This demo nicely illustrates the huge visual enhancement that normalmapping brings to Away3D. You can click on the bust to swap between the new Dot3BimapMaterial and the old WhiteShadingBitmapMaterial to compare. New materials that take advantage of normal maps will be included in the next release of Away3D.

The normal map in this example was created from a high-poly mesh using a technique decribed here. The resulting model has significantly fewer triangles, but retains a high degree of detail in the displayed object. This is hugely beneficial to scenes where high render speeds require low poly-models.

Rob

Broken link, file corrupted etc… we all have experienced those things…

In Away3D there is a native export to AS3, you can export any model loaded in your project to the AS3 format: .as. This allows you to compile the final version of your work in Flash without using the original model(s). Not only making the loading procedures easier, it also provides a better way to protect the 3D models from being reused once published.

Away3D supports MD2 natively too, and it was already possible to export MD2 like any other supported formats, but not yet possible to export the animation data to AS3. Until now !

The little demo shown here displays an .obj file (the flowers) and an animated MD2 model (the Hummingbird) converted to an AS3 class. The original models were needed just to set up the scale into scenery, then both files were exported as .as files and compiled with the rest of the code. This gives us a nice extra for free: colored declarations in our code eg. new Flower() or new Bird();. The concept “beauty of code” takes a new dimension! Soon some Flash code poetry contests?

I’ve also extended the export option to a fixed decimal count. If you take a look at 3D data, especially when the original model is being rescaled on screen, you often get numbers with more than 10 decimals for all vertex definitions… so one little boolean set allows you to save more than 50% of the .as class filesize (this was the case on the models displayed here). Depending of course on the amount of polygons, the more polygons, the more the ‘compression’ becomes obvious. At max fixed 4 decimals I couldn’t find any problems on renderings. If a particular case generates an ugly artifact, just don’t set the boolean!

Shown in this demo too, the latest version of the enviroMaterial code. Even smoother!

This exporter will be release in Away3D 2.0.

Fabrice

First ever implementation of dot3 normal mapping in Flash

There is a lot of possibility with importing normal maps into away3d. However, normal maps themselves can be complex to get right, so this demo combines the advantages of a normal map render pipe with the simplicity of a bumpmapped texture, allowing the model to have extra detail without all that fiddly high-poly/low-poly nonsense. Much easier to get right, plus you have the advantage of using a normal map if you would prefer. People with faster machines can set the default quality to high for a fantastic smoothed shading experience… - looks great but it’s also heavy on the old processor.

I cannot tell you how soon i want to try this with a proper normal map…

Rob

While working on the next demo for the new improved PhongMaterial, i wanted to add some animated texture on a model… but the MovieMaterial was just eating my cpu resources! So I’ve reused a concept I had in my bitmapdata engine.

I think that the animators among us will love this one: the new Away3d AnimatedBitmap class…
it’s using no expensive draw(), no expensive copyPixels(), and it renders at the speed of regular texture like the BitmapMaterial!

It supports also loops, and will support much more play options since it seams to be fast, but right now i’ve more than enough to play with, so I will first finish that PhongShading demo!

After days working on the code, it’s finally there. A smooth shiny reflecting surface!
I let you judge of the quality and the performance… i’am very happy with this result, that’s all i can say!

To get there and be able to make this demo, i got help from my friends Rob Bateman and Peter Kapelyan. Without them, i could have spend days on the code trying to find the bug i was looking for. And it was a nasty one… Peter shown us the way with his sharp eye and Rob killed the beast!
I’m very proud of the Away3D team, thank you guys, real teamwork!

Fabrice

I just couldn’t accept having phong shading only facing you, this would simply be useless in most cases and you would probably choose to have textures with ‘pre-baked’ shading in order to get light coming from another direction just to better translate the scenery you want to build.

The model displayed in this demo has around 650 faces, all being runtime shaded by the code.
The code generates random color, camera position and light position. So some camera angles might look pretty weird but I think it adds some pretty cool drama on screen!

Keep in mind that sometimes the light will quickly turn when it is very near the target center of the model…it’s because the light is being calculated at object level, just to save thousands of calculations per sec.

Fabrice