I recently stumbled on a site that covers perspective in amazing depth, while easy to read and understand. There’s even a section on light, shadows and reflections, making the site as a whole a compelling read and extremely valuable resource for anyone who’s serious about their art (that’s you, right?).

It’s vast. No need to read it word-for-word. You can skip around clicking just on the sections that interest you or you can simply scroll through looking at the diagrams that do so much talking by themselves. I even discovered here that the proper name for the “Shadow Root” is the ‘normal point’ (anyone working in 3D modelling will be familiar with ’surface normals’).

Visit handprint : elements of perspective

There’s nothing more to say except, “GO! READ! LEARN!”

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If you’ve read and understood parts 1 and 2 of this article, by now you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to construct shadows in a scene. The great thing is: that’s all you really need.. a pretty good idea of how it’s done.

Let me just say here, that perspective can be an extremely technical subject. Combine that with the intricacies of light and you have the potential to get bogged down with complex details and bore people to death! So I’m covering a few essential basics.. partly because there’s no room here to explain things in great depth but MOSTLY because I get by only using the knowledge I need and there’s so much more to learn.

(click the Read on link below)

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In Part 1 you saw how the shadow root sits directly below the light. I created a shadow by tracing light lines, intersecting them with shadow lines. The points of intersection created the perimeter of the object’s shadow.

With a simple light source such as a lamp or flame, it’s relatively simple to plot the shadow root on the floor.

(Click the Read on link below)

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No, this isn’t some bizarre type of tuber found growing in the Yuyu realm. Though there’s probably a real word for it somewhere, the shadow root is a term I invented that describes the source of shadows in a scene.

This will be a 3-part article covering some mildly technical aspects of adding shadows to your scene using basic ray tracing and perspective techniques. If you don’t know anything about perspective, you may find some of the following article confusing, but really it’s just basics.

(Click the Read on link below)

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Anyone using Flash CS3 is probably aware that we can now export our movies to Quicktime format keeping movieclips intact and exporting any actionscripted graphics/animation. This is something that was screwed up in previous versions of Flash, where only the first frame of movieclips were exported and any actionscript was ignored.

Note: CS3’s enhanced Quicktime Export is the only video export format that Adobe have improved so far. Exporting to .avi or image sequences will result in the same old movieclip/actionscript issues.

Even though I’m using CS3 I still use graphic symbols wherever possible because it’s important that I’m able to scrub the main timeline and preview the animation in the context of the scene. This isn’t possible with movieclips, despite the menu item Control > Enable Live Preview (which the Help file tells us allows movieclips to be previewed in the timeline - - uh, no it doesn’t).

Still, being able to export actionscript stuff like particles, physics experiments and so on, it’s a godsend for any Flash programmer who’s ever wanted to create a showreel for YouTube or a DVD.

To use Flash CS3’s quicktime export, go to:
File > Export > Export Movie

then choose Quicktime as the format.

Then you’ll get some options to play with:

Clicking the Quicktime Settings button at the bottom gives you further options such as the compression codec and audio settings.

A word of warning for animators. The ‘enhanced Quicktime export’ has great difficulty coping with large movies, CPU intensive graphics and high frame rates. Because it captures frames from the Flash Player, your exported movie may contain dropped frames and some unexpected stuff.It’s recommended that, if possible, you lower the frame rate for the export process, then raise it in another program like After Effects. I know, this is a huge pain in the arse but remember this is QT Export’s

v1.0. At least we know Adobe are listening to us and the feature will inevitably improve as time goes by.

Waterlollies
I posted an update on my Newgrounds user blog and Tom frontpaged it (cheers!):
chluaid.newgrounds.com/news

If you’ve come here from Newgrounds looking for a Waterlollies update, here’s the latest graph:

I estimate it’s about 82% complete now. My painful schedule of 4 scenes per day is pretty tough but it’s good to see how fast the movie is coming along. The end is actually in sight and I’m pretty sure we’re looking at a September release. Don’t ask me for a specific date or my face will implode.

Click image for full size

OK that’s it! As always, thanks for the support. See you in about 10 days with the next update ;)

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