im shure you have heard of http://www.kickstarter.com/ - go public tell the community “we need this amount of money if we are going to make an 3ds max awd2 exporter within a resonable amount of time” - and by public i mean give it some exposure besides this forum - it might bring you more cash than expected… you have the community in you back, make some use of that

“- but we have a donate button..”
people needs a carrot on a stick… and i think its important to come out with an announcement..

im shure im not the only one who unwillingly is moving to another framework after some years of away3D because we need a way to build our scene with meshes materials bones animations lights and cameras before we dive into the code

im pretty tired of obj and manually having to apply all material - besides the meshes fuck up alot with the obj exporter

im working with proscenium atm because of the collada format - but i miss away3D…

we love Away3D

If your using collada you could try Tim Knips git branch.
https://github.com/away3d/away3d-core-fp11/pull/140

Indeed, we have a donate btn. Joined paypal account for both Away3d and Prefab3D. I’m pretty sure lots of users think we get lots of them. Truth is kinda different. If we get a couple of hundred dollars a year that pretty much it. Pays a few beers and t-shirts for the team…
That’s ok, I mean we do not do this for the money in the first place (at least I don’t). But you are right, if we would get more, some of us could work way more on the engine than they can do now.

As most of us are freelancers, one way to help the project is to hire us for a project or to dev a specific functionality.
But by donating you also say thank you to the individues that are busy on the engine other ways. Such as documentation, website maintenance, help, costs etc…

Sure sites like kickstarter could help, but to me, if you can find the download area, and if you realize that the project that you’ve just got payed (big time) for would not have been possible without Away. I do not think it should be very difficult for this person to find the donate btn. It’s all up to you.

In your case, good news is that there is already a collada parser made by Tim Knip for Away3d that will be soon added to the API.

https://github.com/timknip/away3d-core-fp11/blob/9fb09ec98a458aafaab36d65cc97a1595f1c3900/src/away3d/loaders/parsers/DAEParser.as

“im pretty tired of obj and manually having to apply all material…”
Yeah man, hard life you got there

Hey Fabrice i love the job you did on prefab

As i say a carrot on a stick is in many cases what people need to give money - when people donate from your paypal - its kinda like throwing money into a dark buttomless hole - you cant see where they go or how much is in there already or how close it is to being filled

ive seen many projects being filled up quite fast if you approach it as a project - people wants to see how much is donated and how much is left before the pledge has been reached - and the fact that there is a timeline might help push it

- if i told my boss hey lets donate these guys 200$ - i would never know where the money was going - only one thing is shure you guys are constantly working on “it” - but i think people need to feel they pay for something tangible ... its important to come out and tell people exactly what you will do with their donations

- they need to see the goal - be part of it - the donate button is very ... anonymous
- isnt it important for companies to be able to state that they donated this amount to help the project - and maybe gain publicity on that

- and in some cases ive seen - big donations being rewarded with merchindice, project interaction, b2b stuff, credits - sponsor bagdes what ever you find useful for the donator that you can give with little effort
remember you are a known and respected part of flash business

but all in all what i feel is the big difference between the hidden and very anonymous donate button and kickstarters projects is exposure ...

a really good example of a project that actually has been “overfunded” with help from good youtube exposure…

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freddiew/video-game-high-school?ref=live

in perspective - the 3dsmax awd2 exporter is a small project - i belive alot of 3ds max users will be able to push their bosses to give an amount if they can publicly state that they support/sponsor the away3D project… i think its easier b2b than alot of the other projects on kickstarter that is b2c

ye i like collada - but i also listen when you say the collada format is 20x bigger than the awd2 format and can be parsed alot faster…

ye i dont like the obj - but when there are so many gameplayers out there now with stage3D - its much easier to choose a differend direction (compared to the old days with papervision/away3d)- but i dont want to do that because ive been using away3D the last 3 years and i think its a great framework - cant help feeling somekind of loyalty - even though im working with another framework atm - because of this problem.. i keep stumling upon so many issues with the other frameworks that keeps reminding me how much easier away3D is to work with all in all

Build Collada import into PRefab2, AWD2 Export > Game Over.

Trying to write and maintain a plugin for 3D Studio MAX is a fulltime job. There are so many versions, and guess what, the plugin architecture changes with each release so you are forced to buy an upgrade. That’s cool for the people living off making plugins, and I don’t begrudge them a cent. For the volunteer community it’s another story. Build an AWD2 plugin today (for which version, 9, 2009, 2010,2011??) and see it break with MAX 2013, and that release is only months away.

Collada in Prefab, and let Khrono’s and Autodesk worry about everything else.

</rant>

sounds resonable…

if materials bones animations lights and cameras can go along - then it would be nice

Fabrice,
Thank you for your wonderful work on preFab, I am working on Flash 11 project, the preFab version 1 really slow to deal with high polygon, could you let me know where can I get preFab2? thanks!

Tony

@whoamiwhoareyou

Busy everyday on it. Point is, I miss my tool just like you do

Just a little update on dev side, I have as3, ac and obj exports done. awd1 and 2 are next. for As3 and awd2, I’ll try to add animations support to them.

Once I have these done, the goal is to release some very very basic version just to allow these exports.

Pete aka MightyAtom is absolutely right about Max3DS. Maya is the same issue. SO the thing I have been wondering is why the #1 Open Source 3D engine (Away3D) hasn’t made the AWD2 exporter for the #1 Open Source 3D Modeling App (Blender) its #1 priority? I mean it’s pretty weird that you need $3000 modeling program to use AWD2 with Away3D

Choons - 10 November 2011 12:37 AM

Pete aka MightyAtom is absolutely right about Max3DS. Maya is the same issue. SO the thing I have been wondering is why the #1 Open Source 3D engine (Away3D) hasn’t made the AWD2 exporter for the #1 Open Source 3D Modeling App (Blender) its #1 priority? I mean it’s pretty weird that you need $3000 modeling program to use AWD2 with Away3D

I have to agree 100% on this. Blender 2.6 is a very stable, mature piece of software.  Having worked for years with Max and a little bit with Maya, I’m just amazed at how fast I picked up Blender and how easy it is to get great results with it.  So what’s stopping Blender from becoming the default package for game producers?  Especially since it’s free?  I think it just has to hit that tipping point where people feel confident enough that their work in Blender won’t be wasted when they send their source files to other vendors or clients who will bristle at this relatively unknown software package.  But reaching that tipping point requires folks like the Away team to make the Blender/Away tool chain easy, free, and well documented.  And it requires folks like us to tell our clients and vendors about it as well.

Then again, we can just keep Blender as our own little secret so our competitors can wasted thousands of dollars on 3D work they could have gotten for $1.50 in late charges at the public library