Get ready for a looooonngg tutorial, very nice looking in the end.
Does everyone know what a QTVR movie is? For an example, go to http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm and go to the Virtual Reality section. I have a report due on the louvre, so I checked out the official site, and when I saw the qtvr movies, I did a quick search and found out all about it. Unfortunately, you must purchase a copy of the program to make an official qtvr movie. So I took some pictures this morning, and put my knowledge of Swish to the test. Here is what I came up with:
http://jackie.wyk.edu.hk/c5/pan360.htm
It's not as cool as an actual QTVR movie, but it's a fully functional panorama in 100% swish. You will need a digital camera and editing program for the images, and some basic knowledge of swish, but I'll do most of the work in the tutorial.
Ok, to start (this sounds like a picture taking tutorial, but it's swish in the end..)
Take your digi-cam outside, or wherever you want the focal point (center) of the panorama to be. Slowly do a 360 and make sure everything is all set, there are no people in the way (unless you want them to be...) or whatever. Try to keep your shots all at the same level, saves time at the end. If you have a tripod it might help. My camera isn't that great, but you probably can take better images. If you can change the resolution, bring it down to 640x480 or smaller, it'll come out way too big later on if you're using standard 1280x960. Anyway...lol, choose a location and level your shot out. Take the first one, then slowly rotate to your next shot. It should overlap by about 20-40% or so. Keep your shots level, it's a big helper later on. Make your 360 while taking pictures in this fashion, you could have anywhere from 10-20 in the end, any more is just extra work. Scan in your pics, and open them up in your favorite image editing program. This is the tricky part. Make a HUGE new blank image, about 3200x300 or so. Copy and paste each of your images in, starting with the first obviously. Do not change the width at all, just resize it down in proportion, the height should equal 300, the height of the image. Copy and paste your next image, and place it beneath the first one. Then move it so it is overlapped, position it right, and add any necessary effects to make it smooth (mine is not so smooth, but I kind of rushed). Continue doing this until you reach the last picture. At the end, it should be a very long image, and you're not out of the woods yet. The last image MUST connect with the first one, and you need to copy and paste the first two or three images of the panorama into the end, or it will be a little complicated by Swish in the end. You will have to edit this picture a little in the future to get it to be smoother, so save it in a project format, whatever it is for your program. Now that you have all the images pasted and smoothed over, with a few from the beggining at the end, save it. It should be no bigger than 3200px width, so reproportion if necessary.
Now for the swish part. Open it up, start a new sprite, and name it "pan360" or whatever you want. It should not loop and it should be masked, so why not check and uncheck now. Create your base rectangle, should be about 600x280 or something like that. Place a "stop" command on the first frame. Insert your image, and move it all the way to the left, so the first image is visible at the beggining of the sprite. Position it however you want, but make it centered now, it wil be harder later. Add a place effect on frame 0. Begin a transform effect on frame 1, make it 200 frames long (or whatever speed you'd like, remember the less frames the faster), and change the initial effect from 300% scale to 100%, you won't want that  Everything should be default in the properties menu. Hit close, and make sure the red button (for making moves inside an effect) is pressed. Click on your transform effect, then click on the image. Move it all the way to the end, and make sure it is centered, etc. Preview the animation to see if you like it. Now comes the part where you have to mess with the image again. Since it is masked, go back out to the scene you're working with, and hit play. There is a stop command, but that's not what you want, you just have to see the image. Where it ends on the right (hidden by the mask) that's exactly how far the extra images on the end of the image have to go, you know what I mean? On my image, it ends right before you can see the windows on the house, so at the end of the long image, you should be able to see the same thing, almost hitting the windows. Edit your image to make it look like that at the end, and it'll loop cleanly, assuming you did it right Now for the easy part. Insert two text boxes (in the sprite) and give them both place commands on frame 0. These text boxes should read < and > these are for scrolling through the image. Put one on the left and one on the right, hopefully you know which goes where lol. Go to the actions panel, and add an OnRollover effect for both of them. Then add a GotoFrame effect, and for the left one do "prev." and uncheck Play, for the right one do "next" and check Play. Add a OnRollOut effect for both, and add a "stop" command to it. That's about it!
Now exit the sprite and save your movie. Play your scene and mouseover the buttons to move forward and backward through the panorama. The only problem I found in this is that the left arrow cannot go backward more than one frame at a time, so onmouseover it only goes back one and stops. Kind of dissapointing, but if someone could please tell me a way to rewind the sprite effectively it would really help this tutorial  :tu If I find out this is possible, I have a few ideas that will make this even more like a QTVR movie, get rid of the arrows and use transparent rectangles for hotspots that will scroll the pages at different speeds. I don't know if I can change the speed though...anyone know?
If you get good at this, you can make a real 360 degree 3D object and use that, heh. Oh and btw, if anyone needs the swi, I'd be glad to post it.
I hope this tutorial was of use to you, any problems please email me
Time needed: 1-2 hours.
Materials: Digital Camera, Photo Editing Software, Swish (obviously) and this tutorial
Difficulty: Moderate
This is the first of (hopefully) many tutorials from chronicles5
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