Exhibit Maker is a small flash application I made for Shepard Exposition Services in 2003. It purpose of the app was to allow clients to interactively customize their exhibit and see the end result. This allows clients with simple needs to bypass a more complex design process and order a pre-packaged product customized to their taste.
features
- Immediate feedback of selected colors and materials.
- Company name can be customized.
- Customization is fast and easy.
- Lots of color options.
demo
customizing a booth
Note: Shepard ES no longer uses this product but I host it locally for demo reasons. The prices are all samples and ordering will not work.
development notes
The flash application itself was simple, but did contain a few interesting features. The images were all rendered as 3D models and exported to PNG as separate layered components (carpet, panels, metal). This is what made the customization possible. To change colors, only the image needed to be changed for the item that changed instead of changing the whole image to one that contained the selected color and didn’t change the other part colors. I.E. If I had to offer 3 metal colors, 4 carpets, and 4 panels and couldn’t use PNG’s and layer them I would need to render 48 images (3*4*4) for each item, but with layering and transparency I only had to create 11 (3+4+4) images for each item. Clearly with more items the latter approach was more favorable.