Anim8or Community

I agree with Monex, the only way to get a good 3d object out of an image is to simply use build->reference and use that as your work space, HOWEVER, there are some things you can do to attempt to get a 3d object. You might find that tweaking will take just as long as having made it from scratch, but, here is an example from google
http://groups.google.com/group/SketchUp3d/browse_thread/thread/1aa3eede1aee61ea/
I also believe that there are some tools out there that will attempt to do 3d object (usually only ground mapping) out of greyscale images in bmp format. If memory serves me correctly terragen used to do this.
Sage

Not sure if there is a tutorial on this, but, text is fairly easy to work with.

Open anim8or.
press shift+A to ensure that you are in Object/Edit
Press Shift+T to create text.

click in the workspace wherever you wanna start your text.
type your text.
click the arrow (select tool)

go to the build menu and click "extrude"... click OK.

You now have some 3d text...
experiment with that first then move on to other items like...

after typing your text and then selecting the arrow tool, double click the text and edit the font (...)

experiment with the extrude settings.
Hope this helps
Sage

For some reason, I have been getting more and more into portable apps. Actually, it really isn't without reason, I have way too many computers that I access, between home and work and friend's houses. Sometimes the flash drive I am working from is E: sometimes it's F: just depending on the day and what all is plugged in first.
Using a relative path for scripts and so on would be Fantastic.

I had actually thought it was already, because when you go to congfigure you see dots, which usually tells me that it means start here.

the second thing, does anim8or write to the registry at all? If so, is it possible to use a .ini file instead for anything that requires registry writes? this would make anim8or completely portable along with all of it's settings.

Just suggestions
Sage

Also, while I LOVE Terranim8or, I wanted to point out to those of you who may not be familiar with some other great freeware out there.
Jahshaka is a video editor, and so is wax. Both are capable of adding fairly realisticish fire in a post processing session.

Wax can be found at
http://www.debugmode.com/wax/download.php
and Jahshaka can be found at
http://jahshaka.org/

I highly recommend these for folks interested in using Anim8or to create video.
Sage

I have a hard enough time getting my websites to work in both Firefox and IE, I can imagine how hard it would be to get anim8or to work in both Linux and Windows.
Sage

INAPP73,
The frame speed for about 1 second is 2-3 seconds?
There are several places in the process that you can be talking about.
1.) the workspace is slow
2.) it takes 2-3 seconds to RENDER about 1 second of animation
3.) after you have rendered your animation you play back the video that you just created and everything is slower than it should be.

If it's the wrokspace itself, or the render speed, there isn't much you can do about it other than getting a computer with more ram faster processor and faster graphics processing (better graphics card), or just settle for using less lights, and lower poly images. The more lights and polys as well as shadow effects that you are working with, the more it drains on your resources.

If the problem is that your rendered animation is actually slow, it's because you missinterprated how the program works exactly.
In your preferences, you set your frame rate. Let's say regular movie speed of 24 FPS... and then click in "limit playback".
if It's 24fps, that means that, frame by frame 24 1 second has lapsed, by frame 48 2 seconds have lapsed and so on and so forth.
Sage

or go to www.an8search.com and notice that it's the first link there, also, add the tutorials that you find online

you could just download the program (since it happens to be free) and try it, but, um... here's the skinny on wax (which I use almost exclusively)
You can import .3ds models (though it's functionality for using them to make an actual movie is somewhat nill, as you can't make any changes at all to these objects).
You can use a 3d plane and stick your video track on it, then resize that plane, and you will be able to size, rotate, position change opacity.

You can blur, you can use greenscreening (or any other color screening that you want).
Not sure what multiplying is/means but I bet it can be done.

The biggest problem with wax is it's learning curve. But, just like with Anim8or, if you take the time to go through a couple of tutorials, you will be able to accomplish quite a bit.

There is another software out there called Jashaka. It looks promising, and has a few features that wax does not. It is open source and can be found at sourceforge.net

Jashaka's main issues are 1.) it's learning curve (it has tutorials and a help file though), and 2.) it looks like no one has done any work on it in a year or more. I am not sure if it's an abandoned project or not, but, if they are working on it some more, I can't wait for their next release.

Your best bet (for now) though is to use Wax, it's learning curve is a bit less than Jashaka's, and I find that, even though their message board is slow, you are more likely to get an answer to questions there than you will with Jashaka users.
Sage