Archive for the ‘CS3’ Category

NEW: Papervision3D component 2.1 released

August 10, 2009

Details:

http://rockonflash.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/new-papervision3d-component-2-1/

NOTE: this only works in Flash CS3 IDE!

Have fun :)

John

Papervision3d Component: CS4 bug

March 19, 2009

Well I’d been able to fix a few outstanding bugs and make some long overdue enhancements to the component – that’s the very good news.

The bad news is that the component does not work at designtime in CS4 at ALL. The GUI, the rendering – nothing. You *can* see the properties in the inspector, but that’s about it. It *does* compile and work, but of course, what’s the point if you can’t work with it in Design mode?

I have spoken to someone at Adobe (just yesterday as a matter of fact) and they are aware of the issue – not that they know what the problem is, but at least we verified that this was, indeed, a potential bug. So, i’m kinda on the fence on this one.

I’m trying to decide if I should release the CS3 2.1 version now and just see what happens to the CS4 version later. I literally have no idea how many devs are still on CS3. I’d love to hear some feedback on who’s still using CS3 and if my releasing it now would help out.

Thanks all,

John

Papervision Courses: Good for designers/3D people? YES

March 18, 2008

Lately I’ve been getting alot of emails about the Las Vegas class (which is filling up fast) asking if their 3D developer or designer would get much out of the class and I thought I should say something about that ;)

The answer is YES! I have several people attend classes who had just gotten into flash recently or were primarily going to be doing 3D but for Papervision flash sites and applications. The ones that I’ve talked to have said they gained alot from the class time and had alot of fun at it, so I think it’s a good thing for those folks.

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CS3 Component updated to v1.5

July 25, 2007

Papervision3D Component v1.5 update notes:

  • New 1.5 Papervision3D engine – 40%+ faster than previous version
  • InteractiveScene3D is now default scene type
  • Interactive materials are now enabled via a new “interactive” boolean flag
  • Preloader events for collada preload
  • Error handler events for collada load errors
  • Auto-code generation – create new Class or code for timeline use
  • Create your own custom code templates
  • Scene Rotation option added to component – makes for quick mouse rotation of a collada scene
  • DisplayObject3D mouse events with Interactive materials being used

More info here.

RMI Demo Files

June 29, 2007

Grab the demo files for the class here

Or get JUST the demoFiles or just the JediTrainingSphere app – essentially, the one big file split into 2

After going through and putting in the latest version of the components, I realized it would be immensely helpful, to the people who couldn’t make the classes, to tell you *what* the demos are :) So, here’s an explanation of all:

  • handsOn/Developers
    • Demo_0
      • BasicSceneWithPlane: Using the new Scene3D component, we create a simple plane and add it to the scene component.
      • BasicSceneWithPlane_MovieAssetMaterial: All code this time, simple scene, camera, plane with a MovieAssetMaterial from the library

      Demo_1

      • TargetCamera_orbit: It WAS a target camera, but we switched it in class to show how to use a Free camera ;) It uses Peter Kapelyn’s trick of moving the camera back to zero, rotating on Y axis by 1 degree, then moving back out – genius. All code, no component.
      • TargetCamera_orbit_math: this one actually DOES use a target camera, only, the orbiting is accomplished with 2 lines of math. You’ll see that there’s a 3rd line to rotationY – just remove that. Target cam doesn’t allow rotationY calls and that line gets ignored in the Flash IDE. I just realized I forgot to remove that line in the demo files.
      • TargetCamera_Tweener: Uses a target camera with tweener to show you how to animate a 3D object with Tweener.
    • Demo_3
      • TargetCamera_FreeCameraFly: I really gotta work on my naming conventions. This is basically a star wars / stars / flight sim demo. Shows you how to use multiple canvas’ and multiple scene’s to create the illusion of flying through stars. All code and includes the xwing controls class.
    • Demo_4
      • FormUI: The idea was to create a form with basic button, then create planes in 3D studio max to mirror that look. Then, export a collada file, and use the plane object’s (Sprites) mouse events to control the form that’s actually off stage. I just didn’t have time to finish the implementation unfortunately.
  • handsOn/Designer
    • cubeSample
      • this was a demo done at the class to show how to control animation flow across the faces of a cube. We created a cube in 3D Studio Max, added a UVW unwrap modifier, then flattened the mapping. Then created a normals map to work from. We took that normals map into PhotoshopCS3 and added directional arrows. We imported the bitmap with arrows backinto 3D Studio Max and then rotated the faces of the model to match the direction of the arrows. The final result was matrix code streams being applied as a MovieAssetMaterial and the streams “flowing” in the direction of the arrows.
        • cubeSample demo
    • demo_normalMapping
      • Same idea as the above, but this time we wrapped the animation around the outside of an oiltank model.
  • 3D
    • 3dDude: This was some hi-poly model that John Olson found the night we were debugging the component ;)
    • 3Spheres: this is actually a baked shadows demo that I created in class. 3 balls and a plane using rendered textures with shadows.
    • axisBox: it’s actually a cube with a texture that has the directional arrows applied with the pivot point in the corner of the cube. It was meant to be a demo about oneSide=true on materials and how you can’t see the object from the opposing view.
    • Guitar: It’s the guitar from the midi demo I did. It’s a simple model showing how you can have your “parts” separated and completely accessible through code. The body, neck and stock are all separate objects.
    • materials/meshes: Just a couple of junk folders really. I just threw stuff in there ;)
    • spheres: This was the original 3ball demo I did at home to be prepared for class. Of course, the class didn’t like pre-canned stuff. So I had to do it fresh ;)
    • tieFighter: My really really simple low poly tie fighter model
    • Xwing: The one you’ve seen a million times.
  • JediTrainingSphere
    • this was the actual project to create the slide presentation for the class. You can fly around with a wii using the wiiFlash server, as well a move to the next slide and back. Its a great demo peice to show:
      • custom classes for materials (Panel, Beam)
      • communication between movieclips used as materials and 3D objects
      • using multiple collada objects (JediTrainingSphere and orb)
      • Using baked materials (Orb)
      • Using animated Movie materials (Beam, Panel)
      • Using dummy displayObject3D’s for animation purposes
        • the jedi sphere actually “looks at” an invisible dummy object to do it’s rotation to the next panel
        • the camera watches a dummy object go from the middle of the sphere to the panel – as if it were watching the animation of the beam flow out.
      • Using multiple types of materials on one object
        • Jedi Sphere uses BitmapFileMaterial and MovieAssetMaterial

Anyway, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

enjoy!

-John

New Papervision3D Components released

June 29, 2007

I finally released the components late last night over on www.RockOnFlash.com/blog

Papervision3D component

Some of the features:

  • Design-time render and editing in Flash IDE
  • 3 Material types supported – BitmapFileMaterial, BitmaAssetMaterial and MovieAssetMaterial
  • Creates MovieScene3D and Free or Target camera
  • Manages resizing / centering of Papervision3D scene [optional]
  • Dynamic masking to constrain the viewable render area to the bounds of the component [optional]
  • Full API and access to Scene, Camera, Collada objects to code around
  • Automatically loads materials via Collada file [when materials list is not given]
  • New Custom Panel for modifying rotation, camera zoom, camera focus, camera Z at design-time

Check em’ out!

The components were first introduced to the class of June 23/24 at RMI (they ROCKED) and include the Collada Scene component as well as the Simple Scene3D component.

-John

Mip mapping in Papervision3D

June 19, 2007

I’m very impressed with the mip mapping feature of the new Flash Player beta release.

In terms of image quality, the improvements are dramatic. On one side, using the same settings, textures are much detailed and flicker less when moving. Performance is also noticeably better.

But now, we can ramp up antialiasing without a massive performance penalty, rendering textures of amazing quality and very smooth object borders.

I’ve just updated my professional site, and the results speak for themselves. You will need Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 1 to see the benefits.

To take advantage of this feature without any restriction on texture size, Papervision3D now supports auto mip mapping on all materials.

Bitmaps and UV coordinates are adjusted to meet the technical requirements to enable mip mapping. In other words, any texture will benefit of this feature.

Hats off once again to the Flash Player team for their excellent work.

Need for speed

June 14, 2007

The public release of Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 1 is VERY EXCITING NEWS for Papervision3D.

The new features have a dramatic effect on performance, taking advantage of the latest developments in CPU design.

Hardware scaling allows us to go full screen, without increasing our render size and a very cool transition as a bonus. On the other hand, mip mapping improves the quality of our textures while drawing them faster.

But the feature I’m most excited about is multi core support, particularly in the vector rasterizer.

On a typical Papervision3D AS3 scene, the 3D calculations take around 30% of the time, while the remaining 70% is needed for the player to actually draw what we are rendering.

Since this process is our most significant performance bottleneck, splitting the work between the available CPUs makes a whole lot of difference.

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Papervision3D training in Los Angeles – June 23/24

March 28, 2007

Well the folks at RMI are really embracing Papervision3D by having me teach 2 full days at their facilities in Los Angeles!

I could hardly believe my ears that I’d be able to spend 2 full days teaching Papervision3D! I’m seriously stoked to get the chance to hang with them again and do some live demo’s and hands on teaching.

Developers day: June 23rd

Designers day: June 24th

If you’re coming, then use these codes to get discounts on the pricing:

*$220 for each w/discount ‘john12
*$390 for both if purchased at the same time — purchase either course and enter code ‘JBOTH

The 2 days will be split up with topics covering Developers one day, and Designers the next and are meant to cater to those 2 groups very distinctly. Developers will learn about how to use PV3D in their work flow with 3D modelers as well as best use cases from code point of view. We’ll cover AS2/AS3/Flex2 and anything else we can think of. Designers will get a huge dose of work flow, using textures and getting a fresh copy of the new CS3 components for the Flash IDE. We’ll spend time going over how to use them and some best practices. Both classes will get copies of the components and training ;)

The Collada component is unbelievable! At the time of this entry, I’m able to load a collada file and texture it right there in the Flash IDE at DESIGN TIME. On top of that, I can load the textures at design time and rotate/scale the model. It also includes the ability to clip the scene (mask) and / or scale the scene with the resizing of the player at runtime.

CS3 Collada Component

And with having it in the Flash IDE at design time, we have MANY more possibilities with working with movieclips and textures:

CS3 Collada Component - movieclip with filters


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