3D Box Shot was originally developed as tool for packaging designers to help them create 3D Images and videos of their art work. It doesn't have any pretensions to be Adobe Photoshop. Unless you have already designed your packaging, or have a product you can scan, then 3D Box Shot won’t help you (unless you want to use it exclusively for 3D Text generation!).

If you are considering designing your own packaging, at the very least, you need a layer based image editing tool like Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or the Gimp. Rinky dink box shot design packages don't have anything remotely approaching the feature set of professional design tools like Photoshop, nor is it realistic to expect them to. All they can offer is a shabby compromise

What 3D Box Shot can do for you is something no other box shot product can offer... 3D Box Shot can help you to sell your products. This is because 3D Box Shot has entirely unique keyframe animation capabilities, which allow you to make stunning video animations of your products. 3D Box Shot Version 3 also features unique 3D Text capabilities, allowing you to spell out your sales message and broadcast it to your customers!

This document is a work in progress, with the intention that it will be complete by the time the product is launched. As such, we'd really appreciate feedback on the documentation as well as the product. If you have any suggestion for additions or amendments to the user guide then please let us know! All of the 3D text in this user guide was created using 3D Box Shot.

3D Box Shot displays a random sequence every time it starts up. You don't have to watch the sequence if you don't want to. Just Click the "Book Icon" on the tool bar.

At this point you'll have a choice to make. You can either work with the random sequence, or start from a clean slate and create and new sequence. Since the keyframe system behaves differently with preloaded sequences, depending on what you want to do, you may wish to create a new sequence. Alternatively, you can load your own cover images into any of the preset sequences and create an animation sequence very quickly.

Irrespective of which choice you make, the Control Deck will now open. The control deck is a tab control with seven pages of controls. Each of these pages is covered in detail in the user guide.

Slider Controls
The movement controls are operated by three slider controls. These controls are replicated on nearly every page of the control deck. Each slider represents an axis of movement, rotation or scale (depending on what option is selected). For example, when the Box controls page is selected and a Check is placed next to rotation, moving the top slider will rotate the box on the X axis, moving the middle slider will rotate the box on the Y axis and moving the bottom slider will rotate the box on the Z axis.

Since the slider controls all display numerical values when you move them, this allows you to make precise adjustments to your box. This affords a fine degree of control when creating Key frame animation sequences.

The slider controls also respond to mouse control of the box. For example, if you use the mouse to rotate or pan the box in the view port, the slider controls will update in real time to reflect the changes.

Mouse Control
Mouse controls are context sensitive. This means that if the “Rotate” button is selected then clicking and holding down the left mouse button while moving the mouse around the view port will rotate the box or text its X and Y Axis. Clicking and holding down the right mouse button while moving the mouse will rotate the box or text on the Z axis.

If Pan is selected then left mouse will Pan X and Y, right mouse will pan Z. Please note, some selections, such as scale or colour cannot be controlled by the mouse, as there is very limited practical value in doing so. In such cases the context sensitive mouse control remains on Pan.

One of the big additions to 3D Box Shot V3 is the improved key frame animation system. The Box controls, Text Controls and Lighting controls can now be key framed independently allowing you to easily build complex and visually stunning animation sequences that can help you sell your products.

How Keyframe Animations Works
In animation, a key frame is a significant frame in an animated sequence of frames drawn or otherwise constructed by the user. Historically, in the world of cartoon animation when all frames were hand drawn by animators, the senior artist would draw the key frames, leaving the "in between" frames to an apprentice. Now, the animator creates only the first and last frames of a simple sequence; the computer fills in the gaps. This is called tweening.

3D Box Shot Keyframe Animation Tutorial
The key frame system in 3D Box Shot V3 is very simple. We can’t emphasize this enough. Some people might argue that it’s too simple! Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a short five step tutorial on how the 3D Box Shot V3  key frame system works.  Follow this tutorial and you’ll soon have mastered the key frame system…

Step One...
Open the Control Deck and Select the Text Controls Tab. Left click on the view port and move your mouse (while still holding down the left mouse button) to rotate the text through 45 degrees on the Y axis. Click and hold the right mouse button while moving the mouse to rotate the text on the Z axis.

See, you’re already getting to grips with the control system! Alternatively, you can adjust the slider controls to modify the rotational values of the text. Left click on the text box where the text says “3D Box Shot”. Delete this using the keyboard (just pretend you’re using a really simple word processor) and type in “My First Key Frame Sequence”.

Step Two...
Next, select the Key Frame Controls and click "+Add Key" to add a key frame at frame zero on the timeline. 3D Box Shot doesn’t calculate any tween frames when a keyframe is added to position zero on the timeline. All the values for all effects are stored, so the calculations can be performed when the next key frame is added.

Step Three...
Click the Text Controls Tab to switch control back to the text controls. Click the combo arrow under Text Controls and Select Pan & Zoom from the drop down selection box. The mouse controls and sliders will now manipulate the Pan and Zoom on the text. Zoom out by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse. Left click and move the mouse to pan the text around. Pan the Text to the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Click the arrow tab again and select Twist Text. Move the Top Slider half way across it’s range to the right.

Step Four...
Click on the Key Frame tab to switch back to the key frame controls. Left click on the timeline pointer and drag it to the middle point (frame 150) of the timeline. Click the "+Add Key" Frame button. Once a key frame is added beyond position zero, all the values for all effects are recorded to that key frame and the tween frames are automatically calculated.

Step Five...
Click the Timeline Slider and drag it backwards on the timeline to position zero. The sequence will play back in reverse as you drag the pointer. When the timeline pointer is back at position zero, click the Copy Key Frame Button. This copies all of the values from the selection position on the timeline. Drag the timeline to position 300 on the timeline (the final frame) and click Paste Key Frame. This will paste the key frame values that you’ve just copied back to the timeline at the position selected by the timeline pointer.
 
Click the play button to watch the sequence you’ve created playback. Because frame 0 and 300 contain the same values, you have just created a seamless loop. Well done! The principles used apply to the Box and lighting controls as well, both of which can be key framed independently.

Limitations of the 3D Box Shot Key frame system
You can’t write key frames to a point on the timeline where the tween frames have already been calculated. Basically, key frames have to be added to the timeline in sequential order and cannot be edited once they have been committed to the timeline. However, you can append key frames to the end of the sequences without problems. This means to can add additional frames to any of the preset sequences bundled with the program, or build your own lengthy sequences over a period of time. For example, if you wanted to create a half and hour animated sequence for a trade show you could do this gradually by adding additional frames to a sequence you had previously saved, then re-saving it.

Select Your Package
3D Box Shot version 3 lets you visually select the type of box that you want to use from a wide range of possible options. Just scroll through the thumbnail list until you find the box type you want. Then left click on it to highlight it and click the select button. Your chosen box type will now load.

Add to Presets
Once you’ve created a nice animated sequence, click the Add to Presets button. This will store a copy of your preset for future use.

Movement Controls
The movement controls are operated by three slider controls. These controls are replicated on nearly every page of the control deck. Each slider represents an axis of movement, rotation or scale (depending on what option is selected). For example, when the Box controls page is selected and a Check is placed next to rotation, moving the top slider will rotate the box on the X axis, moving the middle slider will rotate the box on the Y axis and moving the bottom slider will rotate the box on the Z axis.

Since the slider controls all display numerical values when you move them, this allows you to make precise adjustments to your box. This affords a fine degree of control when creating Key frame animation sequences.

The slider controls also respond to mouse control of the box. For example, if you use the mouse to rotate or pan the box in the view port, the slider controls will update in real time to reflect the changes.

Show Hide
Toggle this control on and off to show and hide the box. If you are planning to use the program just to create 3D text, for example, it would be a good idea to hide the box.

Generate AVI
Click the generate AVI button to export an AVI video of your keyframe animation

3D Box Shot V3 features a extremely powerful and flexible 3D Text routine that puts many dedicated video titling packages to shame! We've used the 3D texts routines in 3D Box Shot V3 to produce the headings for this user guide.

Text Slider Controls
The text slider controls control whatever option is currently selected in text controls drop down menu. This system allows a wide variety of controls to be included in a small amount of dialog space.

Text Rotate
Rotates the text on the X, Y and Z axis. You can also control text rotation with your mouse. Hold left click and move your mouse to rotate X and Y. Hold right click and move the mouse to rotate on the Z axis.

Text Pan and Zoom
Pans the text left, right, up, down and zooms in and out. You can also control the pan and zoom using your mouse. Hold left click and move the mouse to pan. Hold right click and move your mouse to zoom in and out.

Colour Font
This option controls the colour of the text. All slider control settings can be key framed. This means you can change the colour of the text during a sequence. As well as using the slider to select the colour you can also use the Font Colour button to select the colour you want from a dialog selection. This makes picking the colour you want a lot easier.

Twist Text
The twist text option lets you twist and twirl the text in tangled chaotic patterns. When used in conjunction with the other text controls you can created intricate text animations.

Line Spacing
Controls the spacing between lines of text in 3 dimensions.

Character Spacing
Controls the spacing between characters in 3 dimensions. When used in conjunction with Twisted text you can create some amazing text animations.

Spot Light Colour
Controls the colour of the spotlight.

Scale Text
Scales the text on the X, Y and Z axis. You can use your mouse as well as the sliders to control the scale of the text. Scale the Z axis to add additional depth to 3D Text.

Fade Alpha
Use the Fade slider to fade the text in and out.

Text Reflections
When you select this option, the Y and Z sliders will"grey" out. This is because only one slider is required to control the opacity of the text reflections. Move the slider backward and forward to vary the opacity of the reflection.

Text Shadow
Once again, only one slider is required as the only control option is to increase or decrease the length of the shadows. Move the slider backwards and forward for progressively longer or shorter shadows.

Shadow Opacity
Adjusting the shadow opacity only requires the use of one slider. Move it backwards and forward to alter the opacity of the text shadow.

Text Setting Controls
The Text Settings can be found in the middle of the Text Controls tab in a drop down menu above the buttons. It’s important to note, while the text rendering settings are saved to the “.3dps” sequence file, they cannot be key framed. This means you can’t switch between rendering styles during a sequence. In turn, what this means is that you can change any or all of the text rendering settings in a preset sequence once it’s loaded, so you can easily customise any of the preset sequences. Below you can see a series of visual samples of the various settings you can apply to the text.

This is the classic chrome metal effect. This effect works best with rotating text,

This effect is essentially the same as reflection mapping but with transparency applied. This gives the text a glass like appearance. Glass text is not very effective against a white background, since you can't see it!

Sometimes simple, single colour text is more effective in a title sequence than brash chrome or gaudy glass. Don’t forget to activate the lighting to give single coloured text some depth.

Simple, no frills texture mapping. As with single colour text, activating lighting adds depth to the text. Click the load texture button to load a texture. 3D Box Shot ships with a number of special created seamless textures. These are included in the "Texture" folder.

When this option is selected, the Texture isn’t mapped to the text.  Instead, the text swims through the texture. This effect is very difficult to explain in words and can’t be represented by a static picture. Try it and you’ll see what we mean!

With the wire frame option selected, the text is rendered with lines.

Solid
Select Solid to turn off Wire Frame.

Activate Shiny Texture to add a glossy sheen to the text. This effect can be applied to any text rending setting. For example, you can create Shiny Reflection Mapping, Shiny Glass, Shiny Texture (Object and Eye), Shiny Wire Frame, and Shiny Solid text.

Shiny Texture Off
This turns the Shiny texture off.

Text Control Buttons
Directly under the Text settings drop down you'll find the text control buttons.

Text On/Off
This button toggles the text on and off. All of the other effects can be enabled or disabled via an On/Off button in the same position. 

Change Font
Click this button to change fonts. 3D Box Shot V3 can load any True Type font. When you click this button you'll see the Font Selection dialog.

Font Selection Dialog

The font selection dialog has a box on it for selecting the size of the text. Since the text in 3d Box shot V3 is rendered in 3D, the size is dependant on how close to the “camera” the text is. Therefore the size selection on the font dialog doesn’t do anything. So why is it still in the program? Hmmm… This is primarily due to laziness on the part of the programming team and lack of will on the part of the developers. The font selection dialog is what’s known as a common MFC control and is standard part of Windows. The size selection is a default part of it and there’s no way to easily disable it. One day we’ll get around to developing our own font selection dialog. One day…

Load Texture
Click this button to load in a texture. The default texture for the text is silver.jpg which works well with the Reflection Map text setting.

Font Colour
Click this button to change the colour of the font using a colour picker dialog.

Text Control Miscellaneous
There are a number of other text controls that can be turned on and off by adding or removing a check from the check box next to the control. Use of these controls enables the respective effect to be easily toggle on and off.

Enable / Disable Shadow
Toggle control to enable or disable the shadow on the text.

Enable / Disable Reflections
Toggle control to enable or disable reflections on the text.

Lights On / Off
This control toggles the lights on and off.

The lighting control is fully keyframable, which means you can easily create some interesting spotlight effects on your animations. Please take a look at the preset animations that ship with the program for a better understanding of what you can achieve with the spotlight effect.

Normal Light
As well as spotlighting, flat lighting is also available as an option. Select normal light for flat lighting.

Spot Light
Select spotlight to activate the spotlight.

Enable / Disable Light
Toggle this control on and off to enable and disable the spotlight

The background image feature in 3D Box Shot V3 works just like a simple software rostrum camera. You can load digital images into the program and use them as backdrops. These images can be panned, zoomed, rotated, scaled and animated as you wish.

Rotate

Rotate the background picture.

Pan/Zoom

Pan and zoom the background picture

Scale

Scale the background picture

Enable Spotlight

Enable the Spotlight

Load Picture

Load picture. This opens the load picture dialog.

Show / Hide

Toggle on and off to show and hide the background picture.

Since the launch of 3D Box Shot V1 a couple of years ago, one of the most frequently asked for additions was reflections. We’ve finally got around to it, so you can now make your box look like it’s standing on a very shiny glass table!

The controls are very simple and cannot be key framed. Just drag the slider backwards and forwards to increase and decrease the opacity of the reflection.

Enable / Disable

Click the Enable / Disable button to toggle reflections on and off.

Shadows are another effect we’ve been asked to include a number of times.

Enable / Disable

This is the selection of the control deck that loads the cover images onto the boxes, the textures on the mug and the digital image for the background picture. It also features a large advertisement for our design service with a button you can click to visit the design page of our website. At the time of writing we’re still charging just $100 USD for a complete box design. If you need help designing your box, then we’re on hand to help. We pride ourselves on a fast and efficient service.

The about Screen in 3D Box Shot Version 3 features a giant plug for our design service. If you're having trouble designing the "skin" for your 3D Box, then we are more than happy to help. We've been designing software boxes since 2003 and have got pretty good at it. In fact, we were designing product boxes before 3D Box Shot was even created. The reason we developed it was to help us create the sort of dynamic 3D Box Shot images that our customers were asking for.

As you can see from the screen shot, we've nailed our prices down to $100 USD per box. If you think you can create your own images, then go for it. However, if your having trouble and would like us to design them for you then please checkout our design service. We pride ourselves on offering a fast, friendly and efficient service.

Save Screen Shot

Select Save Screenshot from the file menu in order to export a 24bit Bitmap image of whatever frame is currently in the viewport. This option will only export images in .bmp format. It terms of workflow, it is general easier to use the "Copy Image to Clipboard" option so you can paste a static 3D Box Shot image into your favourite image editing software for further editing or resizing.

For example, many of the box images you can see on the 3D-Box-Shot.com website were created in 3D Box Shot with the viewport maximised with the desktop resolution set to 1280 x 1024. These images were then copied to the clip board and pasted into Adobe Photoshop, where they were cropped and resized down to the exact proportions of the final web image using Bicubic Resampling.

As a general principle, designers work with much bigger images than the final image requires, since this affords a higher level of working detail and improves the quality of the final design. The final image can then be scaled down to multiple smaller sizes without loss of quality. Please note, if you start with a small image and scale it up then you will loose image quality. Starting with a bigger image and scaling it down will always provide better results.

You can frequently find sites on the web, where scant attention has been paid to displaying images at their correct sizes. Unless the image is set to display at its native resoultion then the web browser resizes it to fit the specified space. This results in images having a muddy pixelated look. Take the following for example:

The first image is actually much bigger than the space it occupies on the page. As a result, the browser has resized it to fit the dimensions specified in the html code: 220 x 217. The second image was resized in photoshop to 220 x 217 and saved as a JPEG. The first image is 55k in size and looks terrible. The second image is 13k in size and looks great! By resizing images to the space they need to fill, you can have much better looking pages that load faster and saves you bandwidth. It's a win win situation!

New

Select "New" to create a new sequence. This is important, as the keyframe system behaves differently when it has a preset sequence loaded, compare to it's behaviour in a "fresh" state.

Copy Image to Clipboard

Select this option to place a pixel perfect copy of whatever is currently visble in the 3D Box Shot view port on the clipboard. You can then paste this image into any paint or image editing package from Windows Paint to Adobe Photoshop. Please note, since 3D Box Shot only lets you export .BMP images, copying to clipboard and pasting into a image editing application will allow you export web format images in .jpeg, GIF, or PNG format after resizing it to the dimensions you require.

Exit

Select "Exit" when you've finished using 3D Box Shot. 3D Box Shot has been carefully optimised not to hog system resources, but it's still probably a good idea to close the program while you are not using it!

Open Settings

Select the Open Settings option to load a previously saved sequence or settings file back into the program.

Save Settings

Select Save Settings if you want to save the static position of a box shot for future use. This is of particular use if you need to make a large number of box shots over time and want to keep the same position for each one. This can help to achieve a consistent and appealing look on an ecommerce site for example.

The warning box with no name

This box will appear to politely advise you that you need to create an animation before you can generate an AVI video.

Select Texture Dialog: Thumbnails

Select Texture Dialog: File Filters

Colour Picker Dialog

Several of the effects use the colour picker dialog. This lets you pick colours from a palette, rather than using the sliders. The selection process works in two ways. You can click on the basic colours to make a quick selection. Alternatively you can pick exactly the colour you need by dragging the cross hair around the palette to select the colour range, then moving the slider on the right hand side of the picker up and down to pick the brightness of the colour. When you've got the colour you want, click the Add to Custom Colours button. Click on the Custom Colour, then click OK.

Video Compression Options
Now for the science bit... 3D Box Shot V3 uses what's technically known as the Video for Windows or VFW AVI export library. After you've selected where you want to save your 3D Box Shot V3 AVI clip you also have to select a Video Compression Codec to use. The default option of Full Frames [Uncompressed] will produce very high quality files that are uncompressed and therefore absolutely massive. This is hardly surprising when you consider that it does exactly what its name suggests. It writes each frame of your sequence to the AVI file without using any compression technology at all. Therefore a 300 frame clip is roughly equivalent in size to 500 separate 24bit bitmap files. As a result, these files take up a lot of hard drive space. This is where the codec selection combo box comes into play. If you've been using a variety of video editing software or if you watch a lot of movies and video clips on your machine, you're likely to have accumulated a wide range of video codec’s. Every VFW compatible Video Codec installed on your machine is available for selection from the codec selection combo box in 3D Box Shot, but the default settings of these codec’s often leave a lot to be desired in terms of Video quality.

Fortunately it's easy to fix. By clicking on the Configure button once you've selected a codec, you can, in most cases, alter the default settings in order to increase the quality of the Video. Take DIVX for example. When you select this codec and click the configure button, you'll be greeted with a complex codec configuration screen. Selecting the optimal setting for a DIVX Avi is an art form in itself and there are several websites devotes entirely to this subject. For a fast and dramatic improvement in visual quality, just drag the bit rate slider up until the bit rate is around 1000. While this will result in an increase in the AVI file size, the file will still be much smaller than a Full Frames Uncompressed AVI. The same is true of most other Video Codec’s.


Please note, AVI writing is disabled in the Demo version of 3D Box Shot V3. We've done this as we want you to buy 3D Box Shot V3. The full version of 3D Box Shot V3 lets you export as many AVI files as you want.