Away3D Lite v1.0: fastest and smallest 3d engine in Flash.
September 11th, 2009
Filesize and framerate are generally two of the biggest concerns when using a 3d framework in Flash. Many a mail, comment and blog has written the relative merits of one engine over another in these terms. Everyone wants more for less, faster for smaller, better for cheaper. In fact, we would go as far as saying you’re quite a demanding lot! Well, there is lite (sic) at the end of the tunnel. And thankfully it isn’t an oncoming train, but a brand new Away3D engine that will change the way you use 3d in Flash 10.
What Away3D Lite is is the fastest and smallest fully featured 3d engine in Flash to date.
Currently weighing in at under 25K, Away3D Lite can be used in projects with the most stringent bandwidth restrictions. No problem for use in banners, widgets, thumbnails… anything where filesize is a priority. But the biggest single feature offered by the new engine is it’s speed. Current tests clock framerates up to 4 times faster than the standard Away3D library. And with more frames-per-second comes the potential for more polygons, more accessible content on slower machines, and more processing power left for other areas of a Flash application.
Away3D Lite is not meant as a replacement for the standard Away3D libraries. Because of it’s use of the native 3D features in the Flash 10 Player, Away3D Lite is Flash 10 only, so the development of Away3D 2.5 & 3.5 will continue as usual. These engines are more of a workhorse for many different purposes and with many different features, while Away3D Lite offers the choice to be fast and small at the sacrifice of features. This is not to say that you can’t do anything with Away3D Lite! The list of main supported features in 1.0 includes:
- 3DS, MD2, Collada & Metasequoia loaders
- Bones animation
- Viewport clipping
- 3d mouse events
- All standard primitive types
- All standard camera types
- All standard material types
- Template classes for quick and easy setup
Plus, you will already know how to use Away3D Lite if you’ve used Away3D! Everything is where you’d expect, and there have only been very minor changes made to some property names, which in time will most likely percolate back through the various engines.
The following demos are all available as source files from the Away3DLite examples folder in the svn, or on the downloads page, in both flex/fdt/flashdevelop and cs4 formats.
There is also a complete set of documentation files available from a new livedocs folder here.
Finally, this release has been thoroughly checked for bugs and errors, but as always, we cannot perform miracles! If you do happen to stumble across something that shouldn’t be, please let us know so that we can fix the problem. Make sure you JOIN OUR GROUP for updates!
Enjoy the new release!
The Away3d Team
Popularity: 100% [?]
Congratulations on an amazing new release that redefines the Flash 3d landscape! I, for one, welcome our new tiny 3d blazing speed overlords! :)
This combination of speed, functionality and small size makes it practical to embed 3d into banners and sidebars, and also creates entire new realms of possibilities through sheer speed alone!
Comment by steve
— September 11, 2009 @ 6:45 am
that planes demo runs at 15 fps at low quality versus your 27 at high… damn I need hardware upgrade
Comment by makc — September 11, 2009 @ 7:29 am
[...] Check out more on the site here [...]
Pingback by » Away3D Lite v1.0: fastest and smallest 3d engine in Flash JanuMedia: An Indonesian Flash / Flex Developer
— September 11, 2009 @ 8:09 am
Looks amazing, great work !
Comment by Swan
— September 11, 2009 @ 10:24 am
[...] gore bu surum bugune kadar cikarilmis en hizli en fazla ozellikli en kucuk 3D grafik motoru. Away3D-Lite 0 [...]
Pingback by Yeni Flash 3D Motoru: Away3D Lite « yagiz gurgul — September 11, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
Great work guys – I can’t wait to give it a spin.
Comment by Matt Bolt
— September 11, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Genius, as usual.
Can I make one small feature request, please add a ShaderMaterial.
Then for me you’ll have the perfect Flash10 3D engine and I can ditch my own efforts and get back to work :O)
http://videometry.blogspot.com/2009/09/normal-mapping.html
Comment by Peter Strømberg
— September 12, 2009 @ 4:32 am
Pretty sweet!
Comment by Izaias
— September 12, 2009 @ 8:40 pm
Congrats ! Great job guys :)
Comment by Guitouxx
— September 13, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
[...] trouverez les sources sur leur dépôt svn avec examples et documentations. Share [...]
Pingback by Away3D Lite v1.0 | News | SupaFlash – Guillaume Tomasi
— September 13, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
Very nice to work with.
One big plus is that you can browse through the entire class structure and see what’s going in the time it takes to boil the kettle for a cup of tea.
I tried implementing and running a shader material as I couldn’t do without that. I can maybe understand why you left it out as “standard”, as it does affect performance at high framerates. Still works pretty sweet though :O)
http://videometry.blogspot.com/2009/09/away3d-lite-first-test.html
Comment by Peter Strømberg
— September 13, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
[...] http://away3d.com/away3d-lite-v1-0-fastest-and-smallest-3d-engine-in-flash [...]
Pingback by Josué Palma Blog » Blog Archive » Away3D Lite 1 — September 14, 2009 @ 11:08 am
this new lite engine rocks. papervision3d is my primary engine, but have lots of reasons to focus on away3d lite from now on, but won’t be easy.
Comment by ozgur uksal
— September 14, 2009 @ 11:12 am
[...] Of course, if some 3D is needed in an integrated RIA experience, there will always be room for Away3D lite, but I know that if I want to make a virtual visit or a 3D game I will use Unity3D. Again… [...]
Pingback by » Unity3D is “The Flash Killer”… NOT SpacingOut - Unity3D Extravaganza
— September 14, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
[...] 官方介绍:http://away3d.com/away3d-lite-v1-0-fastest-and-smallest-3d-engine-in-flash 下载:http://away3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fp10/Examples/Away3DLite/ SVN: [...]
Pingback by Vibo’s Blog — FLASH3V » Blog Archive » Away3D Lite v1.0发布
— September 14, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
GREAT WORK – I really found it easy to use and understand. And the performance is awesome. Overall (in a perfect world), I would love it if the engine supported use of as3dmod (to bend, twist etc materials), 3d text (ilike five3D, vectorvision etc.) and the ability to set width/height of materials/objects at runtime. – If they are there already, please let me know :-) I might have missed them!
Also I found it a little hard to understand where to put objects (or the camera) on the z-axis to view my objects in their “real size” – in PV3D it seems easier (zoom = 10 and focus = 100)!
Thanks for another great engine :-)
Comment by Michael
— September 15, 2009 @ 11:44 am
You guys are amazing!
Comment by Sean
— September 15, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
Awesome Away3D Lite example: http://flashmediatuts.sourceforge.net/a3dl-terrain.html
17000 faces, 15 FPS
Comment by Matt — September 16, 2009 @ 3:47 am
[...] released, but this one is worth a serious look. It’s a new lighter version of Awayd3D called Awayd3DLite. I have been playing a little around with this engine, and for my purpose it’s just as good [...]
Pingback by New lighter 3D engine | I like to blog
— September 17, 2009 @ 11:50 am
[...] not too long ago, Away3D lite was released, a streamlined version of Away3D (25K) for Flash Player 10. Perfect for [...]
Pingback by Away3D | MadeByPi® Blog
— September 19, 2009 @ 6:41 pm
[...] Lite 1.0 has been released a few weeks ago. According to the Away3D team: “Away3D Lite is the fastest and smallest fully featured 3d [...]
Pingback by Blender exporter updated: Away3D Lite 1.0 | Rozengain.com - Creative Technology Blog
— September 23, 2009 @ 4:20 am
Is there a problem with the demos? They all run as if they are really far away the 3D is about 20 px high) and Basic_LoadModel even crashes my standard standalone Flash player, even after re-publishing.
Any ideas?
Comment by Dave Stewart
— September 24, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
Basic_LoadModel even crashes the Flash authoring environment now…
Comment by Dave Stewart
— September 24, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
Hi Dave,
You should upgrade your copy of CS4 to 10.02, we are aware that v10.00 creates the scale bug.
Comment by Peter Kapelyan
— September 24, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
Thanks Peter. Just so you know, the “scale bug” occurs on my machine just running the vanilla swfs downloaded from the site (even without going through CS4)
Comment by Dave Stewart
— September 25, 2009 @ 5:18 am
[...] UPDATE: Away3D Lite 1.0 is now [...]
Pingback by Export your Blender objects straight to Away3D, Papervision3D and Sandy! | Rozengain.com - Creative Technology Blog
— September 29, 2009 @ 9:06 am
Away3D is not the smallest 3d engine. ND3D is only about 10kb and it’s pretty fast too with great number of features.
But it’s always nice to see new lite 3d engines since SWF size is very important to me.
Comment by Webber — October 4, 2009 @ 7:27 am
These guys are writing a engine using achemy, very fast and awesome!
http://www.zero3d.cn/blog/catalog.asp?cate=5
http://www.alchemy3d.cn/p/alchemy3d/external/TestMD2_2.html
Comment by Edan
— October 4, 2009 @ 7:58 am
[...] a much steeper learning curve, although some of this is now being addressed by the very impressive Away3DLite [...]
Pingback by AS3 Quick Guides – Open Source 3D Engines « Matt Eley | Labs — October 17, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
[...] Away3d released a very lite version of their Flash 3D Engine. [...]
Pingback by My most important Twitter Messages #3 | der hess
— November 6, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
[...] a big fan of the open source 3D engines such as Away3D (and the smaller Lite version), Papervision etc. But it seems that for this simple 3D “effect”, the native 3D [...]
Pingback by 3D Planes | I like to blog
— November 8, 2009 @ 10:54 am
[...] popular free Flash 3D engines, and recently a smaller, faster version of Away3D was released called Away3D Lite. While Away3D Lite lacks some of the eye candy present in the more complicated 3D engines, its [...]
Pingback by Create a 3D Flickr Photo Gallery with Flex and Away3D | Graphic Design Pro
— November 9, 2009 @ 12:39 am
[...] popular free Flash 3D engines, and recently a smaller, faster version of Away3D was released called Away3D Lite. While Away3D Lite lacks some of the eye candy present in the more complicated 3D engines, its [...]
Pingback by Create a 3D Flickr Photo Gallery with Flex and Away3D - Tutorial Pro
— November 9, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
[...] in a 3D scene. Having done a fair amount of research on the topic myself while putting together Away3D Lite, I was very interested in seeing an adapted Insertion Sort method that had essentially been laid [...]
Pingback by infinite turtles » Blog Archive » Fast sorting in AS3 — December 8, 2009 @ 11:00 am
I made a cube (Cube6) with Away3DLite but I couldn’t set textures (BitmapMaterial) for each face of the cube (while Away3D could). How can I solve this? Please help me!
Comment by Clouds
— January 15, 2010 @ 6:16 am
Very impressive. I would love to see more parsers in the Lite versions. Especially OBJ.
Comment by hebchop — January 16, 2010 @ 5:14 pm
@clouds. Thats because its related to the way the cube6 is mapped. Its made to generate skyboxes with a single map. Same as the Vube class when map6 is being set to true. In your case use regular Cube class and set a cube data object and you will be able to set per side whatever material you wish. You should join our dev group for these questions. See adress on right side of this site.
@Hebshop. Thx, yes indeed, more parsers will come, but days have only 24 hours :)
Comment by Fabrice Closier
— January 17, 2010 @ 5:15 pm
Thanks for your answer Fabrice. Anyway I couldn’t join dev group some how. So I hope you could help me one more time on this: I really wish there was a Cube class for Away3DLite, will it available in the future?
Comment by Clouds
— January 19, 2010 @ 10:30 pm
Hi@Team,
is there any attempt to add light and shaders within the next few month?
best regards
Marcel
Comment by Marcel Klammer
— January 22, 2010 @ 9:06 am
When is next version coming out?
Comment by Emmanuel
— January 24, 2010 @ 11:23 am
[...] Away3D Lite [...]
Pingback by MumboJumboT — Hello. My name is Václav Vančura. — January 25, 2010 @ 8:15 am
[...] The application is based on a concept of a robot blabbing nonsense. Because I’ll use Away3D library, everything will be somewhat raw – boxes and angles everywhere. That should be OK for [...]
Pingback by MumboJumboT: Day 1 — Hello. My name is Václav Vančura. — January 26, 2010 @ 5:23 am
[...] is a well known 3D library. And its new Lite flavour finally provides hardware acceleration via Flash 10 postcards in space acceleration [...]
Pingback by MumboJumboT: Done — Hello. My name is Václav Vančura. — February 2, 2010 @ 5:22 pm
[...] the London Flash Designer and Developer Meetup to start, I decided to create a demo using HYPE and Away3DLite. It is nice to be able to just tinker with complex renderings using very little code and focus on [...]
Pingback by wemakedotcoms » Blog Archive » I like HYPE — February 19, 2010 @ 5:30 am
[...] introduction of the Alchemy version. The only problem is, it only supports Papervision3D and no Away3Dlite. Since that’s the fastest 3d engine around at the moment, I’ve spent some time to build [...]
Pingback by The Need for Speed: FLAR Alchemy & Away3Dlite » gerbster » web engineering
— February 19, 2010 @ 10:39 am