My apologies for the book delay…As a result I’ve decided to start releasing all of its assets.

I actually finished the book many months ago and there was an image problem at the end. I’ve ended up redoing every image in the book. I think the issue was over the fact that I create for the web not for print…so during the process we were talking apples and oranges.  Also, in the meanwhile, I’ve ported PV3D over to Flash 10 and I am considering writing a free book (on this Flash 10 version) as an apology for this delay.  My intention is to make this right.

My sincerest apology for the delay. Best Regards Mike

Book Source Code by Chapter

Note: The code was written in Flash, Air, Flex 3 + SDK4, Flash Builder, and Flash Catalyst…it’s pretty versatile. I will be releasing the demos in the next few days.

Chapter 1 Zip

Chapter 2 Zip

Chapter 3 Zip

Chapter 4 Zip

Chapter 5 Zip

Chapter 5 ManSize Zip

Chapter 6 Zip

Chapter 7 Zip

Chapter 8 Zip

Chapter 9 Zip

Chapter 10 Zip

Chapter 11 Zip

Chapter 12 Zip

Chapter 13 Zip

Chapter 14 Zip

Chapter 15 Zip

Chapter 16 Zip

Intro

PapervisionX will not be Coming! See the video below:

The good news about this is that it gives us the green light to move forward with a Fl10 version of PV3D.  We will not be spinning our wheels creating a Fl10 version of PV3D with a PixelBender PP backend…when someone else has already done it…especially someone as good as Ralph.

Of course the twist here is that we will be building it in Flash Builder and it will be data-driven. I’ve been working on a tutorial set for Flash Builder and will start putting those up…

Intro

Tomorrow I’m going to start cranking out Chapter 2 videos, but while you’re waiting here’s the Chapter 2 video Teaser. I’ll be putting everything on YouTube as I go (at www.youtube.com/mikenku) and when I’m finished I’ll post the entirety of it here.

Intro

I have finally worked through all the videos for Chapter 1. Here they are!

Code and Notes

Chapter 1: Intro

Chapter 1: Code and Notes (Coming)

Chapter1: Scaling Equation

Chapter1: Coding 3D Animation

Chapter1: Native Z

Chapter 1: 3D Coordinates Part 1

Chapter 1: 3D Coordinates Part 2

Chapter 1: 3D Coordinates Part 3

Chapter 1: Vanishing Point

Chapter 1: Cameras in Flash3D Part 1

Chapter 1: Cameras in Flash3D Part 2

Chapter 1: Matrix 3D Algebra

Chapter 1: prependTranslation

Chapter 1: Torus Worm Particle System

Chapter 1: zSorting Part 1

Chapter 1: zSorting Part 2

Chapter 1: 3D Carousel

Chapter 1: 3D Image Ball Part 1

Chapter 1: 3D Image Ball Part 2

Chapter 1: Animation Rules and Motion Editor

Flash Builder and Chapter 2 videos coming next.

Intro

When I wrote the book I had to decide if I was going to write a book full of nice tidy examples or one that is a little more messy that teaches you how to hack. Well I went the messy route – the one that teaches you to hack PV3D and make it better.  And along with this approach I decided to release a number of video training courses designed  to help you come up to speed on the various topics treated in the book.

So here’s the first course:

Flash CS4 for Papervision3D

It has all the topics in Flash CS4 that you need in order to come up to speed for the book.

Course Introduction

Code and Notes

Download Notes and Code

1. Interface

2. Working with Variables

3. Working with Functions

4. Adding Button Events

5. Building an Animation Engine

6. Display List (1 of 3)

7. Display List (2 of 3)

8. Display List (3 0f 3)

9. Looping

10. Conditionals

11. Getting Started with Classes (1 of 2)

12. Getting Started with Classes (2 0f 2)

Papervision3D Book Overview

Here’s the Book’s Overview:

How This Book Is Structured

The chapters in this book can be divided into four major parts:

• Getting Started
• Working with Models and Data
• Building Games and Websites
• Extending PV3D and Beyond

Each part has four chapters and each chapter builds on the next with an emphasis on digging into PV3D’s classes, understanding important OOP principles, and creating your own supporting 3D classes.

Part I: Getting Started

In Part I, you learn all the basics to get you up to speed in using PV3D. You learn how to build 3D engines, how to download and get PV3D running, how to build classes, and how to work with primitives and materials. Finally, you extend these concepts to build CS4 primitives with materials.

Chapter 1, “Understanding Flash3D” Flash 3D is one of the fastest-moving areas in web technology. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to build a simple 3D engine in both CS3 and CS4. Using what you learn about 3D engines you’ll create a torus worm, carousel, and image ball. Finally, you examine Disney’s rules for creating realistic animation, and converte a timeline animation into ActionScript.

Chapter 2, “Getting Started With Papervision3D” In this chapter, you are introduced to the basics of Papervision3d, Painter’s Algorithm, and the view frustum. You learn about culling and clipping and examine the guts of Papervision3d. You instantiate your first primitive (a sphere) and add a wireframe material. You extend your application using BasicView, and examine the different ways to run an application.

Chapter 3, “Rezzing Primitives” In this pivotal chapter, you examine how prims are made in both Papervision3D and CS4.  You create your own custom prim by examining the parametric equations of different prims. And in the case of creating a Second Life tree, you analyze the potential savings between using Papervision3D and CS4. You learn about the powerful new classes and methods in the CS4 library (such as Matrix3D, drawTriangles, and vectors). And learn to create your own CS4 super prim, using a switch case and timer.

Chapter 4, “Adding Materials” In this chapter you turn the corner from 3D techno-babble to application building. You learn the basics of how materials are used to create objects and about their lighting. You learn how to add brightness to a Papervision3D light source, create shades, and make bump maps. And you extend these concepts to CS4.

Part II: Working with Models and Data

In Part II, you learn how to create your own 3D models and import then into PV3D. You learn to create particle systems, bring Google Maps into PV3D and CS4, and build data-driven applications in Flash, Flex, and Air.

Chapter 5, “Creating 3D Models” In this chapter, you start with modeling and end up with Pixel Bender. Regardless of how PV3D changes over time the principles presented in this chapter will be around for a while. You’ll still need parsers to bring in vertex data regardless of your software environment. And Pixel Bender, the new kid on the block, will obviously become the cornerstone of any new 3D package hitting the scene.

Chapter 6, “Working with Particle Systems” This chapter gives a broad overview of particles in both PV3D and CS4. You start with the PV3D particle system and add some of your own particles to it and create a starry panorama.  You build a 3D particle system from scratch and create a Flash CS4 glowworm. You learn how to slice and explode particle systems, and how to use them to interact with video. You take a look at the great work that Plug-in Media is doing and learn how to incorporate FLINT into PV3D.

Chapter 7, “Geocoding, XML, and Data Bases” In this chapter, you turn the corner from learning the inner workings of PV3D to using it to build data-driven web applications. You build a number of applications in Air, Flash CS4, and Flex which illustrat the use of XML, PHP, and MySQL. You learn how to use the Flex data wizard to automatically create PHP code, which is used to make server requests.

Chapter 8, “Gliding on Air” In this chapter, you build your first editor in Adobe Air. During the development process you master the use of a few basic Flex components that you’ll use again to create other editors. Accessing your local pc file system using Air and Flash10, you save your editor results to your local hardrive.  You learn about creating grayscale height maps and using the geometry.vertices property to bring those maps into PV3D. Using this you create a PV3D terrain viewer to view your heightmaps. Extending your editor you capture your webcam, programmatically change it into grayscale, and bring it into your PV3D terrain viewer.

Part III: Building Games and Websites

In part III, you explore bringing physics into PV3D by creating custom physics classes, you modify the DisplayObject3D class, and you learn to use Jiglib. You build Wii controlled games, investigate creating multiplayer games using the Flash Media Server, and create a 3D website.

Chapter 9, “Incorporating 3D Physics” In this chapter, you examine a number of approaches to bring physics into PV3D. You start by creating a spring camera, and beefing up the DisplayObject3D class to add gravity effects, to create orbiting planets. You create custom classes for oscillation and learn how to make particles interactive using the interactive scene manager (or ISM). You learn how to build large-scale applications using states, modules, and porting. You examine both WOW and Jiglibflash physics engines. Finally, you build a Jiglib Hello World example and a Jiglib example viewer.

Chapter 10, “Building 3D Games and Wii” Building games is great fun and in this chapter you learn the basics of building game systems, which include game states and multi-levels. This chapter explores two different games: pool “shooting” and pong. In the pool game you learn to build an entire game system based on Flex View States. And in the pong game you learn to build a multi-level Wii controlled game. Both games are built in Flex, but the Pong game could easily be built in Flash since it’s an ActionScript package. You build bounding boxes for your games by hacking the Jiglib PV3D plugin class and creat a skybox.

Chapter 11, “Integrating the Flash Media Server” Creating Rich Internet Applications has long been the goal of Macromedia (now Adobe). An integral part of that has been using the Flash Media Server to create interactive web experiences. In this chapter, you learn how to get your users interacting with 3D objects using remote shared objects. You also create the starter code for a slot car racing game. Finally, you examine alternatives to the FMS such as Red 5, Wowza, and the Flash Collaboration Service.

Chapter 12, “Developing 3D Websites” In this chapter you convert the CSIS 2D site to a 3D site. You create custom tree, cloud, and collage classes and build a 3D navigation system from scratch using PV3D components. You examine a few important reality checks when it comes to building websites: using a design doc, learning Photoshop, and combining 2D with 3D to get an optimized 3D experience. Finally, you learn how to optimize your website for search engines by adding html text to your html-swf wrapper file and by using the SWFObject.

Part IV: Extending PV3D and Beyond

In Part IV, you learn to take PV3D to the next level of performance by using Flash CS4, Photoshop3D, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder. You add augmented reality, services and examine a number of CS4 rendering engines.

Chapter 13, “Making 3D Movies” This chapter highlights one of the greatest challenges developers face today-the rapid change in programming architecture and platforms. This is demonstrated by building the Seven Revolutions project from the previous chapter in Flash CS4. Next, Flash Catalyst and its integration into Flash Builder are examined. Finally, the new Animate Super Effects class is used to create a panel animation, Photoshop3D is examined, and a PV3D animation engine which saves its results to the DOM is developed.

Chapter 14, “Taking Virtual Tours” As technology advances, Virtual Reality is playing a key role. In this chapter you examine using VR in the military, using augmented reality, and building 3D worlds. The majority of the chapter treats augmented reality using the FLARToolkit which was created by Saqoosha. Saqoosha’s starter kit code is examined and extended to create PV3D BasicView starter code. Using this starter code a number of items are imported in FLAR including the Jiglib pong game created in the chapter on games.

Chapter 15, “Adding Services” In this chapter you learn to hook up Web Services using Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. You build a Twitter viewer, Weather checker, Flickr picker, and CNN news reader. Flash Builder has a full range of data connectivity options…WSDL, PHP, Coldfusion, BlazeDS, and LCDS. This makes data connectivity easier and gives you more time for creative development.

Chapter 16, “Exploring Flash 10 and Beyond” Flash 3D coding has come a long way, and over the next few years will transcend even optimistic expectations.  In this chapter you scratch the surface of such technologies by rebuilding your 3D pool “shooting” game in Flash Catalyst, and visiting a number of CS4 rendering examples.

Intro

The book is done and I’m putting up the website. Here’s a summary of each chapter. I’ll start posting content like crazy over the next few weeks!!!

Chapter 1: Understanding Flash3D

Summary: Flash 3D is one of the fastest-moving areas in web technology. In this chapter, you learned how to build a simple 3D engine in both CS3 and CS4. Using what you learned about 3D engines you created a torus worm, carousel, and image ball. Finally, you examined Disney’s rules for creating realistic animation, and converted a timeline animation into ActionScript.

Chapter 2: Getting Started With Papervision3D

Summary: In this chapter, you were introduced to the basics of Papervision3d, Painter’s Algorithm, and the view frustum. You learned about culling and clipping and examined the guts of Papervision3d. You instantiated your first primitive (a sphere) and added a wireframe material. You extended your application using BasicView, and examined the different ways to run an application.

Chapter 3: Rezzing Primitives

Summary: In this pivotal chapter, you examined how prims were made in both Papervision3D and CS4.  You created your own custom prim by examining the parametric equations of different prims. And in the case of creating a Second Life tree, you analyzed the potential savings between using Papervision3D and CS4. You learned about the powerful new classes and methods in the CS4 library (such as Matrix3D, drawTriangles, and vectors). And were able to create your own CS4 super prim, using a switch case and timer.

Chapter 4: Adding Materials

Summary: In this chapter you turned the corner from 3D techno babble to application building. You learned the basics of how materials are used to create objects and about their lighting. You learned how to add brightness to a Papervision3D light source, create shades, and make bump maps. And you extended these concepts to CS4.

Chapter 5: Creating 3D Models

Summary: In this chapter, you started with modeling and ended up with Pixel Bender. Regardless of how PV3D changes over time the principles presented in this chapter will be around for a while. You’ll still need parsers to bring in vertex data regardless of your software environment. And Pixel Bender, the new kid on the block, will obviously become the cornerstone of any new 3D package hitting the scene.

Chapter 6: Working with Particle Systems

Summary: This chapter gave a broad overview of particles in both PV3D and CS4. You started with the PV3D particle system and added some of your own particles to it and created a starry panorama.  You built a 3D particle system from scratch and create a Flash CS4 glowworm. You learned how to slice and explode particle systems, and how to use them to interact with video. You took a look at the great work that Plug-in Media is doing and learned how to incorporate FLINT into PV3D.

Chapter 7: Geocoding, XML, and Data Bases

Summary: In this chapter, you turned the corner from learning the inner workings of PV3D to using it to build data-driven web applications. You built a number of applications in Air, Flash CS4, and Flex which illustrated the use of XML, PHP, and MySQL. You learned how to use the Flex data wizard to automatically create PHP code, which was used to make server requests.

Chapter 8: Gliding on Air

Summary: In this chapter, you built your first editor in Adobe Air. During the development process you mastered the use of a few basic Flex components that you’ll use again to create other editors. Accessing your local pc file system using Air and Flash10, you saved your editor results to your local hardrive.  You learned about creating grayscale height maps and using the “geometry.vertices” property to bring those maps into PV3D. Using this you created a PV3D terrain viewer to view your heightmaps. Extending your editor you captured your webcam, programmatically changed it into grayscale, and brought it into your PV3D terrain viewer.

Chapter 9: Incorporating 3D Physics

Summary: In this chapter, you examined a number of approaches to bring physics into PV3D. You started by creating a spring camera, and beefing up the DisplayObject3D class to add gravity effects, to create orbiting planets. You created custom classes for oscillation and learned how to make particles interactive using the interactive scene manager (or ISM). You learned how to build large-scale applications using states, modules, and porting. You examined both WOW and Jiglibflash physics engines. Finally, you built a Jiglib Hello World example and a Jiglib example viewer.

Chapter 10: Building 3D Games and Wii

Summary: Building games is great fun and in this chapter you learned the basics of building game systems, which include game states and multi-levels. This chapter explored two different games: pool “shooting” and pong. In the pool game you learned to build an entire game system based on Flex View States. And in the pong game you learned to build a multi-level Wii controlled game. Both games were built in Flex, but the Pong game could have easily been built in Flash since it’s an ActionScript package. You built bounding boxes for your games by hacking the Jiglib PV3D plugin class and created a skybox.

Chapter 11: Integrating the Flash Media Server

Summary: Creating Rich Internet Applications has long been the goal of Macromedia (now Adobe). An integral part of that has been using the Flash Media Server to create interactive web experiences. In this chapter, you learned how to get your users interacting with 3D objects using remote shared objects. You also created the starter code for a slot car racing game. Finally, you examined alternatives to the FMS such as Red 5, Wowza, and the Flash Collaboration Service.

Chapter 12: Developing 3D Websites

Summary: In this chapter you converted the CSIS 2D site to a 3D site. You created custom tree, cloud, and collage classes and built a 3D navigation system from scratch using PV3D components. You examined a few importing reality checks when it comes to building websites: using a design doc, learning Photoshop, and combining 2D with 3D to get an optimized 3D experience. Finally, you learned how to optimize your website for search engines by adding html text to your html-swf wrapper file and by using the SWFObject.

Chapter 13: Making 3D Movies

Summary: This chapter highlights one of the greatest challenges developers face today-the rapid change in programming architecture and platforms. This was demonstrated by building the Seven Revolutions project from the previous chapter in Flash CS4. Next, Flash Catalyst and its integration into Flash Builder were examined. Finally, the new Animate Super Effects class was used to create a panel animation, Photoshop3D was examined, and a PV3D animation engine which saves its results to the DOM developed.

Chapter 14: Taking Virtual Tours

Summary: As technology advances, Virtual Reality is playing a key role. In this chapter you examined the using VR in the military, using augmented reality, and building 3D worlds. The majority of the chapter treated augmented reality using the FLARToolkit which was created by Saqoosha. Saqoosha’s starter kit code was examined and extended to create PV3D BasicView starter code. Using this starter code a number of items were imported in FLAR including the Jiglib pong game created in the chapter on games.

Chapter 15: Adding Services

Summary: In this chapter you learned to hook up Web Services using Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. You built a Twitter viewer, Weather checker, Flickr picker, and CNN news reader. Flash Builder has a full range of data connectivity options…WSDL, PHP, Coldfusion, BlazeDS, and LCDS. This makes data connectivity easier and gives you more time for creative development.

Chapter 16: Exploring Flash 10 and Beyond

Summary: Flash 3D coding has come a long way, and over the next few years will transcend even optimistic expectations.  In this chapter you scratched the surface of such technologies by rebuilding your 3D pool “shooting” game in Flash Catalyst, and visiting a number of CS4 rendering examples.

Intro

Here’s Pong in JiglibFlash and PV3D that I created. It’s fully explained in the book (and the Wii controller is added as well)!

Directions: Click Drag to Move Around the game. Move your mouse up and down to control the game paddle. 21 points and you win the level, get to level six, and you beat the computer. I’ve never made it to level six…

A bounding box had to be created by Hacking the PV3D plugin created by Bartek Drozd…the rest was easy.

Pong in 3D

Demo

Source

Of course many thanks to Seb Lee-Delisle, who created a similar game in PV3D, it wasn’t Jiglib and not mutli-level, but it was a good place to start and Seb released it under the Commons license-thanks Seb! And thanks to Barteck Drozd who created the PV3D Jiglib plugin that I hacked to create a Pong Bounding box.

The book is almost done…when it is, I’ll start posting more frequently…sorry about the down time.

Intro

I did a port into Papervision3D of the famous Spring Camera example in Away3D. I threw out a few things and added arrow control so you can change the speed of your navigating rod.

It didn’t make the book, but I was able to build a galaxy cruiser out of the next iteration that did.

Spring Camera Port

I’ll start beefing up the explanations once the book is done…sorry about the short introduction. The source code is given below.

Demo

Source

Best … Mike

Intro

I built this JiglibFlash example viewer using Flex modules as a demo for Chapter 9 of the book. It’s fully explained in the book, but I thought I would share the code with you before the book is published. Check it out below:

Jiglib Examples using Flex Modules

Demo

Source
I’m finishing the book this month, so not much time for explanation or many posts. Once the book is finished I’ll start posting like crazy again.

Best Regards…Mike