Rotate a Graphic on a web page

[The_Oakster]

First Post, not sure if its in the right forum....

I have a doughnut shape on the front page to my family tree site, how would I make this rotate?

I would like it to either rotate on its own, or so the visitor can drag it to rotate.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ben

[edited by: BlobFisk at 11:22 am (utc) on Jan. 27, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs please! See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Alfasys]

You can try to use flash to make it interactive or to make it rotate by itself.

[The_Oakster]

I only have photoshop 7.0 - is it possible in this program?

[Alfasys]

Adobe Photoshop can make animations.
Please take a look at : [good-tutorials.com...]

Remark to the moderators:
Please allow this link to be published, it's a tutorial link, not a personal link. Thanks.

[The_Oakster]

The animation i require would need at least 100 frames.

Is there an alternative to photoshop animation? It would need to be a free program as i cant justify a full priced program for one animation.

Ben

[Alfasys]

An affordable alternative is Swish 2 (see site of swishzone). It's also a flash builder and not so expensive as Macromedia Flash or equal.
Or just use a java script to animate.
Karl

[edited by: Alfasys at 3:28 pm (utc) on Jan. 27, 2005]

[choster]

There isn't a way to rotate an image using just HTML or CSS, and since image orientation isn't specified in the DOM, I don't think you can set it with Javascript either.

You might be able to use Javascript to replace the image progressively, for instance on a timer. You might experiment combining this with using animated GIFs (i.e. instead of loading 100 different graphics, load 10 graphics each with 10 frames) to reduce some overhead. You didn't indicaate what the purpose of the doughnut was, however, so these suggestions may be inappropriate or unsuitable.

If the content is simple lines and text, Flash may be a good bet. There's no need to buy software, just hire a Flash developer who already has it (btw I'm not one, and can't recommend one).

[The_Oakster]

The picture is a ring (doughnut shape) with peoples faces in. It is just the front page to my site so it would serve no functionality, just eye candy.

But because of the faces the animation needs to be smooth, thats why it would take 100+ frames.

If its not easily achievable then it doesnt matter really.

[Jon_King]

>>An affordable alternative is Swish 2

You can download the trial, do your job and then decide.

[tedster]

You will find that an animation like rotation will take a MUCH bigger file if you do it in a pixel based format, such as PhotoShop.

This is one of the places where vector based animation shines - so Flash/Swish make more sense to me. Pixel based animation needs to define EVERY pixel for every new position. Vector based animation can draw the image once and then move it with a small extra lne of instruction.

Pixel based animations work well when there are many "redundant" or static pixels from frame to frame, so they do not need to be redefined all the time.

[WebGeek]

If you HAVE to do this, flash is the way to go.

IMHO - I think you're pushing to hard to make something work that doesn't really add to the functionality of your website.

[The_Oakster]

I'm not really pushing hard for it, it was just an idea that I had put forward to me, and I wondered how hard it would be to implement.

Now I know that its not that hard, I will have to see it through. I could spend several days doing it in photoshop but thats the last resort. I am trying to do it with swish by using the spiral effect and instead of it spiralling away or towards me I am trying to get it to rotate. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of this and I am struggling, but my hard work will pay off. I have already learnt tons about photoshop just drawing the graphic and then trying to animate it.

Ben