It is all known highly repetitive, but true fact that Flash technology opens the widest opportunities for implementing the most unbelievable interactive ideas into life. The most important is to find the right “combination” of graphics, video, animation and sound.

The essential component for an online artist’s portfolio or exhibition is gallery. That is why Flash is a highly popular technology that uses for artists’ online portfolios: the opportunities for a modern art gallery are infinite. With Flash the result is always amazing, impressive, unusual…

For this post we have collected the most unusual, unbelievable, extraordinary Flash websites devoted to the works of outstanding and talented people. If you find something useful and inspiring for yourself, we will be more than happy!

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Jota Leal

The exhibition of a Venezuelan caricaturist Jota Leal. His works are amazing. An interesting fact is that Jota never studied Fine Art. A zoom gallery is the essential element of this Flash website: it’s rather convenient and allows us to view the works of this talented artist in detail.

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Pavle Kuzmanoski

The retrospective exhibition of Pavle Kuzmanoski’s works, a famous Macedonian artist.  Drawing structures of Kuzmanoski contain a lyrical and sensual component.

The Flash website devoted to Kuzmanoski’s works is created in light colors. The most impressive part of the website is, of course, the gallery. For viewing the artist’s works choose the category first, and then click the thumbnail of any work you would like to view. When the zoom gallery will be opened, you may easily examine the art works in detail.

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Thelotuseater.com

This Flash website was created with paper, pencil, mind and a little of Actionscript. The art works presented in an original manner: the author doesn’t name himself; he just exhibits his works without any explanations, bio info or descriptions.  The only thing he lets us know about him is the main concept of his work: “Whatever there is, there is nothing wrong. I draw what I see in my mind – the image is just there… There are no concepts…”
His black and white Flash website has an unusual concept. The gallery and menu design are impressive.

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Door to Art

The Flash website of the Hara Museum of Contemporary art in Tokyo. It was created for showing the exhibition plan for those, who are going to visit the Museum. You may also have an online tour around the Museum.
The online exhibition includes 5 sections that show the location of artists’ works. The website’s concept is very clear. The galleries are simple, with the “previous” and “next” arrow buttons.

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Slawek Gruca

A Polish artist and graphic designer Slawek Gruca works with ink and oil pastels. He cooperates with private collectors, institutions, for which he draws and designs, using his artistic approach.
His originally designed Flash website completely reflects the artist’s unique style.

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Hans Jurgen Schieker

An online exhibition of Hans Jurgen Schieker’s works. Since 2005 the former studio of the painter shows in regular exhibition parts of his work, as well as the selected works of other 20^th century artists.

The navigation of the website is rather convenient and easy-to understood. The gallery is the main part of the website: it is well designed and easy-to use. By means of the button “enlarge” you may view the paintings in detail.

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Allen Lund

This Flash gallery is devoted to landscape paintings by Allen Lund, an artist from Salt Lake City, USA.

To view a painting just click its thumbnail. Thanks to the zoom gallery, you may examine it very detailed.

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Aaron Jasinski

Aaron Jasinski  is an American artist, currently living in Seattle. His art has shown in Europe and throughout the United States.

The Flash gallery that opens Yasinski’s world for us is designed in the form of many-colored stripes. Every stripe is one of Aaron’s numerous works: to view the drawing you need to click a stripe.

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Gum Blondes

The Flash website that presents unusual works of Jason Kronenwald, a Canadian artist. Each Gum Blonde is 100% chewed bubblegum on a plywood backing. No paint or dye is used, the color is inherent to the gum – the mixing of colors takes place inside the mouth during chewing using an endless variety of companies.

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Jules Arthur

This amazing Flash website is devoted to Jules Arthur’s art. His artwork is the expression of an informed and curious mind, a creative soul and a careful but sympathetic heart. Jules variously employs a wide range of art medium techniques, from charcoal to oil paint and enjoys the creative use of woods, metals, paper, leather, and more often in a multi-media mix presentation.

The impressive background, excellent gallery design and unbelievable works make this Flash website unforgettable.

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Audrey Bergounioux

Most of Audrey Bergounioux’s works has been inspired by natural elements and travels she had the chance to do. She tries to create works of art, which evolve with lights conditions.

The Audrey’s Flash website is also created in light colors. The works of the artist are presented with a cross scrolling gallery. You can also view videos with Audrey, download wallpapers, etc.

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Silvia Bartoli

This amazing Flash website presents the works of Silvia Bartoli, an illustrator, designer and artist. She is actually proficient in any kind of drawing and illustrations, character design, fine art, environments, sketching, photo retouching and handmade product rendering. Currently lives in London.

The website is full of awesome graphics and animation. All the elements are drawn by Silvia and can be viewed in detail.

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Zezd

The Flash portfolio of Zezd, a Dutch spray paint graffiti artist and renowned graphic designer.

For navigating the gallery use right side flowing panel.

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Ryan Terry

Ryan Terry, an illustrator and designer with numerous publications and awards, is mainly specialized in computer art and interactive design.

His Flash website is great: interesting gallery solutions, amazing graphics and brilliant concept makes it worth to be seen.

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Dilshan Arukatti

Change perceptions and reach the unconsciousness. Dilshan Arukatti is an interactive and motion designer based in Paris.

The website design is so unusual and mysterious: when you click a menu section, a dark new page will be loaded. To see it you need to hover the mouse over a shining point, and the page will become bright.

Flash CMS Solutions for Art Galleries and Exhibitions

Unfortunately, not everyone is skilled enough to create a professional and functionally correct Flash website. But there is a good solution: a professionally made Flash Template.

Each of the FlashMoto CMS Templates below will be an excellent solution for an artist’s gallery, exhibition or any portfolio.

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Dominique

This stunning Flash CMS Template is a great solution for presenting your art works. You can create as many galleries as you wish within your Flash website, thereby dividing the portfolio into categories. The customized buttons on the splash page can be multiplied, as well as the time of the buttons’ appearance can be specified. The navigation at the bottom gives you quick access to the menus and images.

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Barry Johnson

This Flash CMS template provides a compact and unobtrusive way to present your works online. The table structure of thumbnails is simple, but so functional. Transition effects create a lasting impression. All paintings, sketches or drawings, as well as photos can be sorted according to the selected albums that are specified below the gallery.

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Touch Photo

This Flash CMS Template has all necessary features for an artist’s portfolio: animated image gallery, interactive menu, artist’s profile and contact page. The amazing sphere-shaped 3D Flash gallery presents an extraordinary way of showing your media content. It also enables you to switch between two view modes: spherical and flat rectangular.

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Petal

This advanced image gallery, done on Papervision 3D, may contain the unlimited number of images.

Also, there are two types of menu: classic two-level menu and graphical 3D menu.

This stunning Flash CMS Template will perfectly work for an artist’s gallery.

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Abstract Moto

This abstract Flash design impresses with a stunning page transition animation that attracts visitors’ attention. The number of Flash photo galleries this Flash CMS template is equipped with is impressive.

It’s no secret that Flash Photo gallery is the most asked-for component among our customers. And it is precisely this fact that explains the popularity of the Flash CMS templates created especially for photographer’s/designer’s portfolios, design studios or model agencies websites. Dynamic interactive image gallery is a must have for such web pages.

And today we want to focus your attention on the recently added Flash CMS Galleries powered up by FlashMoto. These fresh and inspiring photo galleries present the creative and original ideas of displaying images online and impress both in terms of functionality and professional look.

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Flower Style Image Gallery created on Papervision 3D

What makes this Flash design unique and original is an amazing flower style image gallery done on Papervision 3D. The advanced Photo gallery may contain the unlimited number of images. Each image has a thumbnail what makes searching and browsing more convenient. Moreover, each photo may have a short description and may link to a pop-up, any website page or even external URL.

There are two types of menu: classic two-level menu and graphical 3D menu that uses Papervision 3D library. This graphical 3D menu makes it possible to use images and descriptions for each menu element.

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Dark Style Flash CMS Design for a Photo Portfolio

This ready-made Flash CMS design presents a stylish way of showcasing images online that can be grouped according to the albums. You may create as many image galleries as you wish and add buttons for them on the splash page. The buttons positions are also customizable. The image preview suits well both for horizontal and vertical photos. Moreover, via Flashmoto Flash CMS you can specify the size and color for the image thumbnail.

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Flash CMS Gallery with Drawing Effect

This Flash CMS template is equipped with an amazing Photo gallery with photo descriptions and image preview of any size. The image thumbnails can be linked not only to big image previews, but also to other website pages, pop-up and even to external URL materializing the most original and diverse ideas.

This is a “stylish” solution for the design studios, creative groups or just designer’s portfolios. You will never be tired of the design color scheme, as the background colors are completely customizable via Flashmoto control panel. Moreover, you may switch between two colors while browsing a website. But what makes this Flash CMS gallery really peculiar is the ability to draw simple fanciful designs using a mouse cursor.

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Design Studio Flash CMS Template with a Compact Gallery

This Flash CMS design is equipped with an impressive interactive photo gallery that easily expands to fit any size or screen resolution. You may create as many galleries as you wish and embed them into any page. By the way, have you noticed the stunning transition effects between the images in the gallery? And that’s not all. This ready-made design is equipped with a music player with a playlist. So, now you can upload your favorite tracks and provide your visitor’s with a pleasant sound accompaniment.

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Interactive Flash Gallery with the CMS

The built-in image gallery has a horizontal scroll bar that makes browsing more convenient and creates pleasant interactive experience for visitors. There are two kinds of navigation menu: vertical one at the top right and horizontal one at the bottom. By the way, the website menu is created in accordion style and drops down once you hover a mouse cursor over the tabs.

A couple of words should be mentioned concerning the gallery features. Each image may have a short description and may link to different pages, pop-up or external URLs. This Flash CMS gallery has already had a built-in FlashMoto control panel that allows you to fast and easily update your website with no coding required.

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Full-Fledged Flash CMS Gallery

This is a complete Flash CMS website with already integrated FlashMoto control panel. You will be pretty excited with the number of Flash photo galleries this Flash CMS template is equipped with. There are 3 of them:
1. The background Image Gallery. You might have noticed that while moving from page to page, the background is also changing.
2. Compact Gallery.
3. Full page Gallery. This gallery is very flexible and automatically resizes against to the screen size. It provides two types of image preview: thumbnail and big preview.

Here is an example of the Full Page Gallery.

Compact gallery is fully customizable and provides only big image preview. It looks like this:

Visual presentation is the engine of web design — give a perfect visual experience to your visitor and you are sure to become the king of the web. Even high quality and unique content may be ineffective if it is not pleasing to the user’s eye. Flash can be especially useful for presenting multimedia content, particularly images and photos. Creatively done Flash image gallery can become a part of the special style of your website and highlight its main features. And it’s not a secret that singling your website out of others you drive traffic to it and make lots of web ramblers become your loyal visitors.

We continue our inspirational post series. This time FlashMoto discovers some quite outstanding and creative Flash image galleries that can encourage your in your web projects. In this post you can also find useful information about some free Flash photo gallery generators.

1. Sergey Tyukanov presented his gallery in literal sense of this word. Good news is that you don’t have to pay for a visit.

2. This portfolio will hardly leave you cold. It seems that photographer lets you enter his studio — you can sort out some photo film stacks, browse pictures and create a portfolio to your taste.

3. Domenico Tedone’s Flash image gallery is made with carousel showcase approach. Pretty original and stylish.

4. Andrew McGibbon’s Photography is presented as Polaroid gallery. You can grab and move pictures around, a double click will zoom the photo.

5. Would you like to have an online forest walk? Sonja Mueller’s photo gallery is close to nature at most. Take a breath of fresh air in this great Flash photo wood gallery.

6. This photo gallery is created in Page Flip techniques. This showcasing method is especially good for fashion portfolios.

7. Amazing pictures are put into amazing gallery. Each photo becomes highlighted and zooms out slowly when you point a cursor to its thumbnail — quite captivating effect. The rest of the showcase process isn’t less attractive.

8. Oneover.com presents probably most flexible gallery ever. You can change the way it’s displayed on the screen for better interpretation of the image showcase.

Overview of free Flash gallery building services.
When you hear the words «Flash photo gallery» you might think you should know Flash to create such photo gallery. Well, probably some special Flash skills are required for making some fanciful gallery with totally unique features. But if you want to make a simple gallery to display your photos or artworks you don’t need to learn Flash. Flash gallery generator or some Flash CMS could be a very good solution for you. They offer easy to configure single and multiple galleries which are free to download. Here are some resources you could use in creating your Flash photo gallery:

1. A simple Flash gallery that uses XML files to store information about images to display. Intuitive navigation and configuration usability make this Flash gallery worth your attention.

2. Richly featured Flash photo gallery with the slide show. You can choose a gallery both with default and custom settings. Streaming MP3 audio is available.

3. This Flash image gallery works on any webhost without the need of a server-side language. It supports multiple galleries and simple image descriptions. Live Demo option is included.

4. Here you can find 20 free Picasa Flash and HTML web templates to create photo galleries and slide shows. Though some galleries are limited in the number of images (extended versions of such galleries are commercial) the entire collection is quite deserving.

You have lots of opportunities to create a flexible and attractive Flash image gallery even if you are not a Flash professional. Gallery generators and Flash content management systems allow you to fill a simple gallery with many useful features and effects for a successful showcase. However, we dare assume that after looking through our collection of flash image galleries you will feel a strong yearning for learning some Flash secrets to be able to turn a robust gallery into a masterpiece.

I’ve listed some websites below for your flash inspiration. All of them differ in style, in the way they make you feel, in the way they are using flash to catch your attention. Try to use their Ideas in your works. Sometimes it’s not about user friendliness or usability for the flash websites we should also add the animation approach, unique concept, IDEA!
Enjoy and be creative.

1. DuPont – Interactive Go Pro. Virtual bodyshop!
Neatly designed.  I like the idea and how developers worked on video.

2. XM Radio
I don’t understand what’s this site all about but when you enter the website simply use your keyboard to drive the car. Yeah, you’ll tell me it’s too simple. Perfection in simplicity!

3. Eco Zoo
I was amazed how quickly the website loads and it never showed any type of the preloader or anything when playing around. It’s a great interactive thing, drag the “tree” with your mouse up and down to see different characters, you can also rotate it with the mouse. Choose a book from the small pop-up of the character and you’ll be taken to a separate small charming website! This is a real piece of flash art and papervision!

4. Motorola- Public safety solutions
Very nice idea, cool animated stuff. It’s just video is to heavy …

5. Happiness Factory – coca-cola website.
Last but not least in this list. The MAX 2008 finalist. The best commercial creation ever made before!

That’s it for now. Feel free to leave your comments.

In our previous posts we have considered several examples of creating really cool Flash Galleries with the help of 3D. As promised, today I’ll try to explain how to make papervision gallery. At the end we’ll get something like this – awesome papervision flash gallery. Probably at this stage the gallery looks a bit unfinished, one would wish to add progress bars for the images, image names and descriptions, navigation buttons next & previous, and etc. I’d like to cheer you up by saying it’s just the beginning. In this tutorial we’ll try to write the basics, that is to say an engine for our application. Over the next several steps we’ll add functionality to this gallery. Note we plan to write more tutorials based on this example.

In this tutorial we’ll try to build a Flash Gallery using Papervison 3D. First of all I’d like to mention that the main aim of this article is passing through all stages of flash application development. At the same time we would like to discuss all contradictory questions one may face while working with Papervision 3D. More likely this tutorial will consist of several parts. Together with Papervision 3D library we’ll use Tweener for a better smooth animation and BulkLoader for a better image preloading.

You’ll need this archive in order to through this tutorial. This archive includes all libraries and applications which are necessary for the final swf creation. Flash CS3 or Flex Builder to be exact. If you know what Flex SDK is and you work with its compiler this archive is really useful for you. There is a lot of information regarding Papervision 3d on the net. You can easily find tutorials which teach how to download and install Papervision 3d and other libraries, how to adjust classpaths, and etc. It’s beside our purpose. Simply download this archive. Note you can use its structure and libraries like a start point for the other projects.

Tutorial difficulty level: Basic-Intermediate. We suppose even those of you who are the beginners in Actionscript 3.0 will do this tutorial with awesome results.

If you still wish to download and install Papervision 3d by yourself these links may be useful for you: Papervision 3D Training Videos and PV3d 2.0 Tutorial List. Having followed these links you can find a lot of interesting tutorials on this application and learn the way it works.

One more thing to mention: in this tutorial we deal with the second version of Papervision 3d. Note this version of Papervision 3d hasn’t been released yet.

1. Initial configuration

So, at the very beginning you should download papervision gallery source the archive which includes an initial project. Having unpacked the archive you should see the next file structure:

src – all necessary “as” files such as Papervision3d, Tweener and BulkLoader will be stored here. These are the libraries we’ll use in order to create the gallery. All the files we create will be added here as well. Gallery Project is a basic class which is used as Document Class in Flash CS3 and it’s being compiled while creating swf file. So I’ve put it into root. The other files we create for this project will be stored here com/flashmoto/gallery.

fla – this folder will include fla files. It already includes GalleryProject.fla with changed settings: the folder ../src is added to classpath, Document Class is GalleryProject.as

bin – the application called GalleryProject.swf is stored here. All xml files and images that make an application work are kept here as well. Saving your time I’ve already created an xml file with images data. All images are stores in images folder.

For the beginning let’s start compiling the application. As I’ve already mentioned there are two ways of compilation: using Flash CS3 and on your own (means using Flex SDK compiler). As a rule experienced users apply Flex SDK compiler while creating Flash movies. They definitely know what one should do with the source code in order to get a working swf. So I’ll describe how you can compile movie in Flash CS3. To do so I should run GalleryProject.fla from the fla folder and compile the movie having clicked Ctrl+Enter. In the flash output panel you should see something like this – Welcome to our 3D gallery!

2. Problem Description

Let’s build a gallery by following our step-by -step guide. First of all we should decide what to do. So our main tasks are:

- Application Initialization
- Application Initialization
- Loading XML Data
- Loading Images
- 3D Engine Initialization
- 3D Objects Creation
- Adding Objects to the Stage
- Adding Interactivity

3. Application Initialization

Let’s open file named src/GalleryProject.as. If you’ve noticed it is set as the Document Class in publish settings of the fla file. So the code which is inside GalleryProject functon (constructor) runs after the application has been launched. As for the start let’s set some stage properties – align and scaleMode.

Now we should create another class that will be responsible for gallery creation. It’s the right approach if we want to use it for any of our future applications. Considering the fact that it’ll be an ordinary Sprite we can add it anywhere using addChild() method. We can also change different parameters for its positioning.

Let’s create class called Gallery.as in the src/com/flashmoto/gallery folder. At first it will look this way.

And we can now add the gallery to our application. To accomplish this we should add some lines to our main file called GalleryProject.as:

All changes are marked with bold type. I always dislike when tutorials which include source code write new lines or code changes separately from the whole class which requires these changes.) It’s always confusing and time taking process to deal with such code. I prefer using more traffic but seeing how the source code receives new functions and expressions with every step I make.

In order to use Gallery class we need to import it first. If you want to make sure that the code is working and the gallery has been really added you can write trace (’This is your gallery’) into the gallery class constructor and you’ll see this message in the flash output panel.
Ok, let’s go to the next stage.

4. Loading XML Data

Now we should get information regarding images and where they should be taken from for download. Of course there is a simpler way to define them as constants directly in our code. Though, this way isn’t very flexible. So all information will be stored in XML file. (If you want to read more about this format you should read Wiki! ). At the fist stage all we need is an image file path. So XML file will look like this. (Finished file can be found here: xml/gallery.xml)

For xml file and images loading I’ll use BulkLoader. Let’s add a few function called loadImagesData() which will be called from the Gallery constructor. In this function we’ll initialize a new loader. Having added our xml file to this loader we’ll start to load images and listen for the loader’s progress, complete and error events. After you make the changes the class will look like this. As you’ve probably noticed a lot of new features and functions has appeared. I did my best to write the comprehensive comments for each feature and function, and in front of every line. So I don’t think it’s necessary to describe them in a more detailed way. Just have a look at the code we’ve created.

5. Loading Images

Now we have all image files paths. So we can load images. We have two variants to load images – loading all the images and then adding them to the stage or making the user tired showing a procedure of image load. For the beginning we’ll follow an easier way and choose the first variant. We’ll add several lines to the methods we already have. Now we should parse loaded xml, choose image file paths and upload the images. Loading status information can be received via onGalleryLoadingProgress method. At this very stage I’ve simply traced this information to the output panel.

So we are close to Papervision3d. Let’s start…

6. 3D Engine Initialization

In order to use Papervision3d while moving objects in 3d space we should initialize 3D engine first and create all necessary flash components such as viewport, camera, scene and renderer. Let’s write a new function called init3DEngine(). We’ll write a new function named init3DEngine() which will be called in onGalleryLoaded() method after the download has been finished.

As you can see some new features including two constants such as VIEWPORT_WIDTH and VIEWPORT_HEIGHT have been added. These constants define render area. Seems it would be better to define them while creating Gallery object. I think we’ll correct it a bit later. The case is that at this stage we have the other tasks. The same relates to other engine configurations such as camera zoom and focus, viewport scaling and interactivity. It would be better to change them dynamically from an external text file. I think we’ll do it for sure.

7. 3D Objects Creation

Now we should create objects in order to add them to the stage. Of course we could add them at once. It would make the code simpler but we’ll not go this way. One should understand that the application gains its flexibility thanks to dynamic object placement. So I recommend separating these two actions from the very beginning. At first we’ll create objects and then set their positions. For this we should update our class a little bit:

As you see a method called createGalleryDisplayObject() creates a 3D object and this objects isn’t for sure a Plane. It can be any object. So in a case we wish to draw spheres instead of planes we’ll basically have to rewrite this method.

8. Adding Objects to the Stage

As I’ve already mentioned I comment the code without explaining what should be done and how to do it because our code already goes with comprehensive comments. Almost every code line has its own description. So read the code attentively and comment this tutorial in a case you have any questions. I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions.

So we have a collection of 3D objects which can be added to the stage and placed in a way we wish. In the future I plan to update this example in order to develop several image placement strategies. So we could dynamically change the gallery appearance. At the first stage you can see the first variant: I’ve placed images one by one. Let’s add new method called addGalleryImages()

9. Adding Interactivity

The last thing that should be added is interactivity. Seems it should be described in detail.

The first thing you should do to see the objects that have been added to the stage is rendering the stage. In Papervision3d you can do it with this code

as you see all 3D engine elements are activated in this code. Having executed this code you’ll see what is added to your stage. However you should remember one thing – without calling this method you won’t see such changes as:

- changing object location or object properties;
- changing camera position or rotation;
- refreshing something.

Basically it’s called on every onEnterFrame event, but it’s sometimes difficult for browser to accomplish this. Especially if you have a lot of objects and refining or you need fast rendering and good quality graphics.) So Flash developers find various ways to optimize the application. Having analyzed different requirements they define if a stage should be rendered at the moment or not. If to speak about our example the stage should be rendered every moment because our main aim is camera and mouse interaction. So we should continually refresh the image. In the future I’ll add a requirement to avoid such rendering. For instance in a case we’ve clicked the first image and it has been enlarged.

Papervision uses InteractiveScene3DEvent in order to respond to such mouse events as hitting, pointing and tracking. Note if you want these events work the object material and viewpoint should be interactive.

Material has an interactive feature to accomplish this

Viewport has this feature as well. We set its value while creating – the 4th parameter = true

Of course adding interactivity isn’t limited to listening for the mouse events only. It also includes response to these events. This is the way logic is added to the code. Note logic is an inseparable part of the application.

It’s time for the most interesting part which can be difficult for an ordinary animator. So this part is usually done by a Flash programmer. Considering the fact that our tutorial relates to Papervision 3d I suggest you to explore application logic by yourself. Note all application logic is described in event listener handlers such as onPlanePress(), onPlaneOver(), onPlaneOut(). Camera moving logic is described in render() method.

Here is the final code. Let’s try to compile it. You should succeed!

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this tutorial. I’ll be pleased to answer them.

10. Conclusion

So we’ve finished a first pass through creating an interactive Papervision Flash Gallery. If you are the beginner I advise you to download the source project and follow it step-by-step. Though, in a case you are an experienced user you can download the complete sources for the gallery.

This tutorial we’ll be of a great help for us in the future. It’ll help us explore the other 3D engine features. Also, I’d like to explore some ways to optimize Papervison3d applications and make them work faster. I plan to learn different ways of image positioning, navigation, dynamic gallery appearance and logic changing, creating reflections, mouse wheel navigation, and etc. New tutorials are waiting for you in the nearest future.

Using a simple example I’d like to show you main principal of working with Papervision 3D and tell you the truth of it’s power and strength. In my previous posts you’ve seen tons of awesome flash galleries using 3D effects. So I created awesome simple papervision gallery which is using XML file as an images database in this case in 3D! I hope you’ll find this flash gallery interesting.

I’ll try to do my best and write detailed tutorial in few days to help you study the papervision gallery code.

P.S. you could say that code is still raw and features still to be realized (like progress bars for images, image names, navigation bar). I’d like to let you know that it’s just the beginning sooner or later I’ll make a full functional 3D Flash Gallery and share it with you. I’m all open for your spam comments and ideas.

P.S.S. as i’ve told you here is a papervision gallery tutorial.

Here we are – back with the fresh portion of 3D Flash gallery solutions – in case you haven’t seen the previous portions please feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2. The ones we are particularly interested in are the 3D galleries made with the PaperVision 3D framework. At the same time we don’t deny that there are lots of other alternate frameworks for Flash player – Away3D, Sandy3D and others – that are basically no worse than PaperVision 3D for implementing such kinds of things. It’s just that what matters today is not only releasing a product but also organizing a good support for it, to provide a documentation and tutorials for it and – what’s the most important – to attract Flash community towards it. Obviously that is why there’s so many PaperVision 3D based websites today.

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NetAge Web Agency

This is another example of arranging images into an arch. The distinctive feature of this website is re-sorting the foreground images depending on the category that you choose – web, video, adv.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Conocimiento Virtual

This website uses a great innovative idea of arranging the images and navigating through them. It’s some sort of a wall but still not a wall – more like a tunnel. I guess that after this website the component developers have started 3D tunnel galleries with PaperVision 3D.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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PaperVision Template

One of the PaperVision blogs has published an article claiming that the PaperVision 3D engine becomes popular in a sphere of templates and not only custom projects. I think that soon we will be able to buy the 3D idea and just put the images and a text into it.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Viewzi – 3D Photo Cloud

It appears to be that 3D engines are used not only for producing corporate or portfolio websites but also for search engines. This projects provides lots of variants of displaying the search results – one of them is a 3D cloud of images. Looks truly awesome especially when you’re able to interact with this whole thing.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Cortex Design

This is the implementation of a famous coverflow made with PaperVision 3D. The developers have also added different effects to it as well as the non-standard camera movement.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Domenico Tedone Design

I’m not 100% sure that this one is made with PaperVision 3D but in any case this variant also uses the 3D presentation. What’s particularly good about this one is how they have made the motion blur which is especially good while mouse scrolling the images.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Eric Tombarel – Photographer’s Portfolio

A photographer’s portfolio, nothing special at a first sight. But it still fascinates and mesmerizes – I guess there’s something special about this Flash technology

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Komodo Media

A beautifully incarnated idea of switching objects in a 3D space. Nevertheless the gallery still works fast in spite of a great number of elements that are being rendered every moment while the camera is moving.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Terre Bleue

No one knows what has been first – this website or TiltViewer (which by the way has already been reviewed in one of our previous posts). But since this is not a component the developers have gone further and made it all very interactive and interesting.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Knapoggue Castle Whisckey

Now this is the way no one arranged images before – looks like some sort of accordion or concertina. Each of the images is attached to the two next ones AND can be rotated. It’s a shame that you cannot put them into a pile – would have been really striking!

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Unfortunately the second release of PaperVision 3D has not yet been launched. Nevertheless this does not mean that the developers cannot create such striking websites with the Alpha version. I wonder what surprises will the new version bring and what the 2nd PaperVision’s perspectives with the new Flash Player 10 and especially with Flash CS4.

Couple of days ago we have posted a first part of our showcase of the 3D solutions in Flash galleries that we consider to be the most interesting. Since that time we have found some new good stuff that we are sure will be interesting for you.

Anyways, enough of introductions – enjoy.

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TiltViewer

Probably the most famous application that by the way could have been the one to start the 3D galleries based on PaperVision 3D. Another guess is that it became so widely spread due to its free status that gave audience a chance to build their 3D galleries without any limitations.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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TagGalaxy

Another great implementation of images sphere – especially because each sphere is the planet. While travelling through space you will be able to find the images you’re interested in by using a keyword-based search as well as to see the other planets – related tags and their images. Really outstanding!

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Pen Web

This one doesn’t seem to have something new. The elements are randomly situated in the 3D space but the camera movement is done in a very interesting way. The way you move from one image to another astonishes you as their places change dynamically and attractively.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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KENZO – FLOWER BY YOU

This one is something new – I’ve never seen the galleries presented as the flower. You can leave a postcard for someone you know or see the other postcards. In any case you will surely find something interesting in a wonderful world made by the website developers.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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13flo.com: Florian Bernard’s Portfolio

A great example of making a gallery or a portfolio with the layout changing. A good idea and a great combining 2D and 3D animation. Very stylish, without a doubt

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Babynrs.nl

A bit too slow playback but a very nice way they’ve done a curvy 3D wall with rotating images.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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officinanessuno 1.9

It’s hard to find something new about a gallery itself. But as for the categories and navigation – they really are extraordinary AND made in 3D at same time.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Audi RS 6 Microsite

It seems that all of the Audi’s micro websites are made exceptionally good. The developers of these website have been using 3D for a long time now – here’s a proof.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Gwiazdoora

Another example of a nice navigation that is combined with 2D gallery – very interesting indeed.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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FotoViewr

This particular one is not quite someone’s gallery or a portfolio. Here you can create a 3D gallery using your own images and later on demonstrate this gallery to your friends. Various layouts and settings will help you make the gallery unique.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Well, that’s all with this portion of 3D galleries showcase. Once again – most likely there will be another portion of website reviews like these. Be sure to come back as these are all very useful both for Flash developers and the audience that loves beautiful stuff.

In a previous post about bringing 3D into Flash galleries we have uncovered a couple of ideas and trends that are typical for today’s developers. What we want now is to illustrate these trends.

Out of the numerous ways of displaying images with 3D I can mark out the following variants. Please note that they are all randomly ordered and this order does not in any way show the advantage of one in comparison to another. They are too different to be compared.

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Adrian Wilson Website

One of the most available ways to make your gallery look good is arranging the elements in 3D space AND adding a little bit of camera movement after the mouse pointer movements. After the click the images “fly” to the same point and in that point we see the 2D image of a good quality. Nice and easy.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Digital Media 09 Stockholm, Hyper Island

Before the 3D engines were ever created the developers used to work with the perspectives and depth. Using the ordinary trigeometry they could create so called carousels of images. This image carousels were rotating and creating a peudo-3D. With PaperVision it all became even easier and more interesting.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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adidas l Originals

A nice sphere of images that turns into another 3D layout from Adidas.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Karim Charlebois-Zariffa / Graphic & Motion design

It’s a very interesting of a website and of the portfolio in particular. The “unpacking” interactive images, everything is so dynamic and still remains very productive. By the way there’s a FWA award label there.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Envolve Web

It’s too bad that for the sake of productiveness these guys have rejected the high quality of textures. A nice idea and a decent implementation. Of course when the interactivity of 3D is being combined with the possibilities of music player you simply don’t want to leave the website.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Olympus “Mju” | Korea

This is a variant of combining a rendered Flash animation and a 3D interactivity. A tidy intro transforming into an interactive gallery with the same effect smoothes the transition of rendered images towards 3D engine. This things makes you think that a whole website is made with PaperVision 3D.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD

As the 3D engines for Flash have emerged the questions about converting frameworks from 2D into 3D have arisen along with them. But as this process is complicated the developers have found a way of using 2D framework along with PaperVision 3D. This website for example is a great implementation of displaying different images as cubes, work with their physical properties. But the best thing is that you cannot actually tell that the website was produced with the 2D engine.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Videosphere

Another variant of presenting images as a sphere. Except for in this case everything is way more complicated – the relations between images are shown. The productivity did not suffer from this while the attractiveness has improved – especially after having clicked on different settings in the upper left corner.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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The exhibition (beta v0.0.1)

It’s too bad that things like this one are still too “heavy” for the system and the player. A single processor definitely would not cope with this. After the launch of a new Flash player version we will see the future of the 3D Flash games.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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Adobe: “Creative License -Take as much as you want.”

Guys from Adobe simply couldn’t miss the chance and have made a truly beautiful thing using the 3D. There are many objects that still do not slow down during the playback.

(click the image to see the 3D gallery)

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This is it for now – in a couple of days we will post a new portion of interesting 3D solutions applied to Flash galleries. After all there’s still tons of interesting stuff not reviewed by us. But we’ll fix that

Arranging a photo gallery is a very important issue in website building today. Of course for business websites designers don’t have to invent something new and radical. But in case we’re talking about photographers, design studios portfolios as well as individual portfolios the unique and attractive galleries are crucial.

After Flash player became widely spread the galleries took their strong position in the race of presentation tool. Even more popular the galleries became after the new development technologies have emerged in the world of Flash (like PaperVision 3D and other 3D frameworks). Even if the website is not Full-Flash the developers still prefer to insert galleries and portfolios as Flash sections.

Another important thing about developing the Flash applications with PaperVision is the productiveness. After having examined lots of examples almost each of them appears to have some aspect that could be improved. The others would be better if they had more effects or a smoother animation with bigger number of details. The thing is that today there are certain limitations that make it impossible to implement the designer’s initial idea – no matter how beautiful and attractive it is. That is why Flash developers have to use some sorts of tricks and hints, the more professional your developer is the harder it is to understand how he has managed to keep a high FPS rate with this number of objects.

One of the ways of creating top 3D websites with good productiveness is combining the software 3D (PaperVision 3D) and a rendered 3D set of images of FLV which is more popular. Everything that has to be interactive, everything that you want to rotate and press is created with the engine, the rest is being rendered. In the end you get a complete website containing tons of effects and 3D graphics – only a professional will be able to tell the software animation from the set of images.