HI Guys, nice to meet you all, im just arriving in the Away3D community.

a quick overview: i just spent the last week actively searching for the best option for my new game. At first i looked at Unity3D as the best option thanks to its flash export and great IDE, but i realized that this would create some kind of Frankenstein type game with half .net, half flash and that in the end, the final results in both unity and flash worlds would end up crippled and sub-optimal. so i then looked a both Away3D and Flare3D, but away3d just seems better at this point, especially the fact that it is open source. i might even participate in its development should fixes/improvements appear (i have over 13 years experience in software development now although im new to flash/as3).

so, now that i made my choice, im in. I do have a few questions, mainly to know how to setup my new away3D development environment.

1. What development tool would you recommend (Flash builder or FlashDevelop).

2. what is the best 3D authoring tool for away3D (i know they are both great and its a personal choice, but in general which one is best supported/used?) the amazing Blender3D or the great 3ds max?

3. what is the favored file format for meshes with/without animations in away3D (it seems to support quite a few, but which one is the preferred?)

4. how is prefab3d for away3d 4 going and will it support animation view/edit? (looks like amazing software, just seems to lack animation editing).

thanks guys and see you in the forums!

edit: fixed typos

Hi Huck, and welcome !

You are probably gonna have lots of different answers
Just for context : I came to AS3 about a year ago, did much 3D dev before that using Director/Shockwave3D and started with away3D last september.

1. I went with FlashDevelop because it’s free in the first place, but then I never felt a need for a “better” tool. FD is great. I guess Flash Builder is good too but can’t comment on it.

2. I guess it depends mostly on what software you’re already used to (or your graphic artist is used to) and on what you want to do with it. My graphic artist buddy is using 3DSmax as he owns a licence and is quite an expert with it. 3DS files are smaller than OBJ files for static meshes. The hardest part for him was finding a working MD5 exporter (for bones animations, like characters).

3. As I said 3DS files are smaller than OBJ for the same content, but the 3DSParser in Away3D doesn’t recognize multi-materials (I guess it will in the future) while I think OBJ does.
For bones-animated meshes my buddy and I are happy with the MD5 format so far. I think AWD2 will (or maybe already does) support bones animation too, but it’s not “there” yet.
For other animations, we didn’t try but MD2 should be ok.

From what I understand, AWD2 will become the “best” file format when it’ll be ready.

4. Can’t comment at all here as I still have to try Prefab, I thought the working version was for away3D versions prior to 4.x (before Molehill/Stage3D came out) but could be wrong.

thanks Matse,

about the 3D tools, i am equally proficient in both.

for the file export to MD5, i do have a few questions. doing a quick search on the net i found a lot of posts where people seem to have difficulty exporting animations from blender/3ds max into md5. the scripts seem to be unreliable from what i read.

From your experience, are there any stability issues with the workflow of exporting 3D animations into away3D?  are there other formats supported for animated meshes into away3D?

thanks guys!

About MD5 my buddy had a hard time finding a script that would work, I think he’s using one related to modding the Quake Wars game or something like that, I’ll ask him for a link.

We’ve seen a few weird animations of course, but that was because the exporter is very rigid, there are some things that will break export like accented characters in bones names, spaces maybe, stuff like that. Once you’ve learned the exporter rules it’s working very reliably.

Other formats MD2 supports keyframe animations if I understand correctly, AWD2 supports bones I think, keyframes maybe ? AWD2 might be worth a try, I think it has a Blender exporter and one for Maya too.

Huck - 09 January 2012 06:53 PM

HI Guys, nice to meet you all, im just arriving in the Away3D community.

a quick overview: i just spent the last week actively searching for the best option for my new game. At first i looked at Unity3D as the best option thanks to its flash export and great IDE, but i realized that this would create some kind of Frankenstein type game with half .net, half flash and that in the end, the final results in both unity and flash worlds would end up crippled and sub-optimal. so i then looked a both Away3D and Flare3D, but away3d just seems better at this point, especially the fact that it is open source. i might even participate in its development should fixes/improvements appear (i have over 13 years experience in software development now although im new to flash/as3).

so, now that i made my choice, im in. I do have a few questions, mainly to know how to setup my new away3D development environment.

1. What development tool would you recommend (Flash builder or FlashDevelop).

2. what is the best 3D authoring tool for away3D (i know they are both great and its a personal choice, but in general which one is best supported/used?) the amazing Blender3D or the great 3ds max?

3. what is the favored file format for meshes with/without animations in away3D (it seems to support quite a few, but which one is the preferred?)

4. how is prefab3d for away3d 4 going and will it support animation view/edit? (looks like amazing software, just seems to lack animation editing).

thanks guys and see you in the forums!

edit: fixed typos

Great questions!  Here’s my take.

1.  We’re so lucky that open source software is where it is.  If we want it to be even better, it behooves us to use and support OS projects.  But in this case, Flash Develop is just awesome.  It does everything you need to author Flex/Away3D stuff.  And it’s free.  Who doesn’t love free?
2.  Same as above.  Having used Max for several years, 2011 was the year I found and fell in love with Blender.  For games?  No contest. Blender is amazing and handles everything you’ll ever want to do for Away.
3.  3DS files threw me for a loop at first, so I shied away from them.  At some point I got it figured out and the only real trick is to keep meshes with multiple materials as separate objects, and make sure you apply scale/location/rotation before exporting.  If you do this, you can create whole game worlds in Blender and then just export and use.  It’s almost as easy as Unity!  Really!
4.  MD5 was confusing at first.  But once you get the flow going, you can reuse the armature in Blender on game after game.  Exporting animations is a snap.
5.  Honestly, I don’t miss Prefab at all (sorry Fabrice).  I think Blender can accomplish everything you need and your output will be amazing.

No need to be sorry, Prefab is not made to compete with highend apps, it is made to be in between these and flash. Plus 1.0 is obviously not suitable for flash 11. If you think blender is your horse, just go for it!
Note that when I’ll release 2.0, only if filesize matters to you, I would take a look at it…

Prefab 2.0 status on exports: obj(improved), ac, awd1, awd2, md2 and AS3(with optional binary data than are even reeditable in app itself (.asd)).
AS3 already have vertexanimation export working. AWD2 and AS3 are now on work bench for skeleton animation support.
Collada skeleton animation is also already working…

Prefab 2.0 will not have editors for skeleton and vertexanimation. 2.1 probably.
Focus goes to import exports and fast way to test/assemble content.

Prefab like Blender is free. So on my part it’s not a “or”,
its a “and and” case

@Matse, awd 2.0, will not support vertexanimations. 2.1 probably.

wow, im already so proud i chose away3d, you guys are amazing.

i took some time to look at MD5 exporters last night and it looks pretty good to me, so i guess im all set.

my goal is to use MD5 for now until awd2 binary file format and exporters are complete, which then i will simply re export all models to work in the optimal format.

as for prefab, i think its a very interesting tool to make last minute verifications to models and make sure exports from blender/3ds max have worked like they should before we use them in game. I would also see prefab 2 as a great tool to convert meshes into awd2. it certainly seems useful and valuable, especially for newcomers; marketing is key to increase away3d adoption.

i would have another question if you dont mind. although away3d fp11 is all as3, do any of you have any experience with mixing as3 with HaXe?  (my goal is to write the time critical pieces of the game in haxe for performance, and import them in as3 main project as swc’s with away3D as3). Does this seem like a good idea or does any of you have negative experience with haxe/as3?

thanks for everything guys,

time to start now..

@Fabrice:

I know you know what I was getting at   Your tool is fantastic, but I didn’t want Huck to think he had to wait for 2.0 to get started with Away.  Once you go live (or even if you want a tester…hint, hint) it will be great to be able to use the AS3 classes again for models and animations and I’m really looking forward to AWD2.  Anything we can do to make Away better and easier to use is great!

By the way, when I first started with Away, I was worried it would have a steep learning curve.  Now that I’ve been on it a few months, I think it’s extremely easy to use.  Once your meshes are in, there’s really very little code needed to make a game. 

@Huck:

I’ve never used Haxe, but I keep meaning to learn more about it.  If you do some experiments, please post them here!

@Fabrice:  What would be really cool in prefab3d 2 is to be able to play animations attached to a mesh. doesn’t need to have a complete editor, just a timeline and a way to quickly visualize animations, to ensure that they exported correctly from the 3D editor before converting to awd2 would be gold. im sure it wouldn’t be too hard to implement with away3D anyways.

just a few thoughts that would really boost away3d perception with newcomers.

regards,

“just a timeline”....  I want the app to be robust and do the basic stuff as it should first. Trust me, it’s already hard enough.
Not even mentionning how hard it is to resist to try the many stuffs I would love to explore/build…

Like 1.0 started 2 1/2 years ago, the first release was not doing much, then I’ve gradually added more as I was busy. 2.0 will follow the exact same path.

A timeline… there is actually something new requiring one in the making, and of course the same code will be reused else where in app. But that’s a story for later

Also, there was a class handy for this in 3.5 that I plan port to 4.0…. no must resist!

@Alex Bogartz:  sure, i will be happy to. from what i understand HaXe produces much faster code than as3, plus im not sure if i could fully live without generics so i will mix the two for computation intensive operations.

Im already porting the addicted2Flash library for the very nice java-like collection package it has to HaXe, adding generics support along the way. I will post and any useful library conversion i make here.

Stay tuned for my experience mixing both languages during the coming weeks…

N.B.: anyone wondering if its worth it to try haxe with as3, i figure i cant go wrong since i can generate as3 files from the haxe code at anytime, should i feel the marriage between the two is not optimal. so the real life risk is virtually null.

regards,

Greetings Huck, and welcome aboard

+1 for FlashDevelop. I try everything that comes out, and always return here. Simple, fast and free. I’m just hoping it will generate AIR for iOS.

I’m a die hard MAX user. I don’t have the memory capacity to learn Blender’s shortcuts. I’ve started using .3DS for models, .OBJ seems to offer more accurate mapping/normals but at a cost of larger file sizes.
When using MD5, make sure you have no zero weights, Away3D doesn’t like them. I made a tutorial for MD5 to Away, feel free to check it out (caveat: it was many iterations of Flash and Away3D ago..)
http://videometry.blogspot.com/2011/05/mocap-to-molehill-via-3d-studio-max-and.html

Happy gaming :O)

HI Guys,

here comes my first contribution, although i don’t know if it will benefit anyone here. I know this is hardly the best place to post code, but i figure google will index it and people will be able to find it here if it suits them.

this is basically a port of the addicted2Flash collections subset to HaXe, with generics added for type safety. This gives haxe a very good collection framework similar to java and .net. i also use 2 utility classes from casahx library.

all proper license headers are left for obvious purposes.

I didn’t test thoroughly the whole thing as i must move on so might be good to give the classes you need a test run.

best regards,

just a quick followup on my previous post about HaXe collections. Turns out if was kind of pointless, the Polygonal haxe library has a complete set of collections and more for game developers.

http://code.google.com/p/polygonal/

regards,

Huck - 10 January 2012 08:59 PM

HI Guys,

here comes my first contribution, although i don’t know if it will benefit anyone here. I know this is hardly the best place to post code, but i figure google will index it and people will be able to find it here if it suits them.

this is basically a port of the addicted2Flash collections subset to HaXe, with generics added for type safety. This gives haxe a very good collection framework similar to java and .net. i also use 2 utility classes from casahx library.

all proper license headers are left for obvious purposes.

I didn’t test thoroughly the whole thing as i must move on so might be good to give the classes you need a test run.

best regards,

Thank you a lot, I know Away3D has also been ported to the Haxe multiplatform language, enabling it to be cross-compiled to JavaScript, does it supports C# as well?

java and .net