Help with rotary graphic animation for a new theme

[majorspawn]

Hi Guys,

Langers and myself are working on a rotary game themed project for HS. I was hoping to get some help from one of the members if possible as we are both pretty nooby in shockwave.

We have a rotary logo with a joystick as pictured here.

What we wanted is to get the joystick in the logo animated in a simple way so it looks like its rotating back and forth. I suppose someone could redraw 2 more images of the joystick with a rotation to the left and right and then loop the animation between the 3 pictured frames.

Would any shockwave gurus be interested in helping out in our project?

here is the link to the psd file

Thanks in advance

[Polemicist]

Wouldn't rotary games be played with a spinner?

[majorspawn]

no mate, uses a SNK LS30 joystick, games like heavy barrel or midnight resistance, ikari warriors etc

spinners are more for arkenoid etc

[Polemicist]

Oh right.

Been a long time since I've used one of them.

[majorspawn]

Oh right.

Been a long time since I've used one of them.

are you volunteering to help out a fellow Aussie Pole?

[Polemicist]

I can see what I can do. Been a while since I did a 3D animation.

[majorspawn]

I can see what I can do. Been a while since I did a 3D animation.

sweet, thank mate any help would be appreciated.

[Polemicist]

You guys have that file in vector? Sorry I've been playing with Swift 3D again and having fun. Got a little carried away.

/Upload Here/Polemicist/Rotary Stick/Stick.swf

A bit too realistic and would prefer a more cartoon look so your AI / EPS / Whatever Vector thing you have would be much better. What did you guys do the original in?

[dark13]

If you want a clean vector look I can do it in cinema 4d wiht toon shader. Swift 3d was made to have "vector" .swf but as far as I tested c4d is better for this look (and the version of swift 3d I was trying outputted .swf incompatible with HS, no actionscript 3.0).

The only problem is I need a .psd without joystick to put it on the animation rendering in after effects (to make .swf I use cinema 4d, after effects and flash).

[Polemicist]

why not just add the test straight into Cinema 4D? You already did the hard bit. been a long time since I used Cinema 3D. I still have Maya 2012 installed at the moment but again has been a while and I preferred working with organic substances and liquid movement in Maya I much preferred flash for my cartoonish stuff ... Actually there was a program I started playing with many years ago that was used for cell animation ... Damn what was it?

Oh hold on Swift 3D does have toon shading. Crap.

Anyway. Dark finish that thing. All you need is the font quick dump, extrude, deform plus a drop shadow and ya done. Oh and a quick animation.

[dark13]

Yes, swift3d does have toon shading If I remember it also has the possibility to save .swf with 3d object transformed into vector (cool to avoid resolution issue).

A "full" 3d software indeed has more freedom. Just an example, here's how I matched the perspective... actually I modified the mesh instead of losing plenty of time with camera setting lol

Liquid physic is very cool but at the moment I'm working with 4gb ram, these kind of things are ram-hungry BTW how's modelling in maya? Everybody say the real problem is understanding the interface

Usually I prefer to work with more software as every program does have its strong and weak point. To render the font in cd4 you have to unwrap UVWs and create textures... if you don't need 3d look adding the 2d logo in after effect is faster . Indeed photoshop has a pretty good 3d rendering engine so making simple shapes into it is pretty easy BUT rendering in PS is really S*L*O*W, making it in c4d is MUCH faster I don't like too much vectors so when vector graphic is not needed I usually go 3d for extruded text, this logo for example has glossy finish built-in textures (it was for a 90s party planning crew, in the very end they needed even an .ai for rubber-stamp but creating it from a hi-res toon rendering had been a breeze)

Majorspawn if you want it just send the original .psd (or a .png with text and arrows without joystick). If you want extruded 3d text I need the .psd layer with text converted into shape.

[langersld]

If you want a clean vector look I can do it in cinema 4d wiht toon shader. Swift 3d was made to have "vector" .swf but as far as I tested c4d is better for this look (and the version of swift 3d I was trying outputted .swf incompatible with HS, no actionscript 3.0).[ATTACH=CONFIG]39335[/ATTACH]

The only problem is I need a .psd without joystick to put it on the animation rendering in after effects (to make .swf I use cinema 4d, after effects and flash).

Thanks fo your help with this mate... PM sent

[langersld]

You guys have that file in vector? Sorry I've been playing with Swift 3D again and having fun. Got a little carried away.

/Upload Here/Polemicist/Rotary Stick/Stick.swf

A bit too realistic and would prefer a more cartoon look so your AI / EPS / Whatever Vector thing you have would be much better. What did you guys do the original in?

Pol thanks for your help with this PM sent

[Polemicist]

Yeah Dark I love modelling Maya. The interface is actually fairly intuitive. The quick menus make using a pen and graphic tablet absolutely brilliant. I guess for such an expensive application you would expect it. Yeah when Maya started with liquids and different types of emitters I just went nuts. I wasn't doing much as it was more of a hobby for me but the stuff I did play with fascinated me. I was having a great old time modelling heads and creating landscapes.

Oh and yeah Swift 3D is made for doing SWF modelling. It actually had an import tool as well so you can take the created file and drag it into Flash.

Anyway yeah mate finish ya design. Langersld as you can see doing things like this is not difficult with the right tools.

[dark13]

Do you have a .psd with separate layers on it? I need the text as shape to extrude it in cinema 4d and the arrows layer to overlay it to joystick animation.

Is resolution 420*341 or do you need a bigger .swf?

For animation: is this ok or were you thinking to something different?

rot joy.zip

[majorspawn]

Ohhh my Goodness!!

I just logged on, I wasn't expecting sucha response. Thank you so much guys. dark13, the animation is brilliant! Ill check the size with langers..

[Polemicist]

*chuckles* Not many flash guys here and possibly even fewer 3D artists.

[dark13]

Check this in hyperspin, animation seems too fast on my q6600 but I test it trought hypertheme, for full theme it may be ok (hyperspin read .swf as fast as it can so sometimes you need really slow animation). Re-rendering it is not an issue as rendering setting are quite fast, the only problem is more frame=bigger file.

The .psd file you sent me link has raster logo, I need a text-based layer or path-based layer (you can convert text to path) to extrude in cinema 4d. Link also the flyer you want text to be similar to, there are different ikari art with different perspective

rotary logo.zip

[langersld]

Check this in hyperspin, animation seems too fast on my q6600 but I test it trought hypertheme, for full theme it may be ok (hyperspin read .swf as fast as it can so sometimes you need really slow animation). Re-rendering it is not an issue as rendering setting are quite fast, the only problem is more frame=bigger file.

The .psd file you sent me link has raster logo, I need a text-based layer or path-based layer (you can convert text to path) to extrude in cinema 4d. Link also the flyer you want text to be similar to, there are different ikari art with different perspective

Thanks for your help so far Dark... I will test the swf when I get home tonight

I will also see If I can Manipulate the Text so you are able to extrude... Small issue i have is that the text was done outside of Photoshop...

I may need to re-do text in photoshop? can you let me know otherwise....

The text effect we where thinking of was like this Logo below...

Thanks

[Polemicist]

All that is needed for text is the font and a template of what is wanted. That sort of text extrusion is easy enough. I'm enjoying watching Dark playing with this. When ya done Dark can I have a play with the C4D file? I should be able to import into Maya without issue just wanted to muck around.

[langersld]

The font we where thinking of is “Age”

Happy to go with any other Font that may suit ... just wanted it to have this template look

Thanks again for your help so far

[Polemicist]

Where can that font be grabbed from?

[majorspawn]

Where can that font be grabbed from?

is this what your after?

http://www.fonts2u.com/age.font

free to download

what about some of the exiting fancy 3D fonts like xtrusion.?

from here: http://www.fonts2u.com/category.html?id=65

[Polemicist]

In 3D graphics doing the extrusion is the easy bit. I'm interested in how Dark is gonna tackle this one.

I'm tempted to have a play just in Flash and Illustrator to see what can be done purely vector only. Interesting and a bit of fun.

You can see the acceleration in the rotary control in Dark's animation. So smooth with that feature. You will also notice that it gets exported as raster images so size of file will be an issue. Hmmm. This may be a weekend thing for me to play with though but I enjoy it. I still have to finish this

*sighs* I was only doing it for fun. Love the artwork in these old games.

[dark13]

Age font is really different from the one you were using in that logo. There's no gradient as I need to create texture for that, I want to be sure about the font before going fancy.

@polemicist

Really nice vector art. I love vector art but i hate the process of making it

@majorspawn "3d font" does not fit extrusion for real 3d, they are supposed to be used in 2d

rotating joystick test logo.zip