I’m extremely honored to be speaking at the FITC conference in San Francisco this August, along with a bunch of big names with whom I am not worthy to share a stage… am i imagining things or has it been two years since any international Flash event in SF? What the…?!
My presentation will cover some of the latest developments in Away3D, sprinkled with some new demos from the demomeister that is Fabrice and finishing off with a glimpse of the future… or at least a potentially possible one. I’ll also be giving out a few copies of my book The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash, as long as i remember this time. Someone! Remind me!
Later in the conference, I’ll be at the Influxis Voodoo Lounge presenting a special 30 minute in depth look at some experimental 3D goodness in collaboration with those awesome dudes (i think thats how they’d put it) at Influxis, who have also been kind enough to sponsor my exceedingly long trip out. Drinks rider notwithstanding, a thousand beers to you!
As one of the first commercial projects to use Away3D Lite, Away Media teamed up with creative agency Cocomino to produce a 3D minisite in Flash for chip manufacturer Qualcomm, in order to promote their latest line of Smartbook devices.
My Dream Device is a simple online editor that allows users to view and create 3D sculptures out of the various pieces of hardware that are supported by Qualcomm technology. everything from satellite dishes to sat navs can be used as the building blocks for creating your own ‘dream device’.
Using a simple drag and drop system combined with a movement mode selector, objects can be manipulated in 3D to position them in any arrangement. Away3D Lite was used to keep the interface responsive even after many items have been added to the stage. A simple 3D collision system was built specifically for the site to assist the positioning of objects next to each other.
Once created, a sculpture can be saved to the gallery for any other visitor to view and rate. Deeplinking allows users to link directly to their own creations from another website, and users can automatically email to a friend or post their creation on Facebook.
Away Media was responsible for all frontend and backend development, with Cocomino providing design and management expertise. The site was recently awarded an Adobe site of the day award - a great achievement for all those involved! To create your own sculpture, visit http://www.mydreamdevice.com.
After a bit of experimenting with the beta of AIR for Android, I’ve managed to successfully create a couple of demos to show off Away3D Lite running on the Android operating system, using my trusty Nexus One handset. The above video demonstrates that the Google phone is more than capable of handling the playback of Flash content, and can easily be used along with Away3D Lite to create some detailed 3D content. If you’re interested in trying AIR for Android yourself, head over to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android/ to sign up for the beta program.
I was recently invited to write an article relating to Away3D for The FWA. Wanting to do something a bit different from the usual parading of sites and demos, I decided instead to try and write a bit about what running an open source project is like, and what you need to watch out for. The result was given the following rather long title: A survival guide to building a successful open source project, and was published on The FWA earlier this week. The article ended up sounding a little dark, so should probably be accompanied by the caveat that I do quite enjoy writing open source software! I must have been in a bad mood that day…
Thanx go out to Rob and the team - flying the flag for cool sites and their creators
A slightly delayed announcement as the actual launch date occurred while i was away training Away3Ders in Sydney… but we now have our very first Away3D publication!
This has been a lot of work for everyone involved, and is a testament to the dedication of the core team and support of our community. 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.
Being one of the main authors makes it hard for me to give an accurate appraisal of the book without sounding egotistical… so feel free to comment your thoughts below if you have purchased the book recently and would like to submit a review - all opinions welcome!
Away Media has recently been involved with CBBC in the development of an online interactive story for the kid’s TV show My Almost Famous Family. The show tracks the highs and lows of the Swann family as they try to make it as a band, and the recently launched online story continues the narrative with a series of minigames based around the children of the family as they attempt to form a breakaway group and win the local battle of the bands tournament.
The entire game is located in a 3D ‘map’ of events as they unfold, with various mishaps and discoveries along the way unlocking new content. The user is drawn into the narrative with a clever use of webcam video of the band seen as if they were communicating directly with you, and it is here where the main story unfolds. Each event is punctuated by either a video clip or minigame, with the latter requiring the user to perform a task that allows the story to advance to the next stage.
Each minigame can be completed fairly easily so that no one game is a barrier to progressing through the story, however for those who like a more competitive edge, results and highscores are logged and users can revisit a game at any stage to try and improve on their personal best. There are also some nice touches in the story where the results of your completed tasks are used directly with the narrative.
Away Media’s role in the project was primarily the development of the global navigation and game shell, with the 3D map using a mixture of Away3D Lite and native Flash 3D. The minigames were contracted separately and integrated into the main site with the help of the Away Media development team, who also looked after all server communication, asset loading, video playback and control interfaces. The end result is an engaging interactive story that treads new ground for the online portal of a TV show, mixing live action video with interactive flash games in a seamless and convincing manner. Check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/myalmostfamousfamily/
Away3D has a new double-release in the now familiar 2.X / 3.X format for Flash Player 9 and 10 branches of the main engine.
The biggest new addition is the fantastic work done by both Fabrice and David to get BSP sorting working in a usable form. For those of you scratching your heads over what BSP sorting is, take a quick look at this excellent explanation of the principles from David, who has been the main coding force behind the feature.
Implementing BSP sorting is only half the issue - the other half is getting your model into a format that is readable by a BSP renderer. For this, Fabrice has upgraded his extremely useful pre-processing tool Prefab3D - the new 1.3 version includes an option to export any model in a format that can be processed by the BSP algorithms in the Away3D library.
The practical upshot of all this is that Away3D now has the capacity for creating large FPS-style games that allow many different rooms in a scene, while suffering no loss of render speed. A case in point being the David-Fab collaboration for the recent FITC keynote in Amsterdam, the Hacienda Experiment:
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.
You can grab the Away3D update either from the svn repository or the downloads page of away3d.com, where you will also find a bunch of updated examples. As usual, please direct any bug reports to the googlecode issues list, and any questions about functionality to the Away3D mailing list.
Because the Away3D community is an international entity, it seems only right that training events should become more international, which is part of the reason why i’ll be embarking on an Away3D tour (ie. more than two locations ) towards the end of April.
First stop will be Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday 27th April for a single day - there is no training planned for this particular stop but there will be an evening event arranged for any Away3D community members who would like to meet up. The more the merrier!
Next location will be Buenos Aries, Argentina where i will be arriving on Wednesday 28th April to give a full two day training course over the 28th and 29th. The course is being arranged by the ARFUG group, and full details of the event plus venue and prices can be found here. Huge thanx to Max and the ARFUG team for helping to arrange this, should be a lot of fun!
After Argentina, i will be enduring a grueling 17hr flight to Sydney, Australia, arriving in time to give a special one-day condensed training course at the WebDU conference on Wednesday 5th May, details of which can be found here. I’ll then be hanging around for the conference itself and presenting my new session: the many faces of Away3D on the Thursday afternoon. Its currently looking quite sunny here in London, so i’ll be looking forward to some of that Sydney autumn fog…
Finally, after many more hours of dvt inducing hardship I will be back in London, UK to give the headline event of the Away3D training calendar - a two day intensive course over the 20th and 21st May at the LFPUG. This will be limited to a maximum of 14 people, so please book early if you are planning on going! Full details can be found here, and thanx go to Tink for arranging the venue and free pub lunches.
At the recent LFPUG meeting, a showcase video for past Away3D projects got its first airing. now that I’ve had time to create a high quality YouTube version, here is the finished product!
Featuring content created by many different companies and individuals over the past 2 - 3 years, the vid offers an overall feel for the number and variety of projects being produced with the help of the Away3D engine. Our admiration and appreciation goes out to all the people who were involved in producing the content (a full list is available in the end credits), and the motion graphics skills of the video itself must also be acknowledged as the most excellent work of Joseph Rufian.
Here’s to another year of blistering Away3D content!
I can’t believe its been nearly 3 months since my last post, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) there have been fairly pressing reasons behind the silence, more on which will follow…
Anyway, I wanted to take a much needed time out to let you all know about next week’s LFPUG meeting, which will be a bit like a two sided 3D coin of debate. On one side there will be Bartek Drozdz all the way from Stockholm, who will be revealing the wonderful console-shiny world of Unity, and on the other there will be me, showing how Away3D still has its place in the 3D web world, honest guv! Hope you can make it, and if not you can always catch up with any presentation by watching the videos at http://www.lfpug.com/category/presentations/
