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Thread: Pangolin LCFlash Info

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Thumbs up Pangolin LCFlash Info

    This is a short tutorial that explains a technique I have been using over the last week or so to build a small army of laser animations (such as those I uploaded for Valentine's Day) using Pangolin's LCFlash and Mozilla Firefox.
    Even if you don't have LCFlash, check it out- I have only had it for a week and I absolutely love it! I actually cobbled together my own SWF to ILDA converter using C#, but after fighting the ever-changing SWF format and trying to deal with hidden lines, I was nearly driven mad.

    The meat of this tutorial deals with a quick and easy way to find SWF files then download/save them.

    1) For an easy source of many usable SWF files, I reccomend istockphoto.com
    If you click the above link, you should see that I did a search for "atom".
    Perform your searches with the "flash" checkbox checked only to reduce hits to what we want.

    2) Click on the desired thumbnail, to go to the "sample" page. If it looks like one you want, follow these menu clicks in Firefox:
    a) Tools
    b) Page Info
    c) Click the "Media" tab
    d) scroll down through the media files until you find one of type "Embed"
    e) Click "Save As..." and save the SWF file to the desired location.

    3) Open LCFlash, and open your new SWF file
    a) Tweak as needed (I have found that most need no tweaking whatsoever)
    b) Export to desired laser format
    c) That's it!

    I have downloaded dozens of files and rendered them using this method with quite a bit of success.

    ***Important note***
    I am currently using an ultra-new version of LCFlash. The mod with this version allows certain SWF files to be rendered as frames where previous versions will only "interpret" a given SWF as a single frame.
    The new version converts the SWF file's object list into a series of frames, if the format is of this type.
    I actually ran into many files of this type, so I sent a few samples to Pangolin to check out. Within 48 hours they had emailed me a new version that handles this format no problem- how cool is that? The end result is that I can now get busy browsing, downloading, and converting a whole bank of cool little animations.

    ----------------------------------------------
    ^bottom line: Try it! You'll Like It!

    -Mike
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails istockphoto.jpg  

    page_info.jpg  

    page_info2.jpg  

    LCFlash.jpg  

    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by mikkojay; 02-17-2009 at 18:16. Reason: clarity


  2. #2
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
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    Miami, FL
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    Default

    also if you want to do cool text effects check out swish

    http://www.swishzone.com/index.php

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
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    LC-flash is awsome.
    been trying out things and various technique's with it and came up with some "possible" improvements that can be done with LC-flash

  5. #5
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    U can also convert the flash movie (or any other source) into an .avi so that you can trace it in trace-it ;-). Works just as good.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lassie View Post
    U can also convert the flash movie (or any other source) into an .avi so that you can trace it in trace-it ;-). Works just as good.
    Sometimes yes.
    it's a bit mixed, sometimes tracing gives similar results, sometimes flash.
    However I think when you want the most accurate point placement, LC-flash might give just a bit better results

    But I'm not sure in all situations.

  7. #7
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    also take a look at these helpfull tips and tricks I made.
    http://www.pangolin.com/_Files/LC-Flash_Tips.pdf


    the sample files used in the .pds can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?yujsgrh1ck2mr73

  8. #8
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    Yeah...i think you have a point.
    If i convert the flash to .avi i always have some loss of image quality.
    If LCFlash does it on the fly then it would be perfect. I never tested LCFlash
    to be honest...but would love to ;-)

  9. #9
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    I could convert a flash for you, without modifying anything so you can compare the trace.
    I can do ilda

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