3-d image software with actinic??

[willage]

Hi Guys,

Does anybody use any 3D software to make the products look better. I basically want to take the shoes that we do and take 6 shots (or there abouts) around it and then find a programme that will stitch them together and using java or something like that publish it on the web. Thus producing a picture that the consumer then has control of to look around the edge of the shoe.

Any info would be great!!

Thanks

Will

[Mark H]

Hi Will - we have experimented with using Flash in Actinic - we used 12 images of a leather jacket, turning the jacket 30 degrees each time for a full 360 view - we then created a Flash file (.swf) with forward and back and pause buttons - the flash file was then inserted into the product page by inserting the usual code for .swf files into the product text as a piece of HTML code. It worked very well, however, the usual code for .swf files no longer works too well since Microsoft changed the way that IE handles Flash (and other ActivEx controls) in May 2006 - we now use SWFObject to insert Flash files into HTML pages but we haven't tried this yet in this context. Mark.

[RobSollars]

For quite a simple rotation (along just one axis with few pictures in between, as you specified), javascript would probably be preferable to either Java or Flash. Java applets are a pain to implement and slow a page down significantly as the bulky runtime environment has to be loaded. Flash relies on the user having the plugin installed and having it activated, something which I'd guess is less common than having javascript enabled.

Javascript really is ideal for this kind of functionality.

[Mark H]

Re the availability of Flash - Adobe reckon it is over 97% of internet users:

http://www.adobe.com/products/player...s/flashplayer/

We have taken a business decision in respect of using Flash (including the ability to "degrade gracefully" within Actinic - and we don't need to run more than v6 "Flashplayer") - and we would have probably made the same decision if Flash penetration was as low as 60%.

Mark