The book serves as an ideal primer for anyone looking to get into 3D in Flash, or anyone who has used Away3D for a short while but is interested in cementing their knowledge. It covers a wide range of topics from basic primitive creation and interaction through to advanced features such as bones animation and 3D text manipulation, using the latest 2.5 & 3.5 double release as its code base. Each chapter is packed full of examples that teach underlying 3D concepts as well as the application of Away3D in a standard AS3 project, and the text provides initial setup assistance for whichever ActionScript editor you favour.
A web page at http://flash3dbook.com has been created to document where you can buy the book online, and is also the place we are hosting the errata doc which is keeping track of any minor corrections. Alternatively, go to Amazon or the publisher’s own page at www.friendsofed.com, the latter of which offers an eBook option, as well as all the necessary source files for the contained code examples. Feel free to comment your thoughts below if you have purchased the book recently and would like to submit a review – all opinions welcome!
Away3D’s latest update brings some FPS love to Flash… in the form of a brand new render engine and data format for large play areas.
2.5.0 and 3.5.0 represent the latest full engine releases of Away3D for Flash Player 9 and 10. You can grab the code either from the svn repository or the downloads page, where you will also find a bunch of updated examples.
Accompanying the Away3D update is the latest version of Prefab3D a 3D preparation tool created by Fabrice Closier using Adobe AIR. You can download the runtime from the official Prefab3D installation page, or from the AIR Marketplace where you can also submit feedback (and we encourage you to do so!). Prefab3D is still very much a work in progress, but its newest feature allows the export of specially formatted .awd files optimised for FPS rendering (otherwise known as BSP files).
As an example of what is possible with this new feature, the following Hacienda demo was created using the latest Prefab3D runtime and Away3D sources:
A number of rooms can be navigated using the mouse and keyboard, with collision detection enabled by processing the BSP format in Away3D. The beautifully shaded textures were created using Prefab3D’s texture baking feature.
Be careful where you tread, as this is still an experimental demo! Further optimizing work is being carried out on collision and rendering loops in Away3D, but even at this stage, the speed benefits are evident.
Alongside the new FPS features, the Away3D codebase has undergone a fairly major rehaul and anyone wishing to upgrade their project to use 2.5 / 3.5 needs to be prepared for a little re-formatting here and there. We apologies in advance, but most of the updates have been in preparation of the long awaited Away3D 4.0 release which will be the next major version release for Flash Player 10 only. A full set of changes will be published later today on our mailing list.
For your own Hacienda demo, we have prepared a simpler setup creating the interior of a bunker, for which source code is available. Click the image below for the demo, or go straight to the source. The version shown here uses Flash Player 10, but code for both 9 and 10 can be found in the respective 2.5.0 and 3.5.0 examples downloads.
Using Prefab 1.3, the following video takes you through the creation process for the Bunker demo, step by step. The only starting requirement is a simple textured model, ready for processing. The final output is the demo you see above!
Livedocs will be updated to the new codebase within the next few days. As usual, please direct any bug reports to our googlecode issues list, and any questions about functionality to our mailing list.
For a long time, Away3D has been about the pursuit of rendering high-quality, realtime 3D in Flash. However, for the same amount of time, there has been a completely different set of skills emerging around the creation of the 3D content itself, to get the best out of the engine. In the pursuit of 3D FOR Flash, very little has been done towards producing a common set of tools that can be reused and applied to any project. Awaybuilder allows a certain amount of extra control to the designer, but for someone with little or no programming skills, how best do you deliver to a Flash developer the content he/she needs to get a good result in Away3D?
Prefab3D v1.0
Fabrice Closier, core member of the Away3D team, has today released a tool that should help answer that question. It is built on over two years experience creating top quality 3D content in Away3D. If you are a Flash designer or an experienced Flash developer working on Flash 3D projects, this application might become your best friend!
Release 1
Prefab3D can be downloaded for free as an AIR application. Many features still under development haven’t made the 1.0 release, but as you will notice, there is a little button in the main menu that says: “check update”… At present, the tool can import all model formats supported by Away3D, and allows you to export as an AS3 class or OBJ file, ready for insertion into your Away3D project.
Quick start
For a full list of features and some information on how to get started with the tool, head over to the Prefab3D homepage. More documentation and tutorials should be coming your way soon!
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!
Now that Away3D supports the creation of 3d vector text fields, aligning and animating text fields along 3D curves has been one of the big todos on our list. You can now experiment with our first attempts on a solution for achieving this, using latest sources from the 3.4.1 FP10 version of Away3D. Two demos have been created to showcase this new feature and you can see them in action by clicking on the images. sources are available in the right click menu of the demos, or directly here and here.
A core element like Segment or Face can be used to define a 3D bezier path, and this information is used by a new class AlignToPath (from the geom package), to perform the transformation on any mesh object. The class works by transforming an axis on the mesh’s local coordinate system to the space defined by the path, resulting in a pretty cool ‘warping’ effect. This is convenient especially for text, since the deformation is done globally to the transformed mesh, and hence info like kerning, leading, etc. is preserved.
Take a look and feel free to provide us feedback on this experimental feature!
Recent site launches around the globe show Away3D is fast becoming the online 3D framework of choice for major international company content. Here are the highlights of what has been an inspiring first quarter of 2009.
Project dragonfly is an experimental Autodesk tool for designing room interiors. The name on the site pretty much say it all in terms of quality, but don’t take our word for it – take a look for yourself:
For those that don’t know, Autodesk are the creators of world renowned 3D Sofware such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Soft Image. The high quality of the room interiors in dragonfly is possible thanks to a custom built server-rendering system that allows extremely detailed models to be rendered direct into the 3D scene. More information on the process behind this and other dragonfly features can be found by visiting a ‘making of’ youtube video playlist here. We are honored to have Autodesk pick Away3D as their online 3D visualization tool.
The BBC celebrated their regain of F1’s sports coverage this year with a plethora of new and innovative content, including their very own Away3D application in the form of the F1 Circuit Guides. This is an in-depth tour of all tracks on the 2009 calendar, combining 3D flythroughs, driver lap videos, race comments, images and more.
The application was a BBC commission from Monterosa Productions, with Away Media providing Flash 3d production and consultancy services. The extensive extrusion and custom shape creation packages in Away3D gave a huge hand to the track creation process, and more tracks are being created over the course of the season so stay tuned! Read more about the project here and here.
Brazilian agency Gringo have released a surreal 3D playland in the form of Happy Me, a kids site commisioned for Coca Cola. The game plays exactly to the strength Away3D offers, with a cartoon world to explore and customisations you can perform on your slightly ogrish character.
To launch the new iQ car from Toyota, digital agency North Kingdom (with 3D assistance from Play With Motion) have created a beautiful minisite that can be seen here. Combining static video with 3D interaction in a captivating and seamless journey, you can put the iQ through various ‘test drives’ of it’s features.
Disney recently launched the American Idol Experience website as a precursor to their new attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park. The site uses a combination of pre-rendered 3D video sequences with interactive Away3D panels to create a virtual tour of the ride. The idea of a website that houses a virtual re-creation of a theme park attraction that allows participants the chance to pretend to be on a show intended for public participation is a little surreal, but the site’s subtle use of interactive 3D is executed flawlessly.
Finally, Norway’s largest online marketplace Finn.no have just launched a new Street-viewer service powered by Away3D. The application allows you to walk along the streets of the Norwegian cities Oslo and Trondheim, and consists of more than 120.000 panorama locations. From the map interface, clicking on any one of the blue dots will open the viewer at that location.
We are grateful to everyone who sent in their links for inclusion in our showcase section! If you have a site that you would like us to showcase, please tell us more by getting in contact via our mailing list.
The Flash10 branch has recently received the first of it’s optimising updates that deals with some of the problems shading presented to us in the past. Flash 9 is restricted by blendmodes and layers that mean a huge overhead on extra drawing operations and filters to create shading effects. With Flash 10 however, Pixel Bender allows us to solve the problem very neatly and with a significant speed boost!
The above demo shows some of what is possible with the update: normalmapping with ambient, diffuse and correctly normalised specular shading, without the need for layers. As if that’s not enough, a further Pixel Bender shader is applied to the view to create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) effect on the highlights, something usually seen in much more 3d-rich console games. Special thanx go to Eddie Carbin for donating an excellent normalmapped mustang model, and David Lenaerts for writing the HDR filter.
The demo is available for download (along with the latest flash10 version of Away3d) in the zip files on the downloads page, or direct from the flash10 branch of the svn. You can also access the demo source via the right-click menu in the flash movie, or go straight to the code here. Enjoy the new release!
Away3D has always been about practical features and easy implementation. The 2.3 release takes this to new levels, adding variations on this theme in nearly all areas of the engine, from core functionality to workflow tools to geometry generators to shading tools, as well as now offering two fully supported versions, one for Flash 9 and the other for Flash 10.
One of the key core features added in this release is full support for frustum and nearfield culling, as well as object culling for standard clipping which can help with rendering speed for large outdoor scenes. The above demo illustrates how this can also be beneficial for interior scenes where regular rectangle culling causes artifacts – use the mouse and cursor keys to navigate the room and the keyboard shortcuts listed in the demo to compare between old and new clipping techniques. The source for this can be found bundled with the demos download from the downloads page as can the source for the 2.3 version, or directly from the svn.
Normalmaps have been available in Away3D for a while now, but version 2.3 adds a new set of tools that can help you with their generation and/or manipulation. This will become even more useful in upcoming enhancements to the Flash 10 version of Away3D. The above demo shows what can be done with the new system, full details of how this was accomplished and more examples can be seen by going here and here.
BezierPatch is a new geometry generation tool that allows you to create bezier surfaces programatically. The above demo shows an example of where this can lead – with possibly the most famous bezier surface ever produced ;)
Full documentation for using this system will be released soon, along with a visual tool for aiding the generation of bezier surfaces by hand.
Awaybuilder is a productivity tool that allows you to set up scenes created in the 3D modelling software as realtime 3D scenes for the web. You can set up your project with objects, materials, cameras and their properties, then play it back online without the need for extensive programming or recompilation.
Awaybuilder comes with a custom parser for Maya scenes saved as Collada files. For Maya users, this can dramatically speed up your 3D workflow, as it allows you control geometry, materials, and even camera viewports and interaction directly from the 3D application. The above scene was created in Awaybuilder using the Maya plugin, and is available for download as a demo in the 2.3 release. You can click on the cards to navigate in or out of the scene. More plugins for other software packages will follow in future releases.
Some other feature highlights in this release include:
Interchangeable camera lenses to allow for different types of projection
All values allowed for stage properties “align” and “scaleMode”
Improved memory management
Improved extrusion tools
ROLL_OVER/ROLL_OUT events added to MouseEvent3D
Billboard mesh objects for fast 2d sprites
Of course, we will be working to provide some assistance in learning these new features in our tutorials section over the coming weeks. Plus there will be a lot more demo source coming soon in the demos download. keep an eye on our mailing list for updates, including where to find the flash 10 upgrade, which should be released in the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the new release!
In 2008, “3D” was the new buzzword for Flash. We saw an increased use of Away3D as an engine for 3D flash games, as well as the use of Away3D for 3D graphics in applications. Huge improvements and additions were made to our API, and the size of the Away3D mailing list increased over threefold. Make sure you join our group to become a part of it all – it is the best place to ask questions, get tech support, keep up to date with API developments, showcase your Away3D work, and communicate directly with the Away3D team.
Last year, 3D in Flash took off, with the main 3D engines working hard to make commercially viable libraries, and even Flash itself taking a step into 3D land with the new native capabilities of Flash 10. Here are some recent publications of Away3D content that really stood out:
Fisherman’s Day has got to be one of the most polished Flash demos for a 3D game seen yet. You won’t see anything comparable made with any other Flash 3D Engine.
If you’ve played or seen Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS or Wii, you may recognize the way the scenery and terrain scroll. It’s purely ingenious, and this demo has higher resolution than a DS screen, making the effect even more impressive.
Using your mouse to walk around, you’ll notice the precise collision detection, smooth movement, and highly detailed graphics in this Flash 3D mini-world. Congratulations to dangerous-rabbits.com on a superb use of Flash and Away3D!
Intel IT MANAGER is an isometric Sims-style game with up to 100,000 triangles, interactive and animated elements per screen in certain rooms! Do you have what it takes to manage the IT department in your own virtual company?
How does a Flash 3D game handle 100,000 triangles at once? It uses Away3D’s caching system, which makes these large scenes a piece of cake. The game also takes advantage of the Away3D scene exporter, which allows you to save hundreds of objects as one compressed ActionScript file. This saves download times and costly pre-processing, ensuring the loading of 3d assets does not slow down the gameplay.
Munchiegames.com has launched three new Flash games made with the Away3D engine.
How quickly can you make a BLT sandwich, serve up spicy fries, or stuff a box of Valentine’s Day treats? The games all have some kind of food theme, with a healthy injection of flavorful graphics and oddball humour. Munchiegames.com is serving up fresh 3D Flash games just for you!
Conflict is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) Tower Defense-type game that uses Away3D and the WOW 3D Physics Engine. As an added bonus, level maps can be created by users!
Registered users of Conflict can build maps, save their score, rate other peoples creations and so on. If you don’t want to register use the following word as the login/password : shirotokoro. Now go get ‘em soldier!
The CBBC’s Escape from Scorpion Island is an immersive game where you interact with a wild 3D world around you. With video clues to find and puzzles to solve, you’ll feel like you are the star of the show! Play it now – but don’t forget to put on your insect repellent! Shortcut links to the minigames will be available soon where you’ll find more games made with Away3D, such as Escape from the Ship.
Hotels and Events.com is a website that plots upcoming arts & theatre, music, and sport events onto a 3D globe. With their innovative 3D Interface fueled by Away3D they are giving users a new navigation experience for search-based apps.
Real Aquarium is a Facebook app where you can tend to your own 3D fish in a virtual aquarium. The first 3D virtual pet on Facebook is a big step for 3D Flash apps, it shows how people can develop and create simple applications with more graphical ‘depth’ ;).
Christmas Tree is a 3D (or should that be Tree-D?) Facebook app that lets you customize your own christmas tree and then adorn it with decorations. Pick different shapes, backgrounds and coloured ornaments to make your tree as jolly as you like!
Fukhaos.com is a showcase site that takes a peek into the future of 3D Flash websites. The simple, clean graphical style and navigation give you a feeling of space, while being immersed in a 3D environment. Why would you want your Flash site to be a crowded 2D mess, when you can aim for something like this?
Last but certainly not least is the awe-inspiring AUDI VDT website by ArtificialDuck that uses Away3D to plot 3D representations of various machined parts in Flash.
This has to be the one of the best Away3D websites we’ve seen so far. It’s informative and technical with slick, clean visuals. As an addition some really great interactive mouse effects add to the 3D look and feel. Experience it for yourself here.
If you’ve not yet tried it, we hope you get your 3D Flash groove on this year! The Away3D Flash Engine is becoming bigger and better with more capabilities, features and possibilities than any other 3D Flash engine available. We are looking forward to 2009 being another great year with yet more excellent Flash 3D creations!
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.
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.
First Away3D book: The Essential guide to 3D in Flash
