READY SET GO
Last night as road runner blinked "i'm down.. i'm down..." I got to work on some needed 3d. Ok Sketchup 3d is probably a stretch but it is 3d. Sketchup is a quick drafting application for interior/exterior building enviroments. And is really cool on the tablet, provided the pen is working nicely.
Its funny I get into this 3d apps and feel a bit overwhelmed on what to do first, make a box, create something, anything, the cool part of Sketchup is that it excels in instant results. Right away I went from 'make a box' to 'lets build a store and fly thru it via animation!' READY SET GO!
During the enthnographic retail gig I thought wouldnt it be cool to see a customer path thru a store in 3d? Not everyone can grasp 2d maps with lines all over them, especially our "point to point" index maps, they are a mess I think. But what if we could present the same data via 3d, and more so via animation.
Sketchpep Take 3, is my first attempt and this is about 30mins into the app messing around. I think i'm going to have to buy this program its pretty cool......well maybe not... $475!
Yikes I go and look at the galleries there on Sketchup and.. wowza.. thats cool. I need to mess with textures. The problem I saw with them at first was the fact the slowed down the animation.
In other random goodness comes from GlobFX in the form of Swiff Point Player for PowerPoint. Now this one is FREE and is very handy. It allows you to insert flash into your powerpoint presentations cause we all know all the worlds problems can be solved via powerpoint. It works flawlessly and has made from some excellent demo material for the website mockups i've been working on. Wait a sec Dan are YOU finally learning flash? NO! Swish to the rescue. Besides you know I want instant protoyping, I want it goin now, like hurry and stuff. Swish does that for me. Being able to build the whole site via powerpoint and this plugin rocks though. Its very cool.
Ya know GlobFX is pretty damn spiffy. I want this FlashChart making tool as well. That'd be excellent. I don't think I'd ever recall being excited about charts before. And the composer.. ooooo what's that do.
Now the real question is am I ready for serious 3d? Well if the net stays down for me at home all weekend we'll see. I think I'll try the free Maya first though.