Help with Animated logos & text

[StevenK1]

You will have to excuse my very green question but this is what I need the most right now. I can see by the demo videos online that AM is very intuitive and seems fairly easy to learn...just what I need. I am so close to buying AM but need to know how easy it will be to import Illustrator files of say a company logo with paths, extrude them, fly a camera around/thru it and then settle into the scene where I want it. I've played around with other product demos online but they lack a good set of tutorials on just doing something this basic. Do you have any examples of logo/text animation done in AM and a step by step guide.

Thanks in advance for your help and understanding.

[J.Bruce]

To my knowledge you cannot import curves from Illustrator (I know some other apps you can but I've also never tried), however, having said that, you can import an image of the logo. Further, dealing with spline is quite literally the same concept as illustrator curves. Also, because the models can be set to adaptive levels of polygons they have the same benefit of being able to enlarge the space taken up by the model without any loss (whereas straight poly modelers are like dealing with raster images). You have a point and you can change the curvature in and out of the point. This can be done either on both sides of the point at once (setting the cp to smooth), or you can control the curvature on one side of the point (setting the cp to peak). Thereby, rebuilding the logo itself. Now the tutorials that are out are pretty old in relative comparison to the changes made to A:M (I'm sorry), the principles are still good but in some cases there are now better/easier solutions now. Further, there is a utility inside A:M called font wizard:

 

http://www.franksilas.com/glasses.htm

http://www.hash.com/sherwood/main/links.asp?id=14

 

From the guy that made it:

 

http://home.comcast.net/~trickey/index_files/fontwizalg.htm

 

And a whole thread of helpful stuff (including a link to a font wizard thread):

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6044

 

Just buy it. You won't regret it.

 

EDIT: I'm a dork.

 

http://home.comcast.net/~trickey/index_files/graphics.htm

 

And the tutorial,

 

http://www.am-guide.com/TinCan/FW-tut.htm

[NancyGormezano]

To my knowledge you cannot import curves from Illustrator (I know some other apps you can but I've also never tried),

 

You CAN import curves from illustrator and use the AI (adobe illustrator) import wizard to create a 3D representation - works just like the Font wizard - I believe tho that the curves must be in AI ver 8 format.

[Gene]

There is a small tutorial I did some time ago...

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10245&hl=

 

Have a look to see if this is what you need.

 

Regards,

 

Eugene

[StevenK1]

There is a small tutorial I did some time ago...

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10245&hl=

 

Have a look to see if this is what you need.

 

Regards,

 

Eugene

 

Thanks all for the quick response. I will check 'em all out

[Slipin Lizard]

I think AM can do what you're looking for, its correct that you can import curves from Illustrator up to version 8. Remember though, the program can only interpret so much, so its sometimes better if you break the logo down into its basic elements and import them one at a time. I think AM will do what you want as well as any other program, but you might find the learning curve a bit steep at first as you are dealing with a full 3D application. Once you figure things out a bit, you'll probably find it pretty straight forward to do your logo animations.