Digimi is a very nice Avatar-Generator and library of creative assets for Games & Virtual Worlds. It is also a platform and a set of web services for game developers to be able to generate high end characters for a minimal development effort. You can see it in action here.
Following a successful merger of DAZ-3D and Gizmoz, the joint company company provides a central solution to design, manage and transport high-quality digital characters that can be deployed in virtual worlds, cross-platform games, social networks, mobile applications and professional modelling and animation tools.
Digimi has been using Papervision3D for a long while now and it came natural to select the engine to showcase their product in a real time browser based environment. As such Digimi is ready to supply the PV3D community with Actionscript 3 classes and code samples that will assist in integration of the Digimi SDK to Flash development in general and Papervision in particular.
Inside their new developer centre, you will find their up to date API documentation and full avatar creation offering as well as latest news with regards to the Digimi SDK.
This is an impressive project we’ve been following for a while and a fantastic tool for game developers who want to include 3D avatars in their game without the pain of building them from scratch. Hope you find it good uses for it!
We’ve just uploaded a little teaser of my new studio website HelloEnjoy™, which I had the privilege to present a couple of weeks ago at Adobe MAX 2008 in Milan.
For those who missed it and want to get a sneak peek of the things to come, I’ll be presenting atActionScriptHero.org‘s End Of Year Online Meeting tomorrow Thursday 18th December at 18:00 GMT. It’s a free event and you can participate from anywhere, just register today here.
Afterwards, we’ll be heading to LFPUG to join the London Flash community for some Xmas drinks. Hope you can make it!
[UPDATE] Due to technical reasons, the ActionScriptHero.org’s End of Year Online Meeting has been rescheduled for Monday January 19th 18:00 GMT.
That’s right! Papervision3D now has integrated QuadTree support. For those of you who aren’t sure what this means – it is a technique of subdividing the screen into smaller and smaller regions to resolve potential conflicts between triangles. This is one solution to the common error found in the Painter’s algorithm that Papervision, (and all Flash3D engines) uses.
Papervision3D isn’t the first engine to incorporate QuadTrees into 3D Flash – and this is actually a port from Away3D. Those guys did a phenomenal job at implementing QuadTrees into their engine – and after scouring the math and structure, very few changes were actually made to it – mostly just some big changes to get it working in Papervision, and a few extra features to help you out. Be sure to give the Away team huge props for their work.
So to start using it, you will need to update your SVN, and check out the new QuadrantRenderEngine class. For some demos and a walkthrough on how to use it, as well as some of the nuances of the QuadTree, check out my post, Using QuadTrees In Papervision3D.
In terms of what this means for the engine, it is a good step forward for Papervision3D. Not only does it now give users 1 more option for handling z-fighting – it also setup the engine for some cool new features that will be coming out soon, including BSP and 2D clipping. In addition, it got me going through the engine, and found some things that needed to be cleaned up. All in all – it only means great things for the community.
SourceBinder is a node-based visual framework for easy prototyping and real-time tuning of Flash based visual applications.
If you are not sure what that means, just play the video and prepare to be amazed at how easy it is to create a Wiimote controlled 3D physics simulation.
The great Den Ivanov has been working lately in a couple of beautiful toys featuring 3D plants.
The first one is an experiment with portals where you change the season by entering the different doors. Drag mouse to rotate, scroll mouse wheel for zooming & walking through portals.
The second one, his Plant3D class, generates a different tree whenever you refresh the page. Some months ago Grant Skinner did another interesting experiment in this direction.
Den’s blog is a great source of inspiration where you will find some other cool examples of PV3D code.
arTYPEcture is a project exploring points of contact between typography and architecture, and its objective is to create a typography formed by architectonic modules, and a building whose plan is made by parts of letters.
Conceived by Nacho García Martín as the final project for his Design degree, he chose PV3D to present it. In order to make easier for people to interact with the project, he built the impressive interface you can see in the video.
The user can control the camera by positioning a counter in the plan of the building. A webcam placed under the plan sends the position variables of the counter to the swf with the 3D house.
Nacho has sent this pdf explaining how the interface works (in Spanish, but pretty self-explanatory).
Jason Villmer has been working on this cool 360º video engine, Lucid Viewer, based on the Papervision3D architecture.
The principle is very simple. Just play a movie filmed with a 360° camera mapped onto a skybox. But the effect is truly amazing, giving the user the freedom to look in all directions, it raises the experience well above watching a video.
Another great example comes from Quentin Lengelé. Check it and read how he’s done it here.
Since the public release of Papervision3D 1.5 and the very popular accompanying showreel, alot of work has been done and released, by the community and commercial agencies.
So it was time for an update of the showreel; on the virge of release of 2.0, we’ll have a look back at a selection of work done. It’s very exciting to see all the great work been done, powered by Papervision3D.
The music for this showreel was kindly provided for by our friends of Quick and Brite.
