RE: was FLASH: Lightwave to Flash, now MacroModel

[John Dowdell]

At 3:35 AM 1/4/99, d.l.cheseldine wrote:

>I am thinking of trying some Flash animation using 3D letters (a bit like

>the spinning "n" discussed here some weeks back).  The 3D package I have is

>Macromedia MacroModel.  It's a Mac only package as far as I know;  we

>bought it in about 1995 and I haven't heard anything about it since.  Could

>someone who knows the package advise me on whether it would be suitable for

>what I have in mind or whether I should consider buying something else.


MacroModel was the descendent of Swivel, and the progenitor of Extreme 3D.

It is a strong tool for creation of geometry, and its internal rendering is

suitable for tracing in 2D tools.


Note that MacroModel was not an animation tool... you can certainly render

out a dozen or so stills for use in tracing in Flash, but you won't be able

to render out the material for a couple hundred symbols at a pop.


Tips: For any 3D-to-Flash work, trace the outlines and do the fills with

native Flash gradients, as Pete Clark advised. Because there's no 3D

keyframing, each frame will be a new symbol... web styles are different

from video styles!





Paul-as-Walrus wrote:

> Is there any way to output from LW to Flash without hand tracing?


Tip: Use the Cartoon Shader for Lightwave. This will give you nice crisp

edges which are easy and predictable to autotrace.



> I downloaded a trial version of Streamline and it didn't

> do a very good job.


It will tend to produce too many lines, with too many corners. Try the

tracing in Flash itself, and definitely play with the settings, comparing

the various results.



> There must be a vector saver plug-in for LW available somewhere!


Not just "vectors"... look for SWF export. This will tend to be more

optimized. If you're in contact with the NewTek folks, then advise them

that the SWF spec is available on the Macromedia site.


Background: Generic vectors could mean any of several things... even DXF is

vectors, and you know how much variance that has. There are relatively few

tools which handle vector-shading... Adobe Dimensions and RayDream AddDepth

were the two main ones. But these files would be much fatter than what

you'd ever want for SWF and web delivery. Rather than relying on some other

tool's "vectors", it's usually more economical to make the vectors

web-native by tracing them yourself.


jd




John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US


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