combination of Extrusion and Bevel would work, but I wasn't sure of it. It worked practically at first attempt, so I had a 3d Die almost immediately, and I could drag it around freely on screen. I nearly posted it then, because it was getting late in the evening, but it seemed to me I could animate it by manually rotating it by fixed amounts and pasteing the images into XaraX, so I started doing that, then I hit a problem with the wrong dot faces appearing, because my 3d die wasn't a true die, with opposite faces adding up to seven, my 3d die had opposite faces sharing the same number, so I went back to XaraX and made the rest of the faces, and as each new face came into view, I replaced the relevant shape with a new one, as detailed in the Part 2 tutorial.

So you see, every step was a simple one, and built on what I already had, and at least with the animation, was mostly just repetitive slogging away, with a couple of hiccups solved on the hoof, as it were. I didn't know it was going to work, I just tried it to see how far it would go, and happily it worked out fine. If it hadn't, I would have posted just a static image, and if that hadn't worked, I probably wouldn't have posted at all, or more likely, tried something else first.

Hmmm, that was a long sermon, I didn't mean to preach, but the basic point is, don't be afraid to experiment, you never know what might happen, or what you can achieve along the way, and above all, have fun!

Mike

[zee]

Mike,
By gosh, I think I got it. I must admit that I had to go through your tutorial several times before I got it. I did find out though that each time I failed and started over I learned more about the workings of Xara3D and X1
animation. The only problem I see, is that my dice seems to hesitate a bit as it rotates, whereas yours seems to rotate more smoothly. Any idea why that is?

The real amazing thing is that you were able to even come up with the method to do this. Thanks for taking the time to share your talents; you are the true 3D master.

[simsmj]

Zee,
Excellent! The pause is caused by your frame 8 having the same image as frame 7, instead of the image it should have. All the other frames are correct.

Well Done.

Mike

[zee]

Mike,
Yup, that was the problem. I corrected it and re-imported it in the above post. Thanks again for all the information and the help.
Zee

Oh, and one last thing. I never knew that the opposite sides of a dice equaled 7. Thanks for that bit of trivia.

[simsmj]

I'm just showing off now. I turned on the shape outlines in the extrusion dialogue, then I had to make the bevel values for each shape differ by one unit to avoid overlap effects. I also used Shift-Ctrl drag to re-orient the die to allow the manual horizontal rotation to show all six sides.

Mike