Is it possible/what is the easiest way to take 3D model from max and create a Flash or Javascript carousel that can work on the web? It should function like a real world CD carousel with say 100 or so models built in.
(http://www.thechiplab.com/stacks/Untitled-2.jpg)
Buttons on each side scroll through the chips. Thanks so much for looking at my question. This is my first one and I didn’t see any similar questions asked. Sorry for not embedding the image…it wouldn’t let me because this is my first post.
Chase
For working with 3D graphics in Flash you can use a library like Away3D or Papervision3D (the latter used to be the main one, but the former seems to have more momentum these days.)
Away3D will get hardware acceleration once that is available in the next version of Flash, but for now the complexity of your graphics will be limited by the software renderers. As a result, I don’t know if a 100 disc carousel is really feasible.
Another option for doing web 3D is WebGL (already mentioned) but that’s not supported in every browser yet (if ever, darn IE.)
Yet another option is using Unity. Their plugin will work in more browsers than WebGL, but is not installed as widely (or rather WebGL doesn’t require any plugin.)
The specific file format you would use varies with each platform/engine, but the most common file format for web 3D is Collada. The best Collada exporter for 3ds Max is at http://www.opencollada.org