Packt just came out with a new book Away3D 3.6 Cookbook by Michael Ivanov.



Michael Ivanov is a professional Flash developers, he worked in the field of game development for 5 more than 5 years.

His guide covers any possible thing doable with the version 3.6 of Away3D in 80 practical recipes. Notice that this book can be very useful even to people that are mostly interested to Molehill (Away3D 4.0) since there are many other tutorials as Physics, Rigging and Textures, the last chapter even covers it. From the website of Packt it is possible to download the files used in any tutorial.

I think some of the most interesting paragraphs are:
- Following a third-person view with a spring camera
- Animating (Rigging) characters in 3DsMax
- Controlling bones animation in Collada
- Morphing objects
- Prefab3D
- Working with external assets
- Creating a physical car with JigLib
- Adding Box2D physics to Away3D objects
- Optimizing performance
- Detecting collisions between objects in Away3D
- Beginning Molehill API

This is probably the most complete book about 3D and Flash I have ever read.
The cool thing about it is that it covers so many things that it can be used as only source to make a 3D game with Flash. As you can notice the paragraphs I listed above are the perfect mix of things you will need to build a third person 3D game.

Away3D is one of the best 3D engines for ActionScript 3. It allows you to create amazing 3D scenes and animate them.



I announced in a post few weeks ago that I was going to review the book published by Packt about 3D in Flash Away3D: Away3D 3.6 Essential by Matthew Casperson.
This book explains all the aspects of the version 3.6 of Away3D API in 400 pages, it is pretty thick, and it covers anything you can possibly need to know.

If you are new to Away3D it is a great starting point. Even if the alpha version 4.0 (Molehill) has been released bear in mind that you will not be able to use it for any project-related development until the new Flash Player 11 is out of beta, which could be a while.

Away3D 4.0 will have major changes in both the materials and animators packages. However, a lot of the other external-facing functionality will remain intact.

If you want to be ready for that day this is the best guide you can find since the 90% of the API will remain pretty much the same in the transition from 3.6 to 4.0.

Besides that, the book covers any possible angle of the API:
- How to set up a scene with various IDE (FlashDevelop, Flash Builder and CS4)
- Creating and displaying primitives
- Moving objects
- Z-Sorting
- Materials
- Models and Animations
- Cameras
- Mouse interactivity
- Special effects
- 3D Text
- Extrusions
- Filters and Postprocessing
- Performance

The only topic that is not discussed is “Physics”, but actually Away3D doesn’t have any physic class, infact to use it you will have to use library like Jiglib.

I have been using Away3D for years but with this book I was able to find new technique especially for improving performance. I was impressed by the details touched in the tutorials, they get to a point where it is impossible to make any mistake.

If you have never experimented with Away3D though, this book will blow your mind.
It is incredible what is possible to do with Flash using third API like this.
I totally recommend you to try it, maybe before to get the book, do some test with the tutorial, and then if you really get into it go to the next step and buy it.

The future of Flash is going to be in 3D, I guess you don’t want to miss that.

Away3D team came up with a new book, Away3D 3.6 Essential, published by Packt.

Their first one was 3D in Flash, written by Rob Bateman and Richard Olsson and published by Friends of ED.

I have been using Away3D on many of my games in the past, the performance was still kinda cranky, but now, especially with Molehill at the horizon, things are changing quickly.

Looks like this is going to cover topics good for beginners and advanced users.
It has been written by Matthew Casperson and it promises to cover many aspect of the new version of this wonderful API.

Overview of Away3D 3.6 Essential

• Create stunning 3D environments with highly detailed textures
• Animate and transform all types of 3D objects, including 3D Text
• Get the best performance from the Flash Player with proven Away3D optimization techniques, without compromising on visual appeal
• Follow step-by-step examples in a practical and illustrative style

It should be here soon, so give me few days to dive in it and I'll write some considerations about it.

Reading the MochiAds Forum I have found an interesting post containing a bunch of useful Flash API's and Tools. I elaborated it a lil bit and here it is, the bible for every Flash Developer!



Mutiplayer APIs

• SmartFoxServer
• ElectroServer
• Nonoba
• BlossomServer
• Red5
• Player.IO

[...] Click here to read more...

Rob Bateman has just written an article about the new update of Away3D for Flash 10. As you can see in this demo they have boosted the rendering speed increasing the quality of it.



It's unbelievable how the normal mapping and the HDR technique are used in a normal SWF file. I really think that soon we will see some high quality 3D game made entirely with Flash. The problem right now is the compatibility (not everybody has installed Flash Player 10 on their browser) and that using too many polygons would slow down very much everything. Personally I have made some games using Away3D last year and I had some trouble with the speed, infact one of them, Fartunes Jumper, was so slow that I had to set up the quality to low, and the result was not the best. I guess I could rewrite it with Flash 10 and probably add some more details.

In this article I asked to Fabrice Closier what are the potential of Away3D. The article is very interesting, i hope you will enjoy it then later dont forget to go visit the Away3D Website !

How old is Away3D and what exactly does it in few words?

Away3D is an advanced real time 3D engine for Flash. Not bad for a one year old baby![...] Click here to read more...

These 2 games have been taken from the Papervision3D list. Bowling Buddies (Facebook integrated game) AirShip demos The Bowling Buddies game is made by the very creative Playfish.com company (more on the release at their blog). They have some great facebook/social network games combined with flash. With bowling buddies they created a game similar to Wii bowling (even with customize characters) and the best part is how they have scaled down versions. You can play in 2D, 3D and at different levels of quality to make it accessible to everyone. I think that will probably be needed with 3d flash games (Shockwave Director has LOD (Level of Detail) that helps with scaling down to slower machines but you have to do that yourself with the state of 3d engines in flash so far). Bowling buddies and most playfish games are Facebook/Social Network based. You might say, why? (especially if you aren’t in the US where facebook is the biggest social network). But even Activision’s CEO calls facebook a threat to online gaming as we know it, this is because of the community aspect and the ability to play with friends and multiplayer games easily. Rather than setting up your own player find mechanism, facebook has it built in and all the viral aspects you need to garner more fans. So those into facebook and gaming are possibly ahead, but also it will be extremely competitive. [...] Click here to read more...

I have been using Flash for long time, I guess the first time I started to use it, it was still in Beta Version 1; that time I used it just to make simple animation for a cartoon studio. With the years I have seen it growing so much, but, what I really wanted from it was the possibility to use 3D stuff inside my applications; for many years this has been impossible if you didn't want to use Shockwave. Last year something changed with Sandy, for the first time it was possible to see real 3D objects in a simple Flash Application. From that day other 2 major engines were developed: Papervision3D and Away3D. Sandy was pretty good for those who still were using ActionScript 2.0, but, what really changed the cards on the table was Away3D, created by the mind of Alexander Zadorozhny.

Away3D is, in my humble opinion, one of the most powerful engine to create 3D contents with Flash. Easy documentation, lots of tutorials, the possibility to import OBJ 3DS and MD2 files, a very active developers forum where any kind of doubt is solved in less than one day. At beginning I started to use Away3D to create superlative Website at The Adory, when one day I thought: I should try to make a game with this stuff! I made Ultimate Battleship 3D and, well the result was not the best game ever but to be the first game made with Away3D was pretty good, actually I sold a NON-Exclusive License for it of $250 .

After it I made: Pistoleros Cannon Alone Carnival Hammers Fartunes Jumper Miss Primp The last one had lots of success on MySpace.com with the girls audience, because they could create their own avatar to put on their profile.

With the Version 10 of Flash the things will change even more, because the new player will be able to use the GPU of our computer to enhance 3D acceleration, and the men at the Away3D Team told me to stay tuned because big news is coming! I want to thanks Peter Kapelyan, Fabrice Closier and Rob Bateman for all the support they gave to me during the development of my games. Soon I will add some tutorials on this Blog to explain all the things that it is possible to do with this amazing engine.