This is my first public Papervision demo. I’m experimenting with some techniques for the next Sokay game. This is also the debut of the main character for the game, designed by Ricky Enriquez. Check out the demo.

My Papervision Demo

This scene is composed of 4 planes — the cop, the sidewalk, the shop, and the city. I positioned them within the scene with code. The animation is handled with code as well. I’m using Tweener to move the cop left and right, as well as his jump animation. The camera is targeting the cop.

I’m going to keep playing with this. I want to push it further by adding some movement to the rest of the scene, perhaps tweaking the rotation of the buildings as the camera moves.

If you’re looking to start with Papervision, there are some excellent video tutorials at gotoandlearn.com that’ll help you get started.

Filed under: 3d, Everything, Sokay Development by Bryson Whiteman
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Earlier I found this amazing 3d interactive site in a thread on Flashkit. Completely breathtaking. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to make a post about this one!

The Eco Zoo

This is the best executed 3d Flash site I’ve seen so far. Just check it out. Apparently this isn’t created with any open source 3d engine out there, it’s a custom engine by this guy.

3D on the web is sort of a gimmick right now, as Flash itself was seen as a gimmick in the past (i.e. your site wasn’t cool unless it had a Flash intro). All it really takes is some progressive individuals to define what’s possible with the advances of the medium — beyond spinning cubes and globes. Right now I see opportunities to tell stories in new and exciting ways. I’m hoping to take design elements from motion graphics and create interactive visual masterpieces. Couldn’t you imagine CartoonNetwork.com as a fully interactive playground? Kids would love that stuff. How come we aren’t seeing that yet??

Filed under: 3d, Actionscript, Coolio, Everything by Bryson Whiteman
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I found this Papervision demo while searching for a method of character animation.

Clint Hannaford’s Papervision Character demo

I’ve been dabbling in Papervision stuff lately. It’s an extra layer of complication on top of AS3 but the payoff is worth it. I created a model in Maya, textured it, and loaded it into Flash and made it interactive. Unbelievable…

For animation, I figured I could either setup some complicated character rig by separating the character at the joints and linking the pieces together. Setting all of that up and creating a system to animate the keyframes would be much to time consuming. The second idea I heard on Flashkit from renderhjs. He was creating his own custom system of animating the character in the 3d software and exporting the animation frame by frame and playing through the keyframes. I don’t exactly have time to figure that out either so I found Clint’s post searching Google in distress.

Clint explained to me that his character demo uses .md2 format, from Quake 2. It’s similar to, if not the same as, renderhjs’ method of character animation. He linked to this Papervision md2 parser and recommended that I try loading in some Quake 2 models and seeing how it works.

Filed under: 3d, Actionscript, Everything by Bryson Whiteman
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I’ve been seeing a lot of cool 3d Flash stuff here and there, mostly on development blogs or forums. When I tell people that Flash can do 3d stuff, I get an impression which is a mixture of shock and disbelief. After checking out an informative PaperVision 3d video tutorial on gotoandlearn.com, I was less intimidated and ready to jump into it. Been looking for an excuse to brush up on my 3d skillz.

CUBOCC face demo

Anyway, I saw this demo at http://cubo.cc/ today and it kind of shocked me. Apparently it’s a bit viral already, spreading around the net as it should. Some awesome coding, brilliant texturing and a simple design goes a long way, doesn’t it? The future of Google Adsense? Unfortunately, most likely! haha

But wait… that’s not all!

(more…)

Filed under: 3d, Actionscript, Everything, Flash Gaming by Bryson Whiteman
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I just checked out this impressive port of the Doom engine to Flash. It even loads up the original external .wad map files!

Check it out!

It might not be the first Flash port, but it’s definitely the first that resembles the original in speed and resolution. I could totally imagine playing some deathmatch in this thing. Can’t wait till something like that is available.

It’s also worth nothing that this was not created using Flash. It was developed on Linux using open-source/free Flex tools.

This reminds of back in 2001 or so when I saw a demo for a Quake 3 looking engine in Shockwave running incredibly fluidly. I recall it being a Q3 port of some sort because it was created by the same company that ported Q3 to Dreamcast, Raster Productions. I’m assuming it was some kind of port because they removed the demo after a short while, I believe because of legal matters.

Filed under: 3d, Actionscript, Everything, Flash Gaming by Bryson Whiteman
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