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 Swift
3D v2.0
Animating 3D Shapes
The hallmark of Swift 3D v2.0 is its ability to take 3D polygonal shapes and
animate them for later use in Flash. Just like everything else in the program,
animating shapes is simple and straightforward. You have a wide variety of
custom animations built for you to use, or you can create your own custom
rotation/lighting/position effects by using the timeline.
Once the shape has been animated, your timeline
comes to life with keyframes and other such goodies found in Flash and other
timeline-based animation programs.
[ animating in swift 3d v2.0 ]
The timeline functionality of Swift
3D v2.0 is a little strange if you are familiar with using the timeline found in
Flash. The individual layers of the timeline correspond to a property of the
image and how it will be modified as the animation progresses. The keyframes and
other such elements are automatically created for your animation. With a little
bit of getting used to, you will be able to use the basic timeline for its
intended purpose of creating simple animation in Swift 3D v2.0.
Exporting to Flash SWF
The Export functionality of Swift 3D v2.0 is remarkable. Unlike
the first release of Swift 3D, in Swift 3D v2.0, includes a handy preview
feature in which you can preview how a frame of your animation will look. You
might think what's the purpose of that?
If you are working with complex
animated 3D models, it takes a long time to render the final animation into the
SWF. Instead of waiting 5 minutes for the animation to be exported only to find
out that the mesh shading, the lighting, and the color don't look good at this
setting. By using the preview frame feature, you will see exactly how that
particular frame of your animation looks with the options you specified in a few
seconds. You can really fine-tune your animation to the way you like.
The following image shows you the
Render Preview feature:
[ render preview feature of
swift 3d v2.0 ]
You are also presented with many
options to fine tune the quality of your animation. You have several fill
options to choose from; each option contains a certain tradeoff between
quality/file size. You can also specify whether your animation will include
Edges and how the edges will appear.
After playing the Render Preview and
Export Options, I finally generated all the frames of my animation. The
rendering process was quick and I was able to see how each generated from looked
in my work area. The process of rendering the 26 frames on my 933 MHz PC with
256MB Ram running Windows XP took about 30 seconds. Not too bad at all!
Here is the finished animation of
the flashlight that I drew, modified, and animated using Swift 3D v2.0:
Importing the animation into Flash was no problem
either. Because Swift 3D v2.0 exports the animation in the SWF format, I was
able to import the keyframes into a Flash movie clip. Of course, I could not
edit the 3D animation once in Flash, but that's what Swift 3D is for! Read on
for my conclusion...
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