Posted by rob on May 23rd, 2008
This update of the Away3d engine has one overriding purpose - to make things easier to use!
The updated livedocs section of the site has been completed for all classes, with a new version available in the trunk of the svn repository, accompanying the source. There is also a new folder for demos that exists as an svn folder and a new zip file in the downloads section of the site. Accompanying these updates are a fair few framework tweaks to aid the use of the engine - my personal favourite being the new setter properties on all 3d primitives that can be adjusted on the fly!
For more information about the update, you can read the release announcement on Away3d.com.
Posted by rob on May 18th, 2008
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!
Posted by rob on May 12th, 2008
…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!
Posted by rob on May 10th, 2008
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
