3D, Text Effects, Graphs, Charts , and More Flash now supports third-party extensions or add-ins. At press-time, nearly a dozen of these were available, supported by the original developers but sold exclusively through Macromedia's online store. A few examples: -
Swift 3D Xpress from Electric Rain. Helps you create 3D animation, complete with lighting, materials, specular highlights, shadows, and reflections. If you are familiar with the stand-alone Swift 3D product, you'll feel comfortable using this add-on. And, as with stand-alone Swift 3D, you'll be able to achieve some pleasing effects with a minimum amount of effort. -
Distort FX, Text FX and Pixel FX from Red Giant Software, and SWiSH Power FX from SWiSHzone.com. Includes text and button effects such as distortion, drop shadows, blurring, and extruding. -
Swiff Chart from GlobFX. Provides charting and graphing capabilities, including many variations of traditional line and bar graphs, pie charts, as well as more exotic formats such as donuts or combined styles. These add-ons expedite bread-and-butter tasks like creating a rotating logo, attracting attention to a text block by stylizing and animating it, or creating a bar chart. Many effects that were either time consuming or took specialized knowledge are now quick and within anyone 's reach. The only drawback to add-ins is the cost. Individually, they cost $50 to $150, but each one addresses a limited range of functionality. It would be great to have them all. Unfortunately, just looking at the initial batch available at press time, you would end up paying more for add-ins than for Flash itself. Prices may reflect the vendors ' need to avoid cannibalizing the market for their stand-alone products. |
