Help with animation Please

[chuckles]

I hope I am in the right place...new here.

was wandering if someone would please point me in the right direction to create a certain type of SWF, animated gif, or something like that.

I have plenty of programs that I either have, or use. I currently have flashMX, fireworksMX, Swish, Photoshop, and some others. Including the 15 day trial of xara, that led me here.

I have created many differant type of gifs, signitures, SWF's, banners and other stuff. But I am completely at a loss on this project I am doing for a friend.

I'll try and paint a pictures of what I am trying to create....

What I want to do, is take a photo of the picture of the earth,(globe.jpg) and then I want to add some text, that will encircle the globe horizonally. (Kind of like the old movie begining, where the plane is flying around the earth) but I want text rotating aroud it.

I am sure the answer is in Flash MX somewhere, but I am not that great with all it's options yet. I mainly use Swish for my projects, because they are normally not that complicated.

If anyone could help, I sure would appreciate it.

[Gary David Bouton]

Hi Chuckles--

Although I'd recommend a fresh approach (as in, "Why would your client want to imitate the Universal Studios logo from 50 yearts ago, when it was done 50 years ago? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] ", you can try out Ulead Cool 3D. Very quick to learn, and it will export to Flash as well as GIF.

click for trial version

My Best,
Gare

[This message was edited by Gary David Bouton on November 22, 2002 at 11:36.]

[chuckles]

Gary,

LOL...No, not a client, I just do this for fun. And it may not even be a globe in the center when I am done, was just using the globe pic as a starting point for trying to create.

I apreciate the repsonce, and I am going there now to check it out. If successful, I will post what I create, if I am allowed.

Thanks again for your time.

[Gary David Bouton]

As a member, you are allowed to post creations.

Hint on your effort here: use XARA if you have it to import the GIF animation if you're using Cool 3D, add the globe, and then use XARA to export the completed GIF.

Want me to take a whack at it and post it?


Kindest Regards,
Gare

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[staigerman]

You can do animations like these with Carrara, and the 3D Basics version is $99 in the US. I think it's a different name in Europe, I might be wrong.

Place a sphere in the scene and texture-map a globe image on it. Trivial (in the texture room)

For the text, apply a bend Modifier (3rd icon category in the Properties Tray at right. If it's not bent enough at max slider value, apply a second bender.

Then simply lineup the bent text around the sphere's center and rotate to make it orbit. Or apply Spin behaviour.

[staigerman]

Note that Amapi 3D v4.15 is freely available at a frew websites like http://amapi.idevgames.com , http://www.bakhter.com and http://www.insidecg.com

Amapi has limited animation but enough to rotate an object in small increments or to move a camera along a bunch of positions such as points of a circle. Depending on the quality you're after this might just do the trick.

www.tgsmirror1.com/Marketing/Amapi has some Amapi 4 tutorials and also www.staigerland.com/amapi/tutorials.html

[gidgit]

Hey welcome chuckles ( I am chuckling hehe )and staigerman...

Chuckles, of course you are welcome to post your worx, comments what have ya... btw, did ya know that C3D has it's own forum here at TG... also there is a Gallery to post worx created with any app... Stick around and have some fun... looking forward to viewing this project of yours [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

staigerman... alright [thumbs up], a Carrara fan... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] We have been exploring a ton of 3D apps recently and I have really enjoyed myself exploring Carrara... what a terrific app... and ooh what nice renders, and quick like, even on amodest machines such as my wee rig... ya gotta like it... hope you stick around some, and thanx for any information regarding this cool tool [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Happy creating all [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[staigerman]

Ok, took another look at doing this with C3DBasics and noticed you can enter numeric values for the amount of bend, so a single Bend modifier does the trick for bending the text 360 degrees (actually I used 350 to leave some gap).



If you have FlashMX player or plugin installed, view the animation here (244 kb)

I also have an AVI file

here (706 kb) (sorry, don't remember which codec).

Note a few things:

1) the globe is turning slowly, takes 10 seconds for full turn to the East. That's a spin behaviour in the modifiers area, at -0.1 cycles/second

2) the text is orbiting in oposite direction, and faster.

3) the shader on the text is also animated, with a tweener which makes it cycle several times through the colors set at start and end keyframes of animation

4) there is a shadow catcher under the globe which automatically catches the shadow and shows it against a plain white backdrop.

This one was done in Carrara 3D Basics. Rendering took about 0.8 seconds per frame with anti-aliasing set to good and precision on geometry at 1 pixel (dito for shadows) with the Hybrid RayTracer, on a 1.6 GHz Athlon XP under win98se.

-Philip