Yeah it was a bit of a trick tryin to make this spreading effect work right.... i used Macromedia Flash 5 with a masked layer of the first symbol on the different countries.... then animated it spreading across the map...and exported the map as an .avi. Then i applied this map to a geosphere and added some effects and a cloud layer. And it worked AWESOME!!!
I really like your opacity map idea but i would have to make a separate animated opacity map in flash again... and with deadline coming up i dont know if it will be feasable. Thanks David... and good luck with ur extremely large polygon count problem... yikes...
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5 days before ship.... ummm guys where are the controls gonna go....
who needs a robot when you have a cool animation instead....
I'm Serious about the controls thing too....
Team 537