This may be far fetched, but what the heck

[wlpsyp]

Is there a way to take a image, say of a Tank you have a good photo of from a side view and turn it into a rotating image that show all sides? i.e. a rotating 2d/3d image. What the powers to be are looking for is to have a image that rotates on a web page, so the it automatically rotates around from side to front, to side, to back.. A 360 degree circle.

If I am off my rockers here, please dont hesitate to tell me to go jump off a............

Thanks,

Bill

 

[attrofy]

This is doable, but you need 3 (or 4) images of the tank. In other words, you can't take one image (a nice side shot), and render it into 3-D and then rotate it (at least not with PhotoPaint).

So assuming you have 4 pictures, front, left, right and back. It is pretty simple.

The easiest way is to start from a New image. From the splash screen, just like before, pick 24 bit, about 300 dpi, then check the "Create a Movie" button. Set the number of frames to 4.

Take all four pictures, and cut the backgrounds out (create objects out of the tank) and make sure they are all four about the same size, same color, same lighting conditions, etc. There are tools under Image-> Adjust to help with this.

Be sure View-> "Image Info" is checked. This will bring up a box on the side of your color pallete. Be sure if you want to remove that box (temporarily) you hit the double arrows ( >> ) and not the X button to close. This will slide it in tight to the side.

1. Get all 4 of your images or copied into your movie.

2. Under Image Info, click the eye next to the images you want to hide. So in this case, assuming we are starting with the right side of the tank, hide everything but the right side tank.

3. Right-Click on the Tank, either in the Image info screen or in the movie. Select, Combine-> Objects with background. In the Image Info you will see the tank frame disappear, and re-render the background frame with a little tank in the middle.

4. At the bottom of the workspace of the Movie, you will see 1 of 4 with some arrows. Select the Next arrow. Now it should read 2 of 4. This is the frame you are currently looking at.

5. Unhide the front image of the tank. Just so you know why we are doing it in this manner, now go back to frame 1. You will notice that the Front tank, still floats on top of frame 1. Goto Frame 2, 3,4, it floats in the same position. It is not really in the selected frame, until it is merged with the background. At least this is my understanding of it. I think it is a bit odd, but this is how it works. Anyway, go back to frame 1, and align the front tank image with the right side image on the frame. when it is centered, and sitting on the same level (treads). Now go back to frame 2 and combine the image to the background.

6. Repeat these steps for the remaining to sides of the tank.

Now you have 4 frames, with 4 images. Goto Movie-> Play Movie. This should give a pretty good impresion of what you will see when it is complete.

Here are the standard steps to finish. COnvert the image to 8bit Palleted (Image-> Color Mode-> 8 Bit Palleted). Then save as a GIF file.

The trick is that when the movie is converted to 8 bit, it generally looks to the 1st frame to resample the image. IF you have highly contrasting images (lots of lights and darks) it sometimes renders improperly (especially withthe "Adaptive" color pallete. Sometimes it is better to create a new frame (hit the plus "+" sign next to the arrow on the 1st or last frame) and put all of your images on that frame. That way, the entire color pallete will have all of the colors in it.

This should get you going. If anyone knows of an easier way to manipulate the frames, let us all know.

Russell