Systems integrety chk

[Robert]

Hi Adge (and everyone else on the forum),
I just notice a new animation you've done.

http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_a282.htm

I just wanted to say how amazing this looks, I was also wondering how you made the 3d meshes in vectors. I know for a fact that this graphic is a pain to do. I myself been trying my best to come out with the best way of doing it.

Any advices?

[Lee Wolfgang]

Well, the animation is kind of jumpy, and the ship does look somewhat hand-drawn, or at least using the smooth tool, but there are programs that can make three-dimentional objects in Flash, one of which is Swift 3D.* Unfortunately, though, they take up some awful amount of memory.* Or maybe the ones I've seen were just made at a slower framerate, but it works.

[Adge]

I had tried for many months on and off to either paint the meshes in Paint Shop Pro and then import them as 3d meshes into flash, but initially that left me with a huge file size even before I could add anything else such as the other items being shown including the LCARS graphics. And yes you are correct using your words it was a pain to do, however, after some 200 hrs I managed to at least achieve the rotation in sync with the actual screen captures.

To get started I had taken a full series of screen captures from the episodes frame by frame that I mention on my site, and then I had to increase each of the screen captures to a good workable size to be in a position to clearly see where each line was to enable me to trace each vector layer which in this particular case works out at 19 individual screens just showing voyager turning. As if you watch these particular screens shown in the episodes, voyagers is not turning on a normal axis, as it turns it also narrows at the top as well as the bottom. I am not sure if Swift 3D would do the trick, as even the original jumps and jerks! :) It is one of the most difficult screen to re-creat.

If you would like to use my screen captures to do some work, you are welcome, let me know and I’ll send you them to you in a Zip file.

Regards

Adge
www.lcars.org.uk (http://www.lcars.org.uk)