Have you the 3D module installed?
Making table tennis racket animated cursor
 | Creating a table tennis racket cursorOctober 15th 2007 |
This tutorial teaches you how to create an animated cursor for Windows. The cursor is created with RealWorld Cursor Editor 2007.1 with 3D module installed.
This guide is intended for people with basic knowledge about RealWorld Cursor Editor. Before watching the video, make yourself familiar with the application.
Important: the latest version does not contain the 3D functions. Download the older version if you want to make 3D cursors.
1. Creating racket 3D model with parameters
In the first step, a very simple 3D model will be created and then 3 parameters will be added. The parameters will control position of the ball and rotation of the racket. The racket will rotate around two axes.
At the end of the video, the created file was saved as table-tennis.u3d. You may download this file and study it. It is needed in the next step. The very final action was a click on the "Render to Image" toolbar button, which creates a new document and opens it in another window.
2. Preparing animation frames
In this step, the individual frames of the animation will be defined. All frames will share the same camera and light settings, but the 3D model parameters will be different for each frame. Using the parameters, the ball will move up and down and the racket will synchronously rotate to hit the falling ball in the right moment. The upwards movement of the racket will be faster then the opposite one.
During this step, a table-tennis.r3i file with multiple snapshots was created. The last action was a click on the "Create Animated Cursor" toolbar button followed by a click on the OK button, which resulted in creation of an .ani file (opened in a new window).
3. Fine-tuning the animation
The last step shows how to fine-tune the animated cursor. The hot spot of the cursor is moved to the center, the speed of the animation is increased and a small shadow is added to emphasize the outline of the cursor.
Where do we go from here?
The animation sequence created in step 2 is rather simple. With a bit of patience, it is possible to create smoother or richer animations. I have added a couple more frames and the racket flip also flips.
Download table-tenis.ani
Another possibility is to further modify the cursor using the animated cursor editor. The previously mentioned file was modified in the editor to diminish the repeating character of the animation. By copying the frames (drag and drop with CTRL key down) and reordering them, the animation appears not to repeat itself. This actually does not make the resulting file excessively large, because the .ani file format is capable of storing each unique frame only once.
Resources
- RealWorld Cursor Editor home page.
- Parameterized 3D model: table-tennis.u3d (RWCE 2007.1 needed)
- Rendered image 10 snapshots: table-tennis.r3i (RWCE 2007.1 needed)
- The resulting cursor: table-tenis.ani
Summary
This tutorial demonstrated the power of parameterized 3D models. The results can be further finetuned and there is a lot room for improvement. Still, even with this rudimentary approach, the resulting animation looks fine, due to the realistic lighting and movement.
Recent comments
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kekarod
registered user
on July 10th 2009
plz ne1 tell how to make of runescape!!!!!!
Anonymous
on August 19th 2009
For some reason the sound is missing or just not coming across. Thanks for the groovy tool!
Anonymous
on November 8th 2011
ja desenhei a minha é mto loko!! 
PacManSikaT
registered user
on November 22nd 2011
Me quede en:
"La creación de modelos 3D con parámetros raqueta"
Anonymous
on November 24th 2011
i really like your cursor because i play professional ping pong and i think it is great that you mad e one thanks. 
Anonymous
on January 2nd 2012
how do u make a anamated curser
table tenis cursor yay
where is the the link to 3d cursor editor?
Go to http://www.rw-designer.com/downloads.php
Then download the version 2007.1 from the cursor editor. Select your system arquitecture.
Do the setup, you may also find something about a 3D Editor. Enable it and then, wait for the software to be installed.
Anonymous