18.05.08
Posted in Misc at 6:08 pm by rob
The 3rd Adobe sponsored London Poker Tournament is now open for registration at www.pokercoder.com. For those who haven’t been before, it’s a fantastic FREE event with beer, chips and prizes all provided. Dealers at your table will be giving everyone 20 minutes of training if you’ve never played before, although Adobe are making a point this time that the event is for industry professionals only, so it may be best to brush up on your Photoshop or Flash knowledge in case of a sudden pop-quiz…;)
Date is the 27th May, 7pm at the Loose Cannon Poker club in Cannon Street. Hope to see you there!
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12.05.08
Posted in 3d Flash, Away3d code demos at 6:47 pm by rob
…now with source code!
right click on the flash movie or go direct to the source here. Obviously i can’t include the track with the download, but this is a good chance to experiment with your own music running through the demo - might look completely different!
The supplied source uses the latest code from the Away3d svn trunk. I will make sure the download zips on the Away3d site are updated with the same code asap. Some fixes were made to the BitmapRenderSession class, which has been simplified to just specify a pixel scale for the resulting render. You can get a nice speed boost with this class when using a lot of filter effects - as is the case here!
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10.05.08
Posted in 3d Flash, Away3d code demos at 7:46 am by rob
With Away3d 2.0, some interesting effects are now possible using a combination of tiled textures, ownCanvas objects and blendModes. Salt flats Ferrari demonstrates that you don’t necessarily have to raytrace a scene in order to get that reflective polished look, just use some texture mirroring trickery and a multiply blend mode!
The source for this demo also shows how a tiled texture can be transformed on the surface of an object to give the illusion of movement without having to worry about nasty clipping planes. Could be a game in this somewhere… although for authenticity, I may have to swap the F360 for a Lotus Esprit 
Away3d svn
Away3d source zip files
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30.04.08
Posted in 3d Flash, Training at 3:11 am by rob
…back by popular demand!
The third session is booked for 28th-29th May and will be a good introduction to anyone wanting to create 3d in Flash. Covers Papervision and Away3d engines, including the new features recently released on both fronts, and some nice new demos too.
More details can be found on the LFPUG training page, and this time places are still available! Looking forward to it already.
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26.04.08
Posted in 3d Flash, Away3d code demos at 8:01 pm by rob
There have been a few questions recently on both the Away3d and Papervision mailing lists about projecting textures, so i figured a demo was in order to help the explanation along, plus give me an excuse to play with caustic generators . This demo also uses Away3d’s tiling material feature to allow a seamless repeating lightmap to be projected onto the surface of an object.
As usual the source is available in the right click menu or directly from here. To run the code you’ll also need the 2.0.0 version of Away3d from the svn or the downloads section of the site. For now the shading isn’t entirely accurate, as the intensity of the lightmap does not vary with face normal. We’ll be having a look at the possibilities of achieving this, along with other texture projection techniques such as shadows, in the next major revision of Away3d.
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15.04.08
Posted in 3d Flash, Away3d code demos at 3:53 am by rob
The update is here! There has been a lot of activity around engine development, with my recent training class attendees getting a special pre-release 1.9.5 version that after further tweaking has now been launched to the wider world as Away3d 2.0.
full details of the update are present on the Away3d site. The demo we have here is a showcase of some of the new materials - a rehash of a slightly older version you may have seen last November… only this time, we have source code!
As usual, the latest source for the Away3d engine can be obtained from the svn repository or via the download page of Away3d.com. More demos with source code are on their way… 
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31.03.08
Posted in 3d Flash at 4:18 pm by rob
Here’s a little teaser for the upcoming release of Away3d 1.9.5 - something I’ve spent too long tweaking and need to upload so that i can get on with some proper work! 
It’s my first attempt at an audio visualiser - i call it Supernova.
The rendering uses the new BitmapRenderSession class to be released with 1.9.5 that takes especially good care of filters, certainly there are a few in action here…
I’ve also included a fullscreen option that runs with accelerated bitmap scaling, just to see how it handles all those filters. Does a pretty decent job - hit return in the demo to see it for yourself (you will need the 9.0.115 revision of the Flash Player).
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21.03.08
Posted in Training at 11:56 am by rob
Next week I’ll be presenting the first of my 3d training sessions in London. The course is for two days and has already been filled, but for anyone who missed the original announcement on the LFPUG website, another session has been arranged for the 9th and 10th of April. More details can be found here. The course focuses on the basic issues and practicalities of 3d development in Flash, and will include examples written for both Papervision and Away3d engines. Hope to see you there!
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29.02.08
Posted in Conferences at 10:13 am by rob
Some interesting Snippets of information from Richard Galvin here - analysing some of the past enhancements that Flash CS3 gave us, and looking forward to reveal some of the features being worked on for CS4.
Added in CS3:
- Photoshop importer - although this currently has no ability to maintain a link with psd content and update Flash content automatically
- Illustrator-like Pen Tool fix (calculates the cubic bezier path in the quad-based drawing API of Flash)
- Colour coded bounding boxes relating to object type on the stage
- 9-slice scaling preview on the stage
- Copy filter button
- Copy motion tween as actionscript
- Export motion xml (to allow editing and reloading at runtime or in Flexbuilder)
- Runtime errors separated from output panel
- Checkboxes in export options for strict compiling and exporting hidden layers
Being added in CS4:
- A new workspace including a vertical property inspector (similar to Flexbuilder’s)
- Tween Tool on stage allows auto keyframe generation when attributes of an object are changed
- Object Attributes can tween independent of each other
- Tween motion path can be manipulated using bezier handles similar to the Pen Tool
- Tween paths can be copied and replaced separate of objects on the timeline.
- XFL - new export format in CS4 that saves an xml version of an FLA contained in a zip file along with a library of asset sources (images etc.)
- Hydra filter files (.aif) can be loaded and applied at runtime.
Not much online info available on this one (hence the speculative logo…) - but i suppose you could always check Richard’s blog for news updates. Can’t wait to see what else they come up with!
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Posted in Conferences at 9:03 am by rob
Lee Brimlow stepped in to cover for Mike Downey on this one, who mysteriously had a prior engagement in Milan. I get that sometimes….
Essentially Lee’s notes of his earlier pres will do just as well for giving an overview of the AIR API - you can also find details of development requirements and examples on the Adobe website
An update for Flash CS3 gives you new options in the splash screen for an AIR application fla, and includes code hinting etc. for the new commands. CTRL enter runs a debug AIR application the same way a Flash project would run a debug swf.
‘Commands menu > AIR Application and Installer Settings’, gives you AIR export options (chrome, icon, digital signature, included files, file type settings for default opener), and
‘Commands menu > Create AIR file’, exports the application to an AIR file ready for deployment.
The new native classes for AIR can be found inside the flash.desktop. package. These include:
- NativeDragEvent for drag and drop functionality
- NativeDragManager for accepting and rejecting drag events
- ClipboardFormats for reading from the OS clipboard
- stage.nativeWindow for accessing the desktop window containing the AIR application
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