Papervision3D: Materials and Collada
Jan 19, 2009 Articles
Today I spent a little of my spare time playing with Papervision3D, in order to participate in a Papervision3D Competition. I quickly ran into a problem, to which I couldn’t find the solution the usual way (i.e. Google). However, I finally got it working, and I’m glad to write up my findings here for those of you who might face the same problem.
The Problem
The problem I faced was simple. I downloaded a few Collada files from Google 3D Warehouse, expecting it to work in my project out of the box. It did work, but it gave me a completely untextured model, like so.
After a little looking around, I spotted a post which suggested looking inside the DAE file, to check if its materials are pointing to the right locations! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D, actionscript, Collada, ColorMaterial, DAE, Flash, Material, Models, Papervision3D, Texturing
Revisiting Papervision3D
Mar 9, 2008 Experiments
I subscribe to the Papervision3D RSS feed, and once in awhile something interesting comes along and gets me thinking. This recent entry was as such: a gallery of sites that utilise Papervision3D to create new, innovative graphical user interfaces for their users. Looking at them got me psyched up to start on my own (long overdue) site.
However, going through some of the sites raised a common issue, and that issue is one of userability.
History
As someone in the comments noted, History repeats itself. Looking back to the early days of gratuitous .gif animations, unusable Flash websites, and then to the more recent AJAX revolution of Web2.0. Whenever something innovative comes forward, people struggle to find “proper” use for it, and instead end up throwing it all at the user in the hope that they will be “shocked and awed” by it. Perhaps, in the Dark Ages of Web1.0, this strategy would have worked (and it did, for a time). However, people on the internet are now tech-savvy: they want their stuff, and they know how to get it. To prevent them from doing so in any way would be a death-sentence to any website.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Flash, GUI, Papervision3D, user interface, userability, websites
Papervision3D Clipping Issues
Jul 17, 2007 Miscellanous
Gah! What is with all the clipping issues I get? The problem arises specifically at angles close to multiples of 90. I suppose these are problems arising mathematically due to some special trigonometric properties, and seriously hope they get fixed soon.
Again, of course, the library is still currently in Beta status. So it is probably not perfect. However these are the kind of things I’m hoping they will iron out as time goes along.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to grasp 3D Rendering techniques, and I won’t be making my own engine anytime soon! There goes my Rubik’s Cube idea…
Tags: AS3, Flash, Papervision3D, Rants
Papervision3D is impressive, but…
Jul 13, 2007 Miscellanous
I’ve been playing abit with Papervision3D recently, and I’m seriously impressed with their work. However, there were some parts I had trouble with, but I’m willing to let it pass, as it is still in Beta status. Seemingly trivial things like “changing the textures of each side of a cube” seems to require some subclass. And in some cases, I still found evidence of bad clipping. Though that is probably my fault.
Over the next few days, look out for my wonderous journey in learning Papervision3D.
Tags: AS3, Flash, Papervision3D
