Away3D has got a shiny new suit thanks to Flash Player 10 and Pixel Bender, with a completely new set of material shaders and filters that offer more detail than ever before.

Written by recent new recruit and pixel-maestro David Lenaerts, the shaders offer a vast array of new options and shading techniques, all at the pixel level. For more detailed information on the various shader types, you can read David’s post over at www.derschmale.com.

Point source lights can now be used with these type of shader thanks to the parallel processing nature of Pixel Bender, giving an extra level of realism to specular maps, environment shading and even the standard phong shader. Each image in this post links to a demo that showcases the possibilities on offer – from multi-pass shaders that allow more than one lightsource, to normal mapping with specular maps for highly textured surfaces.

All demos come with source files that can be viewed and downloaded from the right-click menu in the Flash movie. These sources need to be compiled with the latest 3.4.2 release in the fp10 branch of the SVN trunk. It is worth noting that this is officially a dot release, meaning that the code is still experimental and may change before the next major release of 3.5. We are keen to get feedback on the new materials and their use before we commit to a final source structure, and would be very interested to hear what the community opinion is, either in the comments or on our mailing list. Speaking of which, if you’re not already a member, what are you waiting for?! Sign up and join the discussion.

Enjoy the new (dot) release!

The Away3D Team

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