synergyseeker.com

I was recently contracted to develop a new PaperVision3D project for Display Objects Inc. It’s a cool new page flip engine, much like the multitude  of flip engines already out there, but this time in 3D. The first thing I learned is that while many of these engines say they are 3D almost none actually are. So that didn’t help much when I was looking for ideas on how to go about doing this. Thankfully I had developed a couple similar models when building some new portfolio tools, so I was able to leverage much of that. The only visual question was how to get that nice bending effect on the planes when flipping. That’s where AS3DMod came in, which is a handy helper for doing things like twisting and bending 3d objects. It is open source and really  must have for your papervsion library.

I added a lot of nice features into this product, including making all copy searchable, and highlighting the results. I added a nice zoom slider bar, to let users set their own zoom level when reading. The whole thing is Search Engine Optimized so the contents of the “book” are searchable on Google. Still working away on features, but have a look at PageFlip3D™; if you want to learn more.

Finally got some time to dive into the new classes in JigLibFlash. If you’ve grabbed the latest rev, 92 or later, you will see some changes to streamline things a bit. Have a look here for the run down covered in a few posts. It is now easier to pick your flavor of 3D engine by declaring the appropriate physics class (see plugin folder for away3D, sandy3D and papervision3D). Also API docs are available now which is killer nice too.

Drag and Drop 3D Objects in JigLibFlash

Anyway, I put together this little demo, which I aim to revise and do more with in coming days. I added the new mouseConstraint class to this one to show how it looks in action. Click and drag on the little blue cubes to turf them around the room.

Code bits that are noteworthy:

Declaring new class:

physics = new Papervision3DPhysics(scene, 8);

Creating objects, for example ground:

ground = physics.createGround(yourMaterial, 500, 0);

Adding listener for Mouse interactions:

boxes[i].skin.mesh.addEventListener(InteractiveScene3DEvent.OBJECT_PRESS, handleMousePress);

Check out the latest examples in the latest rev for examples on how to handle these events. More to come…

Paperockey3D

Always working on new ideas. And well this one is not that new. I have been on and off working on this old -school table top hockey concept. It is Papervision3D and 2d physics. I am going to port it over to the 3d Physics engine jiglibflash very soon and see if that spices it up a bit

I have also been working on rounded corner boards. I am going to post on that shortly showing how the physics works for that. Give it a little play and see what you think so far.