AWAY3D 2.0 IS HERE!

Our new release may bring out the explorer in you, with features allowing a lot more expansive 3d possibilities. Here we present an atmospheric oddessey taking the reliable formula of a crash-landed spaceship and an alien world… Green Planet.

Now you can realize your 3D world like never before in Flash.

Some of the new features in 2.0 include:

• Simulated phong shading (with blinn-phong specular highlights)
• Environment-mapped materials
• Normal-mapped materials (an open source first for Flash)
• Z-depth filter for large outdoor scenes
• Fog filter
• Straight-to-bitmap rendering for fast scaled views
• Surface caching for fast rendered lights
• Package refactor for easier learning of basic classes

Full update details have been posted on the AWAY3D mailing list. You can get the source files by accessing our svn repository or going to our downloads page

Handling the rendering of over 13000 polygons, 16 animated and interactive models with surface tracking, and a cool soundtrack composed by Atom(bang), this is a demo unlike anything else… so turn up your speakers and enjoy a new kind of ride into the realm of Away3D 2.0!

The Away3D Team.

More info on our group here…

We’ve now completed the main part of the refactoring work on rendering pipeline for upcoming Away3d 1.9.5. Now user has possiblity to render either to a sprite (SpriteView3D) or select the BitmapView3D which renders to a Bitmap. This can then be used as a normal DisplayObject or you can request a direct access to the rendered output for post processing etc.

Jalava, our new team member, quickly whipped together some post processing effects from using evoengine from Evoflash and slapped it together with Away3d.

Here is the result.Bitmap Rendering Demo

As you can see, it is pretty easy to add different post processing effects on the away3d engine when you can get everything rendered to a bitmap.

In here we are doing about 20 fullscreen bitmapData#draw calls to render postprocessing plus we are rendering about 1200 polygons fully textured with precision bitmap material.

the Away3d Team

Away3D has recently seen a sudden increase in commercial use - now including areas such as Education, Gaming, and Online Applications. The following content shows a sample of what’s currently being powered by the Away3d Engine.

EffectiveUI launchs an application for the Discovery Channel called “Discovery Earth Live” which lets you visualize different scientific data on an interactive 3D globe, as well as read about news stories around the world; the data is both images and video, and you can adjust layering and opacities of different layers in real-time as the globe spins.
In otherwords: Really Awesome.
http://www.discovery.com/discoveryearthlive

Newgrounds features 3D Sugar Glider on the front page and 3D Flash Games finally become a reality on the Web.
Newgrounds is the largest and most popular Flash site on the web, and the future of Web Entertainment. Now Away3D is pushing the3D Flash Game envelope.

Play 3D Sugar Glider !

Fusebox launches Empressr, the first web-based application that lets you create, share and store presentations online.

It uses Away3D for the 3D transitions, with many more features being made.
It’s nominated for a Webware 100 award for the Best Web 2.0 sites.
www.empressor.com

Away3D has many new things coming up, please JOIN THE AWAY3D GROUP to stay updated.

If your looking for somewhere to relax (and I know we are!) after a hard day coding with Away3d, then why not try the latest online virtual-zen environment: The Away3d Temple

The beautiful ambient music is composed by Atom(bang)

This demo weights only 204 kb with fully code generated meshes, and combines Flash’s power to reuse, alter, and mix sources with the latest Away3d tools.

We are busy building tutorials and the source of this demo will be available soon across a series of posts in a new section of the away3d site.

Many of the new features in the latest Away3d version are present in this demo, which is part of the reason it will be used as an extended tutorial. A full feature update will be announced on our mailing list, but the highlight additions include:

• new AnimatedBitmapMaterial for processor-saving animations
• new extrusions classes for creating many different shapes on the fly
• new BitmapFileMaterial for automatic loading of a material
• added autoloading textures functionality in collada and 3ds importers
• new extended 3ds importer
• added 2d rotation on Sprite2d and Sprite2DDir
• new importer for google sketchup (kmz) files
• improved md2 importer
• added md2 animated to as3 exporter

The 1.9.4 source has been tagged and can be downloaded from the svn repository, or as a zip file from the Away3d downloads section.

If you would like to follow the progress of future Away3d updates, please feel free to join our mailing list

Hope you enjoy!

the Away3d Team

The Away3d Team are pleased to announce a new partnership with the community-driven software company Strata, involving their 3d application software Live 3D and 3d[in] Photoshop plugin.

Live 3D is a powerful 3d exporter for the web, which provides an intuative workflow for converting content made in standard desktop 3d modeling software to web based 3d content in Java, PDF and Flash formats.

3d[in] is a plugin extension for Photoshop that allows the import, manipulation and export of 3d content to a variety of web formats.

Away3d will be providing an updated Flash export option for 3d content that displays in realtime, with navigation and animation options built in. The new export format will provide designers with an easy one-click solution for publishing 3d content, using the Flash Player to maintain a high level of compatibility with web browsers.

The Away3d Team will also be developing further tools to allow content manipulation for 3d exported to Flash from the Strata product line.

We are all really excited about the potential this offers 3d on the web, as currently the transition from high-end accelerated desktop 3d content to lower end, browser based web content is still somewhat tricky for 3d designers. Our partnership with Strata aims to address the balance by improving the workflow for Flash content.

Further details will be announced as work progresses.

Here are a few Websites that use Away3D as it gains power, speed, and popularity.
Congratulations to everyone that made this possible.

B-Reel launchs the new Flash/Away3D site for the EA Games title FIFA Street 3.
www.fifastreet3.com

North Kingdom releases a site for Toyota Europe with a game that use the Away3D engine.

www.buildyouriq.com

TODESIGN completed their newest Internet interior arrangement application called Dekort3D.

Create any room and change walls colours, floor materials, furniture. It features object rotation, collision detection, snap to object, and save to local disk.
dekort3d.todesign.pl

Honey Agency creates a Flash/Away3D Interactive map of the local New York City area.
www.450park.com/map.php?startNode=1000

Away3D version 1.9.3 is now available via the svn or downloads section of away3d.com. The above demo shows some of the new capabilites of the BitmapMaterialContainer class, along with a viewable source (right-click on the background of the swf) that can be used with the 1.9.3 codebase.

The extrusion classes being worked on in the demos below are to be included in the forthcoming 1.9.4 release version

After straight segments extrusion it was time to play with the rounded stuff.
This Lathe class allows you to rotate 2 or more 3D points arround the axis of your choice or using an offset if needed, you can add more rotations in order to generate springs, phonecords or screws… and like the segment extrude class it supports multiple textures and you can add thickness to the geometry as well. Very handy to show some exploded views of parts, educational stuff… or some melons!

This little technical demo shows the most common use of the class. Press on the model to change the points randomly.

For this one: Lathe+tweek properties+md2 generator = 30 sec work!

If you wonder why there are no forks or spoons in the situation demo, that’s because I wanted to use exclusively the Lathe class to build it!

All the objects you see here are just generated with one line of code and an array of Number3D’s.

Of course, the idea is to use other forms, models, primitives but…. I just couldn’t resist!

More extrudes classes are coming…

PS: Jerome, it was too late to couple it with WoW, will try it in next one!

Note: For some weird reasons, these demo’s will play only with the latest player installed on your machine. (9,0,115,0). As soon as I’ve figured out why, I’ll update them.

In order to build a complex scenery and keep it low poly, you need to have good 3D skills and a good modeller. For many that’s just too much to ask. As a result, I read threads everyday, on lists and forums, on how to load those elephant xml files…

I think it’s just bad practice to build whole scenes that way, specially when it comes to Flash.
And here comes the problem:
What else?

Personally I think that’s one the biggest challenges, offering tools that helps to reduce loading problems and offer more flexibility to the way we work.

So here’s my first contribution in that direction, this demo shows one of the classes I’m working on.
The class allows you to create extrudes from points, like a fence around a house, walls, a city block, charts elevation, some surrounding forest, sky trips or … a maze! You can define elevation on 3 axis, thickness, add one or more materials per segments, be able to generate one mesh from one or more point definitions, subdivisions per segments so you can control the polygon count, be able to decide if texture(s) covers whole geometry or per segments, you can hide some sides…
Last but not least, this option costed me almost a total rewrite of the class: it respects the thickness no matter the angle of the next segment.

Here is a 2d representation of the algorithm.

Of course one class is not enough… so more are coming!

To bring in 2008, it is time for an update to the documentation for Away3D.

Other than a significant makeover, the documentation now :

• has been updated to V1.9.2
• provides a search function
• documetation can be easily managed
• links to the new wiki are included for each class
• examples will be included with the classes to make life easier
• anyone can add comments to the documentation

At present, there is still a lot of content to be added to the documentation but this is now a simple process and can be done when required - rather than having to get comments put in the code and get it all regenerated. So more information will be being added all the time - if you need to know something in particular, contact us on the mailing list.

In conjuntion with the new LIVEDOCS, Pete has done a great job and introduced an EXAMPLES page to allow anyone to post any useful Away3D snippets or complete solutions that others would benfit from. Note, these will be subject to approval by the team.

And if that wasn’t enough, there is now a site WIKI to provide yet another mechanism for use contribution. There is a link from each class in the Livedocs to a class specific wiki page. If the page doesn’t exist, create it and add to it. This again is to allow all of you to help others understand and use the API.

If you come across any issues with the livedocs, examples or wiki, let me know via the mailing list and I’ll get it seen to as soon as I can.

NOTE: Please bear in mind that these items may need tweaking and will certainly have more information added and should be considered to be in a Work-In-Progress state. More notices will be posted when things of significance happen.

Greg