The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents at a Glance

Table of Contents

About the Author

About the Technical Reviewer

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Layout conventions

Chapter 1 Getting Started

Getting the Away3D library

Setting up a project

Using Adobe Flash CS4/CS5

Using Flash Builder

Using FDT

Using FlashDevelop

Open source workflow using the Flex SDK and Makefiles

Summary

Chapter 2 Creating Your First 3D Project

Starting up the engine

Adding 3D objects to the scene

Understanding constructors and initialization objects

Lighting the scene

Animating objects in 3D

Enabling interactivity in 3D

Summary

Chapter 3 The View, Scene, and Camera

Understanding the basics

View

Scene

Camera

Exploring the fundamentals of 3D

Working with coordinates in 3D space

The rendering process

Clipping

Z sorting

Perspective Projection

Setting up the chapter base class

Creating and using the view

Centering the vanishing point

Clipping the viewport

Managing the scene

Adding and removing 3D objects

Accessing 3D objects in the scene

Working with nested 3D objects

Moving, rotating, and scaling in 3D

Using containers as pivots

Creating and using cameras

The Camera3D object

Moving the camera

Rotating the camera

Adjusting the zoom and focus properties

Aiming at objects using lookAt()

The TargetCamera3D object

The HoverCamera3D object

Summary

Chapter 4 Primitives, Models, and Sprites

Knowing the basic terminology

Vertices

Faces and segments

Meshes and primitives

Billboards and sprites

Setting up this chapter’s base class

Understanding common primitives

The plane primitive

Back-face culling

The cube primitive

The sphere primitive

Understanding wire primitives and line segments

Wireframe primitives

Combining wireframe and regular primitives

Drawing irregular lines in space

Using regular polygons

Working with external models

Workflow when loading a model

Optimizing external resources for size and speed

Converting a model to ActionScript

Using the converted model

Creating a library of models

Applying bitmap filter effects to 3D objects

Using 3D sprites

Creating smoke using 3D sprites

Tutorial: Creating a twisted image gallery

Laying out the application shell

Creating the TV sets

Loading the gallery image

Creating the menu items

Displaying the content

Adding movement and interactivity

Summary

Chapter 5 Materials, Lights, and Shading

Understanding Away3D materials

Using color and bitmap materials

Working with wire materials

Using lights and shading materials

Lighting in Away3D

Omnidirectional lighting with point lights

Parallel beam lighting with directional lights

Background lighting with AmbientLight3D

Creating and configuring light sources

Controlling the intensity of a light source

Shading materials in Away3D

Flat shading materials

Using normal map shading

Generating a normal map

Using DOT3 materials in Away3D

Using environment shading

Using animated and interactive materials

Using the MovieMaterial class

Using the VideoMaterial class

Summary

Chapter 6 Vector Shapes and Text in 3D

Working with vector graphics

Vector graphics vs. raster graphics

Creating lines and curves

Using the Away3D drawing API

Preparing the chapter base class

Drawing 3D vector shapes

Creating simple shapes with straight lines

Creating curved shapes

Creating open-ended line segments

Creating nonplaner shapes

Creating shapes with holes

Importing 3D vector shapes

Extracting vector shapes from an SWF file

Animating imported vector shapes

Importing 3D Text

Extracting vector data from a font

Extruding text

Warping text along a path

Knowing the limitations of vector graphics in Away3D

Summary

Chapter 7 Procedural 3D Content

Preparing the chapter base class

Building a pyramid primitive

Starting with AbstractPrimitive

Setting up the constructor

Adding public properties

Building the Pyramid mesh

Mapping UV coordinates

Using the extrusions tools

Creating a ribbon using the PathExtrusion class

Creating a vase with the LatheExtrusion class

Using mesh modifiers

Creating a terrain using the HeightMapModifier

Summary

Chapter 8 Interactivity

Setting up the chapter base class

Interacting with 3D objects in a scene

Introducing the MouseEvent3D object

Using MouseEvent3D’s scene coordinates

Using MouseEvent3D’s UV coordinates

First-person camera keyboard controls

Walking with the keyboard

Looking around by dragging the mouse

Looking around by scrubbing the mouse

Summary

Chapter 9 Animation

The basics of scripted animation

Using basic tweening

Path tweening

Importing animation

Working with MD2 animations

Importing an MD2 file

Playing an MD2 animation

Working with COLLADA animations

Importing a COLLADA file

Playing a COLLADA animation

Creating programmatic animation with bones

Defining an animation rig

Bone tweening

Summary

Chapter 10 Optimizing Tips and Tricks

Preparing the chapter base class

Optimizing geometry

Using level-of-detail objects

Culling and clipping polygons and meshes

Back-face culling

Viewport clipping

Object culling

Manual culling

Using models effectively

Polygon counts

Intersecting polygons

Double-sided geometry

Optimizing materials

Optimizing shading

Static shading

Normal map images

Conserving material instances

Exploring general best practice techniques

Switching between 3D coordinate systems

Converting from object space to scene space

Converting from object space to screen space

Changing camera lenses

Traditional perspective projections

Extreme wide-angle projections

Isometric projections

Summary

Index