This is an old project using Flash and Strata 3D, but it’s still one I’m still proud of.

Getting to the end result took time and effort, but first I had to get my “client”. I’ll start at the beginning…

Back when I was working for Penton, a B-to-B publishing company, I was working on their websites. This was still kind of the early days of the web and things were always changing. It was a very exciting time, however since the websites dealt with electronic engineering, they weren’t exactly pushing the limits of creativity. That isn’t a complaint, just a fact of the realities of B-to-B publishing.

Finding a subject

Not too far from the office was the New Jersey Naval Museum. The main attraction was a WWII-era Balao class submarine, the USS Ling. I was familiar with it since my high school NJROTC class took trip to see the sub.

I thought that we be a great little project so I went down to the museum and explained that I was a web designer. Before I knew it I was redesigning their site. Volunteers ran the museum and were more than happy to get help with the website.

My ulterior motive

While redoing the site gave me a chance to do some more creative web design, my real objective was to use Strata 3D to create a model of the sub. I told the museum director and he handed me the original blueprints from the 1940’s! While they were very useful in creating the conning tower, there wasn’t enough detail for the body of the sub.

Luckily there are plastic model kits of Balao class submarines. I bought one just for the hull. Unfortunately, the hull wasn’t in two halves; my original plan was to scan slices and use the slices to create the hull in Strata 3D. The hull actually consisted of 3 pieces; one for the deck and two sides. A Dremel made it relatively easy to slice the deck lengthwise down the middle, giving me half of the hull.

Using plaster, I made a mold which provided me the negative of half of the hull. I then melted modelers wax in a double boiler, poured it in. Once cooled I took the wax (positive) mold and sliced it into 1″ wide pieces; 1/2″ on the ends where the curves of the hull change more radically.

Some Photoshop work required

Numbering each slice, I scanned them on a flatbed scanner into Photoshop and traced them using the pen tool. Exporting each slice’s path as an Adobe Illustrator file made it easy to import into Strata 3D, where I joined them together to make the hull.

Once the sub was built I added textures I created in Photoshop and added proper lighting. If I remember correctly I used Strata’s capability to create waves and used the movie of that as a gel on a spotlight.

After building the outside, I had to create the interior using a handout the museum has as a reference. This was a bit easier since I was only going for a general look of the interior and not trying to faithfully recreate it. Once I had both interior and exterior views, I could make preplanned renders at 3 different viewpoints where the outside of the sub would become transparent.

Having completed the model, I had to build a Flash interactive. I was already familiar with Flash but had to learn some scripting to get the buttons to work and control the animation.

The result is one I’m still pleased with, even after all these years. Now that Flash is being deprecated, I need to find an alternative.

Click here to view the interactive (Requires Flash)