Papervision3D Essentials

Papervision3D Essentials

Overview of this book

Papervision3D is a powerful real-time 3D engine for Flash. Papervision3D can take externally created 3D models and render them as Flash content, without requiring end-users to download or install an additional plug-in. It has an outstanding reputation within the Flash community and its ease of use has even impressed experienced 3D game developers. However, getting started with Papervision3D can be daunting and mastering it can be challenging. This book guides you through the easiest way to tackle challenges that you may normally face with Papervision3D and master them effectively. The book will show you how to build Papervision3D applications from scratch in the easiest way, providing plenty of examples that make sense even if you're not a Flash expert. Papervision3D Essentials serves as a comprehensive guide to getting you started, as well as being an invaluable reference for every Papervision3D user and developer. By the end of this book you will be able to create your own projects with real-time 3D rendering. Since the first release of Papervision3D in 2007, the authors have been involved in various commercial projects with Papervision3D, building up a deep understanding of the engine. In Papervision3D Essentials, the authors share their knowledge to help you create stunning 3D content in Flash and teach you how to work with one of the most exciting open-source Flash projects around. Papervision3D Essentials shows you how to download Papervsion3D and make it work in Flash, Flash Builder and Flex Builder. It provides a short introduction to Object Oriented Programming and classes for those who are new to non-timeline programming. Then, it takes a closer look at the engine, discussing a broad range of topics from how to work with built-in 3D objects to using and animating cameras, 3D objects, and light. Applying materials and textures, using filters and effects, particles and performance optimizations are also covered. Ultimately, this book will provide you with the information you need to build your first Papervision3D application. Covering the basics, but by no means limited to beginners, Papervision3D Essentials provides a thorough explanation of the engine and numerous tips and tricks, making it a valuable resource for every Papervision3D user.

Papervision3D Essentials

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

Preface

Free Chapter

Setting Up

Downloading Papervision3D

Downloading the non-compiled source using SVN

Downloading the non-compiled source in the ZIP file

Downloading the compiled source

Configuring your authoring tool for Papervision3D

Where to find the Papervision3D documentation

Summary

Building Your First Application

Introduction to classes and object-oriented programming

Working with the Document Class/Main Application File

Basics of a 3D scene in Papervision3D

Creating a basic class for Papervision3D

Smart programmers use less code

Preparing for the book examples

Summary

Primitives

The basic elements of 3D objects

The rendering pipeline

Creating and adding primitives

Nesting

Accessing vertices

Summary

Materials

Introduction to materials

Basic materials

Three ways of using bitmaps as a material

Two ways of using a movie clip as material

Example—creating a carousel

Summary

Cameras

Cameras inherit from DisplayObject3D

Basic camera settings

Camera types

Setting a target with the lookAt() method

Culling

Clipping

Summary

Moving Things Around

What can we move around?

How can we move things around?

Rotating objects

Mouse interaction

Animating with Tweener

Example—the galaxy extended

Summary

Shading

Introduction to shading

Bumping your materials

Reflection mapping

Example—shading the Earth in our galaxy

Summary

External Models

Modeling for Papervision3D

Creating a template class to load models

Creating models in Autodesk 3ds Max and loading them into Papervision3D

Creating and loading models using SketchUp

Creating and loading models using Blender

Keeping control over your materials

Summary

Z-Sorting

What is z-sorting

Layering your renders

Quadtree rendering

Summary

Particles

What particles are and why to use them

Creating particles

A template class for all the examples

ParticleMaterial

BitmapParticleMaterial

MovieAssetParticleMaterial

Creating particle fields with the ParticleField class

Particles don't have to be tiny—a billboard example

The Flint particle system

Summary

Filters and Effects

What are filters and effects?

Using Flash filters to create effects

Setting the transparency and blend mode of a viewport layer

Applying filters on viewport level

Built-in Papervision3D effects

Adding a Flash filter as an effect with BitmapLayerEffect

Adding fog with FogFilter

Adding reflection with ReflectionView

Example—creating depth of field

Summary

3D Vector Drawing and Text

VectorVision: 3D vector text and drawing

Creating a template class for the 3D text examples

How to create and add 3D text

Font creation

Adding interactivity to 3D vector text and shapes

Drawing vector shapes—lines, circles, and rectangles

Drawing lines with Lines3D

Summary

Optimizing Performance

Measuring performance

Basic optimization strategies

Summary

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Combining materials

In some cases you might want to combine multiple materials and use them together as one single material. For example, during development it can be pretty useful to combine a wireframe material with another material type. This can be achieved with the CompositeMaterial class.

Usage of this material type differs from what we've seen before with other material types, as it doesn't take any parameters on instantiation. Instead, you add materials to the CompositeMaterial class, similar to adding materials to a materials list, which we did in the previous chapter. Having a look at how this works makes it clearer:

import flash.events.Event;
import org.papervision3d.materials.BitmapFileMaterial;
import org.papervision3d.materials.WireframeMaterial;
import org.papervision3d.materials.special.CompositeMaterial;
import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.Plane;
import org.papervision3d.view.BasicView;

In the init() method we create two materials, which will be combined by the...

Papervision3D Essentials

Papervision3D Essentials

Overview of this book

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Papervision3D Essentials

Combining materials