Touch the 3D diskette image with your mouse. To prevent it from constantly flickering before your eyes, I did it in such a way that the animation activates only when the cursor moves over it.
There are a few ways to prepare 3D animated objects for use in Flash clips. Here we present, in my opinion, the most effective one, from the point of view of final results. The disadvantage of this method is that it is labour-intensive; its advantages - the minimum size of an SWF-file and full control of the process.
Instruction for the creation of 3D animation:
1. Imagine how your 3D object will look and how it will behave. Then create the scene in any 3D editor with this object and animate it with the required frequency of frames. To color this object you should use gradient fill, not texture. The stage with animation of this example was done in the package BRYCE 4, but it makes no difference in which software package you do this work.
2. After rendering scenes with animation in a 3D editor, record all frames in successive bitmaps, the format of which makes no particular difference, provided that it was imported in Flash editor. I, for example, am using BMP-format. It is desirable that your chosen format is full color and undamaged, in other words, it is better to use neither GIF nor JPG. To facilitate the following edit the object in a Flash editor. Don’t skimp on the size of the picture; the higher it is, the better. Usually I make pictures having 480x360 pixels, but the more complex the object, the larger its size.
3. Import the bitmap-sequence in a Flash editor through the corresponding button in the menu File -> Import (Ctrl+R). Every picture sequence lies alone in one frame on the montage ruler (TimeLine). Immediately after importing block this layer.
Drawing 1. Imported bitmap sequence. |
4. Create a second layer on the existent layer with the imported pictures and move to it. All of the following work will be conducted in this layer.
5. Establish the following settings for the “Pencil":
6. Further is the beginning of cropping work by hand-tracing each frame. Tracing – the translation of a raster-based image to a vector-based one.
For hand tracing it is necessary to outline every edge with pencil along the top of the initial raster-based image. Once you got into the habit this work will seem less interesting, more routine; but within three-four frames, you will get the hang of it and everything will a bit better. That’s how it was for me.
7. After finishing the hand tracing portion of the project, it is necessary to prime the frame of the image. Simply select "Pipette" color with the initial bitmap and fill in the corresponding spot. For major changes between colors, create gradient fill. For this you can select a “Pipette” from every color at the end of the future gradient. Experiment! The longer you paint, the more you understand how it is done. An important moment: to achieve more realistic results, try to distribute the colors you created for the maximum correspondence with the initial.
8. After finishing filling delete all lines for the frame, delete the layer with bitmap-sequences and remove extra elements from the library. Optimize the resultant animation; in order to do this in every frame select all images (Ctrl+A) and working with menu Modify -> Curves -> Optimize (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C) in the window that will open give the necessary settings optimization. They of course depend on concrete images, but as a rule it is sufficient to set the “Smoothing" cursor in the left position and turn on the option "Use multiple passes". I reiterate: experiment. The optimization decreases the size of the Flash-clip by 10-20%.
