Professional Papervision3D

Chapter 13. Making 3D Movies

When Flash was born everyone was fascinated with how easily they could make objects "tween" across the stage or morph into other objects. Such concepts as masking, timeline, and framerate were subsequently brought into the stagnant world of HTML, and a new era in web design was born. But there was a problem. Making things move realistically using the Flash timeline took some work and a sleight-of-hand referred to as "frame-skipping". But with the advent of 3D Flash, a new era of animation has begun, one which isn't bound by a mechanical timeline or 2D environment.

In this chapter, you review many of the new tools being used in making the next generation of Flash 3D movies such as Flash Professional CS4, Photoshop 3D, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder. You create a number of applications to demonstrate their use, build an animation recording application, and discuss building a PV3D studio.

Houston . . . We've Got a Problem

Things are moving really fast in the programming world for the Adobe Flash Platform, perhaps too fast. These aren't just code enhancements, but complete architectural overhauls that render previous codes obsolete and non-functional. It's as if your economy was based on dollars, and one day America just starts using rupees as its major currency. Then, a week later, Americans adopt the Yen – imagine how you'd feel if you were a stockbroker by trade. The rapidly changing world of architectural methodologies and design patterns makes it difficult ...