Once you start working in a 3D environment, it is hard to go back. It is also hard to get started sometimes. Papervision 1.5, Papervision 2.0, and Away3D have all been tried for client projects, and for now, I like the stability and ease-fo-use of Away 3D. The projects are in the process of merging, at least in terms of the API, and new native 3D rendering capabilities of Flash 10 are being incorporated, overall it is a pretty exciting time.

I thought I’d write a simple demo of a coverflow type engine using Away3D for rendering and Caurina’s Tweener for transitions. You’ll need both libraries if you want to compile the source files.

Play around with some of the Tween and camera parameters to get a feel for the flexibility of this system. Also, click and drag any area outside of the images to rotate the whole scene to get a feel for the relatice postioning. What is interesting here is that no images are scaled – all relative sizes are due to distance from the camera. Try a differen camera focal lengths to get some fairly radical perspective (especially a shorter focal length).

I have implmented an XML version and am looking at some of the video-as-material possibilities so it can be a full 3D multimedia interface. I think that may be pushing it (‘it’ being processor hogging), though!

Demo Source:
http://jufaintermedia.com/demos/cf01/cfgallerydemo01.zip

Tweener:
http://code.google.com/p/tweener/ 

Away3D:
http://away3d.com/

 

All Images courtesy of Canada’s Airforce library at:
http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/site/equip/index_e.asp