Re: Good 3D App to create images for Flash

[John Croteau]

Hi all, 


An animation displayed as a series of bitmaps is generally

unsatisfactory for most Flash presentations since its viewable size

needs to be kept quite small to allow a reasonable download and frame

rate in Flash. Also, for best results Flash movies with bitmaps should

be set at a fixed size and not scaled.


What we are looking for is not the best 3D creation program, but one

that leads to easy vector import into Flash. Most all 3D programs have

features and capabilities that are beyond anything needed for creation

that is destined for Flash, most are made for use in TV, Film, Video or

for multimedia use as AVI or MOV movies . All 3D programs create in

vector format, then vector and/or bitmap surfaces are added. What is

important for our Flash use is a program that exports the image in a

usable vector format (ai, eps, wmf, swf) instead of a bitmap format. 


The DXF format export (not save as) from 3D Max and other programs is

kind of useless since it only exports a single view of a 3D object and

not the 3D skeleton in perspective.

For 3D Max a better solution would probably be export in EPS into either

Freehand, Illustrator or similar full function vector program. After

importing into Freehand (or other program) as EPS, the vector portions

can be exported to Flash as AI, swf or a Flash compatible version of

EPS. If the surfaces are stored as bitmaps, they can be separated and

imported into Flash as bitmaps where they can be realigned with the

vector portion of the image. They can then be converted to vectors or

left as bitmaps as needed. Flash 4 Wish, EPS import into Flash retaining

bitmap info.


Both Animation Master http://www.hash.com/ and Poser 3

http://www.metacreations.com/ export in DXF, but if they export only a

single side view and not a perspective view then this is worthless for

our Flash needs.


Direct export to a game engine (Flash) is possible in 3D Studio Max

There's no need to export to an intermediate format when you

know exactly what your game engine needs.  3D Studio MAX

R2's proven SDK development kit comes standard.   It gives

you access to everything in memory. You can even extract

private data created by custom 3D Studio MAX R2 plug-ins.

With the 3D Studio MAX R2 SDK, there's no barrier between

your game content and your game engine.

Or in our case the Flash Format (instead of Game Engine).........

Maybe MM or someone else will create a converter.


-----------                               -----------------------

John Croteau

croteauerols [dot] com (mailto:croteauerols [dot] com)

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