I am a novice at 3D Flash, although I have used SWISH with no major problems. I do not doubt the power of 3D Flash, but am amazed at its lack of tutorials or assistance for the beginner. It has the additional power that I want (eg 3D and ability to create animated GIF), but I cannot even work out how to get a basic move text event to work properly. I notice that other calls for tutorials on this forum have had no replies. Does this mean that nothing is available?
If that is the case, perhaps the people at 3DFlash should resolve the problem very quickly because it must drastically affect their sales to novices. Without access to good tuorials, I certainly could not recommend it to another novice, even though I accept it is a very powerful package. Does anyone else agree?
If anyone does have any idea where I can obtain information on how to use the package, I would be very, very grateful.
I've done a few tutorials in the past and have been considering a new set to go with Version 4 but it is very time consuming project and I haven't been able to get to it.
Don't be afraid to ask here and I and others will do our best to assist you.
Thanks very much for your offer. I must confess I am very dissapointed that there has been no response from anyone at 3d Flash on such a fundamental issue.
However, my initial problem is exceedingly simple. all I want to do is to move a piece of text. You cannot realy get much simpler.
I add a text element and then add a new event. Except now I get a screen which says record position. So I move the text and press record. now a new button comes up saying show (but I have no idea why. if I start the movie nothing happens. If I add another event and press record, the text moves in the opposite way to expected. by now I start paying around for 10 minutes and give up! Not a help screen in sight!
Yes, I may be a novice, but I use word, excel, dreamweaver, swish, access and frontpage, and nothing drives me mad quite as quickly as 3d flash.
I am sure I am just missing the basics, which is where a tutorial would be useful.
I would have to agree. I am dissapointed as well with 3DFA's lack of tutorials. Most likely is hurting there sales. It took a little time to learn the layout and options which is confusing to a noob to 3DFA. I had emailed them recently though and we'll hopefully see some improvement at the begining of the year with this product and tutorials.
Thanks for your support, but can someone please explain in simple steps how I get a single piece of text start at position "A" and move to postion "B"
I know this sound an absurdly simple question, I only wish someone could give me either an equally simple answer or point to to somewhere in the help section that explains how to do this.
I agree that 3dfa does need a better tutorial if they really want sales to grow. I think it's a great product now, and bells and whistles are probably less important than keeping it stable, and encouraging new users by improving documentation and support. Still, it is pretty inexpensive, so it's hard to complain too much
So on to the question:
I think the tricky thing in answering your question is that there are a zillion ways of moving text.
I looked at the way you're trying, and I must admit, I've never used that method. I do most things with scripts, but I think I can help:
To create a simple bit of moving text:
1. Create the text element (Sounds like you were OK there)
2. Go to 'Add new Event' and click 'Move to'. Select the element to move. (Sounds like you were OK there too)
3. Drag the text element to where you want it to start, and click 'Record Position'.
4. Go to 'Add new Event' and click 'Move to'. Select the element to move.
5. Drag the text element to where you want it to finish, and click 'Record Position'.
6. I recommend turning the option at the top from 'Loop when finished' to 'Stop when finished' to make things easier whilst you're learning.
7. Run your animation.
I've attached an example movie to show what happens,
ForumNewbie.
Last edited by ForumNewbie; 11-28-2003 at 04:02 PM.
You think you have an absurdly stupid problem? on the topic of tutorials, i think there should be one for idjits like me who havent the faintest of what they are doing and still spent $50 on software anyway. My problem is that i don't know jack diddley about scripts, and i can't get a darn movie started, heck, i can't even get more than three frames on the darn thing!!
Although I'm sure that many reading your post will understand your frustration, I think you'll gain most benefit from this forum if you ask a specific question.
Generally the forum is good at either finding a way of explaining how to do something, or creating an example for you to pick apart and learn from.
What the forum is less good at, is to give an all encompassing tutorial of how to use 3dfa. Hopefully, the makers of 3dfa will take note of the comments on the subject, and take that into account for later releases.
Don't be afraid to post your problem movie files on here (Zip them first, and include all linked files) for people to look at, and recommend better methods or solutions to problems. It's also well worth picking through the samples provided with the software, looking at any examples posted on the forum, and also looking at samples such as those on Blanius's site. Judging from the last couple of questions, there's a big demand for solving the more basic questions, so if you ask them here, you'll be helping others too.
In time, who knows, you may even be able to help other Newbies as they start to get to grips with the same questions
I fully accept that your example does exactly what I would expect. Unfortunately, when I (as far as I can see) copy your instructions on my version 4.5 instead of start at A and Go to B and then stop, it starts at B, goes to A, then back to B and stop!
Oops. That's my fault, sorry. Like I said, I don't normally use this method.
Having looked at this method, I've discovered easier ways, but to make this one work:
On your first movement event, click the little egg timer next to the event name, 'Wait until finished'. This makes the first movement occur immediately, taking the element to point A before anything starts.
In the method I described previously, it was moving the element from where you last left it, to point A, waiting till this was done, then moving it to B.
Many apologies for the confusion.
Morgan.
Note: The easier method is:
1. Create the text element
2. Go to 'Add new Event' and click 'Move to'. Select the element to move.
3. Drag the text element to where you want it to end, and click 'Record Position'.
4. Drag the element back to where you want it to start.
Isn't life simple when you know how! The "easier method" was the very first one I originally tried, but I did not move the text back to the start position after placing the "move to" position. So it just did nothing. After that I must have spent at very least a couple of hours going round in circles.
For such powerful software plus its extreme flexibility - there are no valid reasons for not having decent tutorials.
Either they do not respect their clients i.e. specifically our own time spent on trying to do things. Even when you learn something you tend to forget it and again we are forced to lose our time.
Or the business owners have no clue as to where they are taking this software and are continually experimenting at their leisure. Forget not changes in features that were there in the past but left out in new releases - incompatible file formats...etc...
Great software - lousy businessman and the worse as it pertains to customer relations. Some of us use software to make money and I can't bill time because I do not have a manual and I just do not remember what I did a while back.
Wanted to vent on this issue for a while..
Analog Technologies = Digital Culture
Digital Technologies = Analog Culture
I could not agree more. As my example above shows, one tiny piece of missing knowledge has cost me hours, as well as significantly raising my blood pressure!
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