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Flash Report on Prototyping 2 ----The Exploration of 3D Hill

Tong Xu

Ⅰ .The Consideration of the Project

I keep thinking of attractive features to encourage people to try 3D

Chatting in virtual world. The project of The Exploration of 3D Hill is my

endeavor to add some educational features to 3D Chatting.

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The picture is 3D Hill is made in 3D Max, modeling on various

vegetations of different altitudes in Himalayas Mountain. The square is

employed to emphasize specific vegetation and fire up the curiosity of

users.

Music that is typical of mountains (The Moon in Tibet) is employed to

promote communication. Music not only reflects the culture, but also

expresses and affects experience, creating feelings and responses during

listeners.

It is just an initial prototype and in the future, I hope to add buttons to

let the square to track the movement of mouse to add more interactive

features, and relative text-based explanations will be provided to facilitate

learning.

Ⅱ . The Process to make the Project

1. In Photoshop, use the tool of “Gaussian Blur” in “Filter” to set the

Raduis the picture 3D Hill to 6.0 pixels. I name this picture to Blurred

3D Hill.

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2. In Flash, set stage to 600×500 pixels, and choose black for its

background.

3. Then I drag two pictures (blurred and clear 3D Hill) to the

stage, making sure that the layer of blurred 3D Hill is on the

bottom and two pictures coincident with the other (use

“WindowAlign”). Insert frames at 276th frames on two layers.

4. Create a movie clip called “box” in Library panel, and

drag it to stage on a new layer. Right click the layer name “box”

in Timeline, and choose “Mask” to activate the box.

5. Insert keyframe at 276th frame, and create motion tween. Then insert

keyframes every 20 frames (roughly) to change the location of the

square, so that users are able to explore the hill step by step.

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6. Add a white frame for the square. Add a new movie clip in

Library panel, and draw another square that has the same size like the

previous one. In the backstage to make the second square, delete the

inner fill and draw the white line as the frame.

7. Go back to stage, and “copy frames” on layer “box”, and “paste

frames” on a new layer with the name of “box2”. Double click the

name “box2”, and choose “Normal” in “Layer Properties”. Then

delete extra frames caused by pasting.

8. Click the first keyframe on layer “box2”, then click the square in stage,

and then click “PropertiesSwap”, and choose the second square

instead of the first one. Every keyframe has to be changed in this way.

9. Add background music to facilitate communication and

interactions. Add a new layer, and choose “PropertiesSound”, and

then select the music The Moon in Tibet that has been imported to

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Library before. Then “Custom” effects to modify the volume. As

background music, it should be quite and won’t disturb participants.

Last but not least, let it repeats 999 (or any number you like) to loop

the music.

Now, the project of The Exploration of 3D Hill has

finished!