Animate Running water for the web, what type of animation?
I am attempting to animate running water on top of a white page (kinda like a waterfall) with a logo printed on it. It's for a friend of mine whose starting a non-profit, and I'm trying to give him something unique for his non-profit website.
However, I'm stumped. Should I take a ton of photos and work them into frames? Using Flash (a gif would be huge)? Any other suggestions as to what type of object to create? This will be a header for the pages -- and, if too large, maybe just a welcome page, because they want people to be stopped before they enter the site fully.
Also, if anyone has any animation tutorials for running water (Studio Max, Lightwave... or anything else I can pick up that is 2D or 3D), I'm all ears. Thanks
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I think Flash (or use Swish, as it it easier to work with) would be a better ideea. Anyway, as MotherNatrsSon already said, you will need some frames from a movie, mpeg or whichever, to combine the movement, even in Flash.
Of course, if you can draw that water...:-).... Use your own drawings.
You could do the mentioned, but as far as I am aware, you belong to a high profile graphics company.
My suggestion would be to use Maya, which can create animated water (which looks fake and realistic, you can choose how you wish to create it and to what extent of realism), relatively easily.
If you haven't got that at hand, then the mpeg way would work, printing each frame into flash, or a gif animator to create an infinite loop.
Yeah, I have to go the advanced route - thanks Ionsurge -- but, I still wonder, even if I use Studio Mya or Lightwave -- should I integrate it into a flash animation then or use a quicktime movie? I mean, this is going to be a big animation...
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My guess would be flash. If you save it as a quicktime movie isn't it going to want to put it in a quicktime player window when it opens? Flash seems to run smoother and have better quality of images, and smaller files too......imho.
Flash will work well with an animation. However, it may run a little slowly on machines that have a speed lower than that of 450Mhz, which isn't very common nowadays, but people do have them.
Render the animation, and import each frame into Flash, and create the swf from that - making sure that it is set to best from the publishing menu (or high if you are using Flash 5, not MX).
At the last frame, just add a gotoandplay(1); line to just loop it, if you do not know how...
If the animation is greater than say 70kb, put in a preloader so <56k users know that it is loading.
If you don't know how to create a preloader post it up, and I'll put up the code for you here.
Originally posted by ionsurge it may run a little slowly on machines that have a speed lower than that of 450Mhz, which isn't very common nowadays, but people do have them.
*raises hand*
400mhz, 64mb ram, 6gb hard drive(original one anways), ATI rage pro turbo grfx card, 15" screen with 800*600 resolution.
may the e-lord have mercy on my computer.
70kb isnt that much for a preloader. i think the visitor will be busy reading the page to be waiting for the animation anyway
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Yeah, I know my preloader and my ActionScript Thanks you guys. I've done quite a bit of flash animation, but I've never imported a clip like this before and worked it in. I'll be doing a lot of work on this I imagine... I appreciate all the help, it's gotten me on the right track
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Originally posted by Kor ... me either... i reckon it is something to build a water animation....
I didn't get that post?
Yeah, I will -- I'm going to take a stab here at some Maya and/or Bryce -- export the frames, clean them up, pop them into Flash and have a go at it. I will post it when I'm done, but it probably won't be until the weekend! Thanks all
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