Flash ala QTVR

V-Ray V-Ray Common Off-topic
1

Hello everybody,

We would like to make an interactive flash where one would be able to look around in the room (only left - right Z rotation)

now

one way to do this is by rendering frames by rotating camera in 360 degrees, make a png sequence and put to flash

by we would like a more elegant solution, something like those quicktime panoramas…

do u have an other ideas how this could be made?

we need to operate all this in flash so we cannot use no other viewer such as QTVR

Thanks a lot for any constructive answer:)

Martin

2

There was something like that done with that flash 3d engine…hmm. lemme check my links…

3

There you go :

http://www.papervision3d.org/

Here’s a Panorama Demo :

http://www.papervision3d.org/demos/panorama/

Regards,
Thorsten

4

great man :slight_smile: many thanks

5

ah …just had a look…looks like the engine is in early beta stages…:frowning:
and also not many decent liks to follow…havent even googled out a link to download a trial or something…whats more…ive read its been acquired by MS :slight_smile:

anyway…we just wanna make a “fake” 3d solution…only a virtual rotation in th einterior…

forgot the plugins name but it used to render into a unwrapped box and u could open it through smthng…completely lost the link …and forgot th ename of it even though it is well known imo :(…

6

Heya,

completely forgot that sorry. The main page is a demo. All the info is in the blog:

http://blog.papervision3d.org/

It is fully opensource atm and all the components are available via googlecode:

Here’s the downloads

as it’s 1.5 i would have thought it’s not early beta anymore tho i cant say that for sure

Regards,
Thorsten

7

thank you :slight_smile:

8

Papervision is not a VR engine but rather an API for creating rudimentary 3D within Flash. So there is a lot of coding involved to get it to do what you want. There may be some templates but I am not sure as of yet because this coding is being kept close to the built by most people with the idea to sell these as components later. Although if you have a hardcore Flash guy it will give great results http://labs.blitzagency.com/?p=388

There are two types of VR solutions. One being a panaromic (Left and right with slight up and down) or spherical. The panoramic one is pretty easy to do in Flash and their are many solutions to do this. Spherical will require papervision or similar.

If you do want to do a pano the big thing is render out a 360 came which is doable in VRAY. If you need help with Flash let me know.

9

what do you mean a more elegant solution? If you ONLY want to rotate left to right around the Z like you say, then like you say just render PNG’s, convert to Quicktime and import to FLV. This is a really tried and tested method and something we do day in day out.

For example:

http://www.rekk.co.uk - (go to products)

was done this way.

The important thing to do, (and here is a tip that took us a while of R&D to grasp) is to embed a keyframe in the Quicktime, say every 5 or 6 frames - then the playback left or right will be fine. Without the keyframe scrubbing backwards will be crap & jerky.

10

oh, i think you embed the keyframe in the FLV also.

11

FLV is definitely the way to go. The Flash player still has a bug which shows up with image sequences that are played over and over again that will quickly eat up your memory. There are workarounds but the FLV method is best as SV stated. Also as SV mentioned you HAVE to set the keyframes to a low number upon encode. You can however load this FLV into the VR player however we like to embed it into a swf then load that swf to allow for more ActionScript goodness.

12

yep agreed

13

If I understand you right, you want this panorama’s in flash right?
Use the frame technique if you want to follow a path.
If you just want them to be able to look around from a fixed point, use a flash panorama viewer. There are plenty. I use the following.
EDIT:
BTW I you have loads of bandwith you can also have the ability to move along a path while stil being able to have a full 360 look around. But because ofcourse the quality can’t be as high as a normal pano. Pretty slick though:smile:
http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr\_sample.php?demo=video
Another nice option is to have timelapse panorama.. Imagine the possibilities..
http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr\_sample.php?demo=timelapse

- flashpanoramas > http://flashpanoramas.com
- pano2vr > http://gardengnomesoftware.com

Both have a bit different approaches.
Flashpanoramas is highly configurable because every bit is broken up into parts. Using an xml file to set all parameters. (> can be adjusted on the fly) and external images for menu etc. + You can feed it .mov qtvr files on the server (aut. converts it for display), strips and cube faces. This is only a viewing tool consisting of .swf, .xml and template html files.

Pano2VR is a multi purpose export/conversion application. You can trow every possible panorama format to it, and it wil convert is to any other format + has the ability to export to QT and flash.
While flashpanoramas uses different files, pano2vr spits out 1 .swf file that you have configured in the application. But there is an API to manipulate it on the fly. Haven’t got my head into that so can’t tell what the possibilities are.

There’s many more about them to read on their sites + many more apps that have flash panorama capabilities.

To render a panorama, you can’t use vrayPhysCam. Use standard cam, do a search, there have been topics on that..

Hope this was what you wanted or I have wasted 10 min of typing :slight_smile:

14

thanks again for all your input guys :slight_smile: will give em a go and post the result :slight_smile: