Congrats to our Swift 3D Addict Amy Baniecki.

Amy created a simple robot-like humanoid, set up the hierarchy and then animated a walkcycle with the robot. The robot itself is comprised of simple shapes (primarily spheres and cyliners). Various parts of the body were modified with the Advanced Modeler to give it an extra funky push. The end result turned out to be quite a nice set of renderings (with a nice theme) that shows just how easy it is to model, setup and then animate your 3D animations.

>>Here is the link<<

Click on the first link in the User Showcase.

Yep, its that time of year again... Time to accidently staple yourself to the roof of your house while trying to put up lights. Time to do some power shopping at the last minute of the holiday season. Time to put on your fake smile for when your dad gives you another pair of "Designer socks" that you never wanted.

Most importantly its time to dust off your holiday humor and put it into the form of an SWF holiday card! Submit your holiday cards and have people email them to their friends and family.

Deadline for entries: December 25, 2004

1st Place: $100 Amazon.com Gift Certificate
2nd Place: $50 Amazon.com Gift Certificate
3rd Place: $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate

Click here to view the contest.

Congrats to our Swift 3D Addict Lalo Fuente Martinez.

Lalo has produced a life-like product example of a detailed camcorder. The modeling is done quite well and Lalo was able to do something that is a bit of a challange, making the model look good in Raster format and Vector format alike.

>>Here is the link<<

Click on the first link in the User Showcase.

I was just working on a project and realized that these printable Swift 3D v4 keyboard shortcut lists might be valuable to some of you.

They can be found here:
v4 Shortcuts - Printable FlashPaper
v4 Shortcuts - PDF

In this weeks blog posting I put together a quick tutorial on modeling tubing and wiring. You'll find that adding tubing and wiring is a great way to compliment your models details or you could make your models comprised entirely of tubing and wiring.

Give the tutorial a shot and learn various ways of making your tubes / wires and methods for mimicing Lofting.

>>>Here is the link<<<

Do you have an oustanding Swift 3D model or animation that you would like to share with the 3D Community? If so, send your work to Submittals@erain.com and become an offical Swift 3D 'Addict'.

If your work is selected you will be crowned as our weekly Swift 3D 'Addict'. Your work will be featured in our Swift 3D Usershowcase where thousands will be able to view your creation!

Submit my work!
Please note that submissions need to be 300k or less.

This week I'll be sharing a composite scene that I (jfoley) created with Swift 3D. In this example I used Swift 3D to model the robots, spacecrafts and the ground. The 3D elements were made with a raster graphic and then an eps outline render was laid on top of it. Since the scene was quite large I composited various renders of the scene in Photoshop. In Photoshop I added blur here and there to give the scene a focal distance. I also added the dust and the burning sky in Photoshop as well.

>>Here is the link<<


Click on the first link in the User Showcase.

I'm looking forward to seeing your crazy-cool submissions!

Chances are you have seen Erain's Splash Screen with the red and grey pinball theme. The majority of this splash screen was designed and devloped in Swift 3D. The maining bits and pieces were added in Flash.

Objective:
When we I created this movie I knew that we had to stick with the pin ball theme, at the same time it needed to be geared toward mac users and Swift 3D animations were a must-have (oh, and it had to have the Swift 3D v4 red in it as well).

Swift 3D Usage & Pin ball theme:
The objects that were used are merely single parts of a pin ball machine. By not building out the entire pin ball machine I was able to produce the splash screen in a conservative amount of time.

You'll notice that the splash movie is a series of stills scenes followed by very cinematic scenes with lots of camera movement. This created a nice balance to show the animation / modeling ability of Swift 3D and left time for delivering more effective messaging in the still frames.

I pimarily used extrusions from the Extrusion Editor and objects that were created in the Advanced Modeler to come up with the pin ball objects.

The Color Scheme:
The Swift 3D v4 red was used as a background and it was also used on the models themselves (and in various other places). As you can see the Swift 3D v4 red was used quite extensively as to carry the branding of the products color theme.

Mac Branding:
The mac theme was inspired by the iPod tv spots. The iPod commercials were a great way to relate because the commercials are quite popular. I used very few colors, one very vibrant color (red) and one dull color (grey). Using lots of soft shadows against the pin ball props (when I had the chance) also helped to bring the mac side of the splash screen to life. The mac desktop product line of computers was also added to the equation (that was a no brainer).

Final Touches:
The final text, overylaying graphical elements and buttons were added in Flash.

Please feel free to download my source files for this project and trackback the steps of making the new Erain.com splash screen.

Download Source Files Here: 01-Splash.zip 912 KB

Source Files include:
- 4 .t3d Files
- 1 .fla File

Congrats to our Swift 3D Addict Ermin Monzon a.k.a. Tyger.

From what I understand Tyger is a relatively new Swift 3D User. Within a few months of swifting Tyger's modeling skills have graduated from novice to expert. His latest model is Starscream, from the cartoon Transformers, which I think most of us can relate to as our favourite childhood cartoon and action figure. This model displays a combination of Primitives combined with geometry from the new Advanced Modeler.

>>Here is the link<<

Click on the first link in the User Showcase.

Congrats to our Swift 3D Addict Mark Rush.

Our latest Swift 3D Addict Mark Rush has an impressive library of 3D models that he has created. You can find a few of them in our User Showcase as a matter of fact. Marks work on the Crimson Avenger (aka Defenders of Justice) contains excellent modeling combined with an effective hierarchy setup. The hierarchy setup that Mark established allows him to fully animate his characters body with complete human motion and when you throw modeling into the equation, you get really cool results as demonstrated with his latest creation The Crimson Avenger.

>>Here is the link<<



Click on the first link in the User Showcase.

You can find Mark Rush circling the Erain.com forums on a daily basis.

Learn more about hierarchy and animation.