The Core

Design it yourself T-shirt builder widget - HINT - I don't want to really make t-shirts, but the premise is the same I want to give people the option of designing their own product.  I know someone must make software like this of the shelf for resale, but I don't know who.  Any ideas?  I really don't want this thing to get out out of hand expense-wise. If any one has any ideas on technology (ex. Flash vs something else) or maybe a similar but cheaper alternative, I'd love to hear because I havent even figured out the right technology for this.


Possible UEs:

Ideal -  a person can start with a plain product, and then click on a section of the item, select a color from a pallet... and once they clicked on the pallet, the original part of the product will turn whatever color (or pattern) the person chose.  They would then be prompted to click on different parts of the product and change them until they were satisfied (a quote would also tallied in realtime) the info/order would be saved to their account, and/or processed. (Note: You still see whole item still at all times, and only the selected part of the item would change, while everything else remains the same.

And how would you do this? Flash? Not ipod/pad friendly, but it would work.


Base - User is presented a (diagram of the) product, and beside it, a color pallet with names for each swatch. Dropdowns(?) with all the names of the swatches are arranged around the item, with little arrows associating them with different sections of the item.  In this case, no realtime quote would be given and the product would not change color and remain static. Upon submission, the user would be presented with either a.) a list of sections and corresponding colors, and a subtotal for a shopping cart, or b.) an image of the finished product AFTER the changes were applied, and a subtotal for a shopping cart.


Somewhere in the middle is an AJAX/Javascript solution, I assume(?) whereby the view changes in realtime as you select colors.  But this is where things get fuzzy for me.  Can you use this to build a single image out of several components and change just one component and leave the rest alone? Or would I need to come up with an infinite number of possible combinations in a database so I could load the correct one?  In Flash, I believe you are working with layers which are stacked on top of each other, but other technologies may deal with multiple pieces on the SAME layer, like a jigsaw puzzle.


So the questions to you are:
1.) What are the possible technologies can I use, and any pros and cons.
2.) Do you know of any stock software that does something like this that I could have bolted onto an existing ECWID shopping cart?

I think mail order customized guns is not a bad idea.  You shouldn't be ashamed to say it.

...so getting back to my t-shirt builder, how would you go about building it, tech wise?

>Did something simpler in the end (few choices, output was more illustrative than trying to look like the finished product) using PHP and some image processing.
This is along the lines of a good option.  Can you elaborate at all so I know what type of specialist I need?

Your opening post reminded me of this site:

http://cocomyles.com/

There might be some clues there.



Elisabeth

This would be good but you have to use CS-cart, which I don't know anything about... and they don't give you source code, you pay them to customize it.
http://www.alt-team.com/product-designer-software.html#Source_code

Would love to see something like this in open source...

I sent them the following email to clarify the use case...

I'm looking to get a lifetime license and source code, so I can modify your tshirt builder into, for example, a shoe builder. Except we want to divide the shoe up in 'sections', or layers' so we could deal with each section separately, independent of the others.

For example, we could divide a shoe up into 4 main sections: the laces, the sole, the upper, the trim.  And each section might have 2 different (but not mutually exclusive) options, each with an array of discrete possible choices. In this case, if we were talking about the sole of the shoe, choice #1 would be a 'functional option' between various kinds of treads, and choice #2 would be a cosmetic option (such as the color of the sole) which was dependent upon whatever functional option was chosen. In this case, if you chose a heavy tread option, you may only have your choice of 3 colors, whereas if you chose a light tread, you might have the option of choosing 5.

The process basically would be:

1.) Choose the basic style of shoe from among a group.
2.) Choose between functional options, or leave as default.
3.) Select a color for each part of the chosen shoe, or leave as default.
4.) Add some text, choose/upload an image, to very specific areas of the item with a limit on size, or leave as default.
5.) See a realtime quote as the shoe is being built.
6.) Save/pass on the order info to our cart.

Which solution might work for me?

If you want to do it on the client side, Flash is probably the best option. But it seems easier to create the image on the server side with the assistance of an imaging library.

...from a buddy.