360 interactive shopping

[mbeckhardt]

Hello,

I have a client who is interested in having an application, likely in flash, where a 360 view of their product (for the sake of argument lets just call it a car) is available to navigate and explore the exterior of the "car". The user would then be able to change options and features which would update the graphic or add them to the graphic, i.e. a spoiler or whatever so that they could essentially see what the item would be like with their selected features. I've seen similar features on the yamaha website, for customizing bikes, and on just about every automobile website out there. What I'm wondering is if there are any out of the box flash applications that are capable of doing this with some tweaking or if this would have to be custom developed and the time frame/cost of such a project.

Thanks,

Mike

[chandrika]

Maybe this would do the things you need, I have not tried it myself, just seen it and thought it looked really good....

FreeSpin3D - Real time 3D in Adobe Flash

[imvain2]

Mike,

It sounds like you are looking for a custom application.

The reason why I say that is because you could get away with an out of the box system for the 360 rotating. But the piece by piece addition would have to be custom built based on your product's specific needs.

As for a time and cost quote, that is very difficult to say, without a throughly going through everything that you need.

[mtheory]

The key component to what you want to do is not Flash but the photography of the product.

You must take still photographs if the product as you rotate it incrementally on some type of lazy susan.

This can be done for larger objects bu moving the camera around the object but lighting and precise camera movement become difficult.

Another way is to do a short 2 or three second video of the object rotating and then importing into Flash.

[dak888]

You want wirefusion from demicron.

Demicron - 3D Configurator and Product Visualization Software

No flash, just java and a 3d program like 3d max. They have a free version that you can use on any site (commercial and non commercial) but it does not have all the functionality of the big boys (obviously). Although with the free version, you can do quite a bit with it.

I've used this in the past with great results.

DaK

[mbeckhardt]

Thanks for all of the advice. I realize that the configuration possibilities would require a ton of photography, I'm actually leaning away from this option, though the client may end up with some type of 360 view gallery, it's unlikely that it's going to end up affordable in the way that he wants it.

Thanks again,

Mike