Attached Link: http://www.enigmastudio.co.uk/stretchnwalk.htm

Hi, this is a link to a 3D animation created with Director and the beta PPP w3d exporter. Curious have said it's OK to talk about this. When you get there, you'll probably be asked to download the shockwave player from Macromedia. These people are bona fide, they make Dreamweaver and Flash amongst other stuff. When you get the animation playing, use your keyboard to navigate around the animation, up/down/left/right arrows, press 'r' to reset the camera and hold shift/up or down to pan up and down. It uses a mixture of Chris Derochie's animations from Avatar Lab and mine (and the walk designer) File size is about 900k, nearly 300 frames of animation. I've set the file to check for the shockwave player but the next one will have a progress bar or a little game to play while it downloads, have fun.....

Cool. It ran at fullscreen without a hiccup @1600x1200 monitor resolution. How about one with a little interactivity? :)

Neat. It worked with my older version of Shockwave, too. It practically loads in real-time on a cable modem. Can you push Michael and more complex scenes through the exporter, or is there a poly limit to the engine?

i can't do anything but watching it... it's not reacting on keyboard. i have the newest shock player and ie 5.5...

My keyboard works, but I have IE 6.0. This is even better than the Viewpoint technology.

Hey Saxon No wonder you haven't been around much lately. This looks like it's going to be fun to work with!! Ed

Thanks for all your feedback, keep it coming! Yep, it's brilliant fun to play with and just think how big a 300 frame animation would turn out at even with the best compression. I've been banging on about this stuff since I first saw it on Macromedia. Believe me, I'm just barely scratching the surface. I'm restricted to a lower poly count due to my operating system but expect better things soon. I know absolutely nothing else about anything else but at least this piece of software development by Curious we can discuss.

is there more info on what it can do? how much is director involved and how much poser? does it work with other 3d-apps? what about my keyboard ;)?

Aleks, it may be because you need to get the focus of the animation, try clicking in the movie first. Director is the recipient app, all the major apps are creating w3d exporters. The 3D apps create the scene or model and it's director's job to translate it into the shockwave format. There's an enormous amount more that it can do, it has physics for example and Shockwave's version of Flash behaviours (that's a bit simplistic) hell, it even can have Flash within the Shockwave. Where Poser wins out is in the ability to create animations so easily. If you're interested, go to the front page of Renderosity and scroll down to the interview with Phil Gross a guy who wrote a book on it, Paula's written an excellent review there too. It isn't the be all and end all of 3D on the net but it's a long way towards it. Something of a holy grail I suppose, being able to view 3D animations from any angle yet still small enough to be possible over the net. Remember when all this net business started, didn't we have this dream then, being able to enter 3D worlds as though they exist. Besides, just think of the possibilities......

whoa, it'll make some couple of hours read. thanks, saxon, i guess i'll give it a try. i was looking for some tools for creating 3d environment that is interactive to some extent but i ended only in licensing some of the game engines. there is also a "qoobee" software (formerly nemo), but i was reluctant to dive in, because one has to be a programmer and to learn their script language. i made some apps with lingo before so i guess i wouldn't have to start from the scratch, though i stopped working with director with ver. 4.

Aleks, everything you can do with Nemo and the other game engines should be possible with Director 8.5 There's an enormous amount of interactivity that can be built in. Like I said, I'm just scratching the surface of what's possible. There's bound to be a crossover between the two worlds of 3D and Director users but I suspect that most of us are either or. It'll take time for us to catch up with what's possible, I know it's taking me time to learn Director at this depth. I hope there are just as many Director users struggling to learn 3D, getting them to talk to you is tricky. They've got some of the most silent groups! I noticed this in Flash when I first started really learning that app. Help was restricted to 'RTFM' and 'read the FAQ's'. I guess we've been spoilt rotten because of our wonderful community.

hehe, yup! though my experience tells me, that those reactions are mainly due to lack of real knowledge ;)...

True, it's really satisfying just to get something to work right, but in Director that doesn't equate to being an expert. The drag and drop level , which is more or less where I am, is OK but the depth of the app is awesome.

Attached Link: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/director/index.html

Hey Saxon, thanks for the link! I was just about to write another nasty email to CL asking what the ell was going on with the long ago promised SW3D exporter! Good to see it is coming along! I've been working with SW3D for a bit from Max, and while the excellent havoc engine has been most fun, the ability of the Max exporter to handle complex animation (such as character & walking) is limited. Does the Poser exporter handle morphs? Parent child linked objects? Since Max's bone's are currently poorly supported, if CL can get the exporter out the door soon here, Poser will be a serious contender for SW3D character anims! Woo hoo! O and for the folks who wanted more information on Director, the best site has a terrible URL, but tons of info, free code, and links to lists where the folks do actually respond pretty nicely, link below: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/director/index.html Don't be put off by the url, it is the place!

Hi Digit8r, thanks for the link. The exporter can do more than I'm able to show because of my antiquated system. Like most things it's better on post Win 98 OS's. I'll do some animations to show how it handles morphs and child/parent links. I don't mind admitting that I've still got a long way to go in getting the hang of all that's possible with Director 8.5 The Havoc thing for instance! Still haven't managed to get that to work! I suppose the trouble is I'm too busy playing with the exporter. Perhaps I'm easily satisfied but it very nearly does everything I wanted it to do. That is, I can make an animation in Poser and export it out. The current restrictions on the poly count on characters due to Win 98 is a bit frustrating but hey..... this is just the beginning. I'm hoping for CL's sake that they'll get this all scrubbed up tidy and out onto the market soon 'cos, I don't think there'll be an easier way to make animated figures and that's got huge potential for the gaming market. Maybe, because it's all a bit too complex at the moment, is the reason why Shocked sites haven't hit really big time yet. It'll come and wow! won't it take the web up a notch.....

Hi... This is exacly what I am looking for. i use Mimic. Will the exporter include mouth movements??? Rushy

"I'm hoping for CL's sake that they'll get this all scrubbed up tidy and out onto the market soon 'cos, I don't think there'll be an easier way to make animated figures and that's got huge potential for the gaming market." Especially when you use the nice, lo-poly figures from the Avatar studio, take them into Poser, export them to SW3D. Walla, instant game characters!

Rushy, I've answered you on another thread! but to repeat here morphs don't work :o( .....sorry. I'm thinking it might be possible to bone a face, I'd like to have some expressions too. As to the gaming market, absolutely.... PhilC's done some lo-res figures that'd do nicely. And, on-line gaming because of all the extra functionality of Director and Flash (you can use both together)