How to get a 2D image into Xara3D for editing?

[John K.]

Hello! I am new here, yet I have scoured the forum and the website for both 3D and Xtreme. I have both builders and still have yet to find this information. Perhaps it is there, but I am simply not seeing the terminology that would fix me up. I am on a deadline, and would like to take a glossy button with a flag on it and import into 3D to get it to animate. I do not HAVE to do this, but I wouild like to do it. Here is the button:

http://www.progresslanguage.com/thailand.png

So, the question is... for your basic .jpg .bmp .png files, how does one get these sort of images into 3D?

Do I have to go through Xtreme first and save that image into a particular format, and then store it somewhere and then retrieve it with 3D?

I simply cannot find a step by step that addresses this issue, which I imagine most people either know how to do, or do not and would like to know as well.

Sorry if this is obvious, but I am simply red-eyed from looking at the monitor without success, and have finally surrendered and am throwing my need into the ring here at the forum.

Regards,

John

P.S. I am a quick learner, and a nudge in the right direction/s is appreciated.

[Soquili]

Hello John,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Xara3D requires a vector to make 3D. A raster (also known as a bitmap) image can only be used as a texture. Fonts are a special type of vector.

Because you button is round you can use any circular shape. For example you could use the circle from the WingDings font. See attached image.

You could also use a full stop (period) from almost any font that uses a circle or that character.

Once you have your circle you load your jpg, gif, png, etc. as a texture.

[Soquili]

The bevel and extrusion settings to get the rounded look shown in my previous post.

The Bevel Depth slider only goes to 200, to get values higher than that you must type them in.

[iamtheblues]

Hi John, welcome to the forum. You might want to take a look at my tutorial for doing this, it's pretty detailed with lots of graphics.
Click on the link in my signature below to download it.
Saludos,
Bob.