Additionally, you can get answers from other Amapi users. There is an Amapi Forum at big-i.com, 
an active e-mail based community at egroups.com (formerly onelist.com), and many online tutorials as well as links to other Amapi users in the TGS Users Gallery and the Support/Docs area of www.tgs.com/amapi. 
 
 

You may be wondering - how did we create these nifty animated GIFs found throughout this page?

Amapi does have animation and rendering capabilities, but doesn't directly publish to animated GIF. On the Mac, you can create Quicktime movies. On the PC, Amapi can create AVI movies. Amapi can also create static images, rendered in raytraced and/or cartoon styles into images such as JPEG or PICT format. These can easily be converted GIF or other formats with popular image viewers. And if you have TGS 3Space Publisher, the CD edition, you'll also have the right tool to assemble such a set of static GIF files into a new animated GIF - with the TGS 3Space GifAnimator!

There are two products from TGS which let you render and publish 3D models into animated GIF, and they are also very affordable: 

3Space Publisher at $89 (includes the 3Space GifAnimator), and
3Space ClipArtist at $49

Airplane models modeled in Amapi, courtesy of OneMileUp.com

Another popular thing is of course the cartoon styles, known as TGS ActiveStyles. Check these examples, all in animated GIF format, of models , made or included in Amapi and saved as .3DS files, then rendered as short 5-frame animated Gifs using the frantic look of 'Fat Edges' with random number to wiggle the edges. 

piggie courtesy of Planet3dArt.com

With 3Space ClipArtist, you won't move individual parts in the assembly, but simpler animations are still possible, i.e. the entire model simply spins, or you can easily create a transition (enter from left, spin a while, then leave to the right, for instance). And you can import models from  Amapi's VRML 1 (or VRML 2 also, from other sources), and even in the ZAP format, retaining the Nurbs description. The ZAP edition of 3Space ClipArtist (v2.02) also exports (publishes) to ZAP format. 
 

This dune-buggy, from Amapi's 3D models collection (on the CD in 'Vehicles' folder) saved as VRML 1.0 file. 3Space ClipArtist  was used to create a spinning animation.  rendering: Cartoon Style 'Draft Technosketch' in 'Edge Only' mode (no shades) - also available in Amapi!

When you need to show your models over the web or in a presentation (e.g. MS Office/Powerpoint), you'll find that these two products make excellent additions to Amapi. Visit the respective websites today and try them out for yourself with the downloadable demo.
 

Thank you for using Amapi. If you have questions, please contact Philip Staiger, at TGS (philip@tgs.com) or our support organization, support@tgs.com. In Europe, please contact support@europe.tgs.com
 
 
 
 

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