Hints & Tips

Understanding HSV & B/C environmental effects

HSV stands for Hue, Saturation and Value. This is a very useful effect as you can control color, intensity and brightness.

Hue:
By increasing or decreasing the Hue value you can see that the models color changes, with a yellow model increasing the hue will make the model orange, decreasing will make it green as seen below:

Saturation:
You can use the Saturation value to control the intensity of a model, if you think the model is too bright or dull change the Saturation value, the effect can be seen below:

Value:
By increasing or decreasing the Value parameter you change the level of light, in effect this controls the amount of white that is contained within the model and how ‘light?or ‘dark?it appears, the effect can be seen below:

B/C stands for Brightness and Contrast, these effects are also very useful when combined with the HSV effects.

Brightness:
This controls the intensity of the model, and has a similar effect as the Value parameter. Increasing the Brightness gives a “washed out?or “over exposed?look. Over exposed images can be improved by decreasing the brightness.

Contrast:
This controls the variation between light and dark areas of a model; low Contrast has little variation between the light and dark areas. High Contrast on the other hand, has a more pronounced differentiation between light and dark areas.

Changing an image from color to black & white
If you want to change a color image into a black & white image it can be simply achieved by reducing the saturation parameter, then the value parameter can be adjusted to get just the right effect. This result of this simple effect is shown below:

Subtle Colors using combinations of effects
Using a combination of the Fill light and HSV you are able to make some very subtle changes in the mood of your object. For instance, by taking the model shown below we can alter the HSV to give a soft yellow color.

Using a white model for instructional purposes, you can use the Fill light to cast a different color on to the surface of the image. Below you can see we have used a blue color light to illuminate the white model.

By casting this same blue color light on to the original soft yellow model we get a purple color with subtle hints of blue and yellow.

Copy and paste still images between applications
Effect3D uses standard graphic formats, so you can quickly copy and paste still images between applications without needing to save. For any creation you wish to paste into another application, click Preview to see the model in the preview window. Click Copy to copy to your clipboard, switch to any standard application that supports graphics. Use the paste function to paste directly into your application.

Save and Re-use your creativity with projects
Effects, effect parameters, backgrounds, environmental effects, and animation can all be saved in Projects. This allows you to re-use your creativity time & time again, enabling you to save time and keep the parameters of your most dazzling effects.

Details for saving a project can be found in the Effect3D help file.

File size optimization
Based on your planned use of animated file outputs from Effect3D it is very important to best optimize the file size for its intended use. The file size is mainly affected by the following; image size, number of frames, and number of colors.

Image size; you should try to keep the image size to a minimum; your model should completely fill the area of the image.

Number of frames; although more frames gives a smoother animation, it directly affects the file size; this number is a compromise giving you the smoothest animation effect at an acceptable file size.

Number of colors; a high number of colors gives any shading, shadow or color transitions a very smooth and well blended effect, select the number of colors that provides you the smoothest look at an acceptable file size. When exporting an animation a preview is visible to assist with selecting the number of colors. More details can be found in the Effect3D help file.

Make perfect transparency effects
When creating animated models that are going to be exported with the transparency effect. Improve the look of the image by using a similar background color that you plan to use the finished graphic with. This is because anti-aliasing will blend the model edge color with the background color to give a smooth edge. If you use a different background color the edge will be noticeably different, the difference is more noticeable in animated images.

Control animation playback speed
Playback speed of an animation is mainly controlled by the frame rate, however the number of frames also has an affect. The frame rate changes the delay between each frame of the animation sequence. A fast animation transitions from frame to frame very quickly, another method is to reduce the number of frames in the animation, but this reduces the smoothness.

If you want to have a very slow animation sequence that is not jerky you may also have to increase the number of frames so the delay between frames is not too long. The default frame rate is 10fps, which gives a smooth animation.

You should also consider file size optimization when animating your models.

Dynamic mouse roll-over effect for HTML
You can create dynamic mouse roll-over effects on your web pages by saving a static image and then an animated version of the same image. If you are using a tool like FrontPage or Dreamweaver you can add this effect simply by selecting the option. If you need to do it manually you must add some JavaScript to your page. Below is an example of the JavaScript required, it is broken down into 2 parts. The first should be added into the page:

<script> <!-- a1=new Image(20,20) a1.src="images/staticimage.gif" a2=new Image(20,20) a2.src="images/animatedimage.gif" //--> </script> <script> <!-- function filter(imagename,objectsrc){ if (document.images) document.images[imagename].src=eval(objectsrc+".src") } //--> </script>

Replace the "staticimage.gif"and "animatedimage.gif" filenames with your own; also the numbers "20,20" refer to the image size.

Next add the following section where you wish the image to be displayed, again replace the filenames and image size to suit your application:

<!-- --> <a href="yoururl.htm" onmouseover="filter('img1','a2'); window.status='Status Message';return true;" onmouseout="filter('img1','a1'); window.status='';return true;" onclick="window.focus()"> <img src="images/staticimage.gif" name="img1" border=0 width=20 height=20></a> <!-- -->