For this project at the Secretary of State, I have primarily worked on the page layout, graphics design and static data.

When working on a project of this type, I am often asked, "What graphic tools are you using?" Over the years the answer changes as new software products come into the market place, but most recently I have been using Visual Reality and Fractal Design Painter.

Visual Reality is a 3D modeling and animation package produced by Visual Software. I have found that if I really want to get a nice 3D look, the best thing to do is simply build a 3D model and render the images I need to create the WEBsite.
You may have noticed that all the shadows on the TABS of this WEBsite work. That's because I actually built a 3D model of the TAB system. To create the different TABS for each page, I simply move or re-order the tab positions and render the image. Some may argue that's too much work, but actually with the power of Visual Reality it's much simpler than you may think, plus it has saved a tremendous amount of time when we have had to make changes as the WEBsite was being developed. Illustrated ito the left is a different camera view of the Candidate Folder 3D Model and to the right, a close-up view of a navigation button.

There are many buttons out on the NET that we could have used, but we wanted to have a matching set for the arrows and the help button. Again with Visual Reality it was a snap to build the buttons. In addition to a powerful rendering engine, visual reality includes a very good 3D modeling package called Visual Model.

As a part of this project I also built a 3D model of the State Seal using a combination of Visual Reality plus Fractal Painter. I did all the 3D work in Visual Reality and created the "seal" graphic with Fractal Painter. In my personal opinion, Fractal Painter has to be one of the most powerful "real-media" software graphic programs on the market. I used Fractal Painter to compose all the photographs on this site, and on the Homepage, used Painter to create the text over the flag. Illustrated here is a 3D rendering of the State Seal model, plus if you would like to view/download a 1.8Mbyte AVI animation, it has been made available from this site.

Leave this WEBsite and visit Visual Software Inc. (USA)
Leave this WEBsite and visit TME, European Visual Software reseller.
Leave this WEBsite and visit Fractal Design Corporation