Here is a basic tutorial to get you started designing your own animations and content for the 3D Display Cube. In this tutorial we will make a letter bounce back and forth within the display.
1. File > New.
Open a new photoshop image. Make the background black and the image dimensions 100pixels width by 180 pixels height. Whenever you make an animation the width will always be 100 but the height will depend on the length of your animation (However, it will always be in increments of 10).
2. Edit > Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices.
Set your Gridline every 10 pixels and Subdivisions to 1
3. View > Show > Grid.
Now you can see the 10 layers of the Cube spread horizontally and the frames (time) of the animation vertically.
4. Now let's use the font tool and make a letter. Make sure the letter fits within the border of the gridline boxes.
5. Now let's copy that letter and bring it to the next frame by bringing down to the next frame of animation. Remember, each horizontal layer is one 3D frame of animation. Now let's move it over a layer.
6. Repeat this step until your letter goes all the way to the right side. What we are essentially doing is having the letter travel from one side of the Cube to the other.
7. Now let's have the letter return back to it's start. This will make a looping animation of a letter travelling back and forth within the Cube.
8. File > Save For Web.
Make sure you have GIF format with the following settings. Also make sure that in the Color Table you only see WHITE and BLACK. If there are any other colors in there the animation will not work.
9. Save to your desktop as "lettertest.gif"
10. Now you can go to the Preview/Compiler to see your animation, compile it, and then send it to your 3D Display Cube for viewing! Easy!
Now that you've created your first 3D animation for the Cube you can use Photoshop to create all sorts of animations and content to display the Cube. You can also start using the XYZ rotation tool to flip the orientation of your animations within the Cube. Then you can take designs, flip them and combine them with others in Photoshop.
Your imagination is the limit!
Also, for your reference here are previous animations you can download and look at in Photoshop to see various techniques. Make sure to have your gridlines on so you can see the individual frames.
Some of these combine the XYZ rotation tool and make use of the Photoshop tools to make things easier. For instance, for the Rain animation one raindrop was animated, set in a Photoshop layer and duplicated as much as wanted to make it look like it was raining in the Cube.
