Creating a 3D firearm in Swift - Page 2

Tracing the parts

Here, we draw the outline of the gun over the picture in flash. Now, you could just draw round the whole thing, but that wouldnt look good. ie, if you did a pistol, the trigger and all the smaller bits would be as wide as the main part and it would look ridiculous. So instead we make a layer for wide bits, medium bits and small bits. Wide bits is the main part of the gun, perhaps medium is the handle or magazine, and small is the trigger or aiming thing.

So, create your layers and just trace over the picture and fill in the bits with the correct colour. After you've done all that, dispose of all the lines, leaving only the fills (remember to add details!). And.... make sure that there arent 2 different parts of the same colour touching, otherwise it might be screwed up. Oh, and delete the old picture you traced.

Importing to swift

Still in flash, choose File/Export Image, and choose .EPS Export it.

Into Swift

Load up swift, create a new file and import your picture. Wait for it to load, it takes quite a while, then select it and press Alt - U. This means 'ungroup' and so this will seperate the different parts. I hope you can remember which were the small, medium and large parts, because you'll need to now. Firstly select the main part, go onto 'scale' on the properties menu to the left and experiment changing the Z scale value to see what's right. Do this with all the other bits and there you have it, an accurate model of a gun. Tada!