Flash 3D Cheats Most Wanted

by James Dean Palmer, Jared Tarbell, Anthony Eden, et al.

"Flash 3D Cheats Most Wanted" is the latest title in the Most Wanted series of Friends of ED. The Most Wanted series dictates that each of the chapters is completely standalone, delivering as many finished examples as possible - the chapters are themed by tools and theory, but the content is driven by aesthetics, i.e. "how cool is the effect?" Each chapter is packed full of the most wanted tips, tricks, and techniques to demonstrate exactly how...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590592212
• ISBN13: 9781590592212
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

I'm lovin it!

I didnt buy this book to learn about flash coding, or web development. I bought this book because I am interested in Software rendered graphics. That is, applications that dont utalize OpenGL or Direct 3D for rendering to the screen. I bought this book for the techniques it discusses in "faking" 3d, and also producing real 3d. So far it has done a perfect job in giving me ideas and techniques that I can use in my applications. For anybody interested in producing anything that is real time, and 3d, I would reccomend this book.

A work of art! Opens all new possibilities to script builders

This is the best book I have read in years! If you know the basics of ActionScript and you know sine and cosine, this book opens up whole dimensions of possibilities for both games and business applications of Flash. It is clearly written and reads more smoothly than most programming books. While it does assume a basic literacy with ActionScript, it does not leave you flailing with complex 3D concepts. You may have to pull out your definitions of sine and cosine, but beyond that, it is pretty light lifting. The genious of the book is that it violates commmon assumptions, and this results in simple, elegant techniques that are also powerful for a wide range of problems. The common assumption is that Flash doesn't do 3D. Don't believe it anymore. If you are willing to use some basic limitations to your application (such as keeping your polygon count down), you can have some smoothly flowing, useful 3D applications with relatively little effort. And unless I'm mistaken, those applications will run equally well on a browser running on a Mac, Windows or Linux. The solutions are simple and eclectic. The authors have created a variety of 3D engines - each optimized for a given purpose. The engines are simple enough that (in theory) you can take the source and enhance it to your needs. Each technique is backed up by source code that you can download from the publisher's web site. But don't shortchange yourself with only the sample code - the explanations in the text are worth the cost of the paper book. Here are my favorite techniques: * ch 8 (P 195) - Drawing API and Math for 3D - here they explain and provide a working polygon 3D engine. The demos work smoothly (at least 20-30 frames per second) on my cheap Dell laptop. The demos include a oragami bird and a rocket ship with at least 10-20 polgons each. It doesn't support bitmapped textures, but it does offer fill color and shading support. * ch 9 - 3D Slice Engine - this is the more clever, powerful and non-obvious technique of the book. Check out "dad.swf" in the binary samples from the web site to get an idea of the power of this approach - the author has made a 3D talking head of his father from a photograph! The idea here is that if you can view your 3D world as a topographical map, then you can model it with a set of parallel planes, where each plane represents a certain cut through the entire 3D model. This approach, though not immediately intuitive, is extremely powerful in Flash because it plays on the strenghths of Flash. Each plane is represented by two "movieclip" objects, with one embedded in the other. The first one handles scaling, and the second handles rotation, within the scaled clip. The hidden surface problem is finessed because the planes are parallel - so you only reverse the rendering order once every 180 degrees of change in viewer angle. This enables you to handle full bitmap detail of your scenes, and the result is pretty dazzling! The basic render

Trigonometry background required in some chapters

TOC: Chapter 1 Introduction to Flash 3D Chapter 2 Light and Shadow Chapter 3 Scaling for 3D Chapter 4 Isometric 3D Chapter 5 Focus and Depth of Field Chapter 6 Parallax Scrolling Chapter 7 Text Effects in 3D Space Chapter 8 Drawing API and Math for 3D Chapter 9 3D Slice Engine Chapter 10 Departure Lounge: Moving beyond Flash 3D Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 10 don't require a trigonometry background. One of Chapter 6 topics uses XML though. The best chapters for me were 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. I gave the book 5 stars because it has something for everyone. Some people use Flash to create digital art while others use it for practical purposes. This book delivers to both people. Unfortunately, I belong to the latter kind and some of the topics aren't for me. I also think that some chapters are impractical unless you're really a math geek. For example, I think Chapter 8 - Drawing API and Math for 3D -- is unnecessary because you can import Swift 3D files. Some of the authors also show you Actionscript without really explaining what it does (I think they assume you do know trig). I work for a software engineering firm (not as an engineer though) but I do know that it's bad practice to embed magic numbers -- literals that don't have apparent meaning -- in any code. It's better to put them in constants. One of the authors (the Chapter 4 author I think) said to get a good book on trigo. I don't think I will because there are plenty of free trigo tutorials on the web. I agree though that to get the most out of Flash and this book, learning trigo is a must.

Good golly

This has to be about the best book I have ever seen. The 3D cheats in it are amazing -- and you surely wouldn't know you were cheating. There are some incredibly insightful techniques, and some more staple things if you're not quite steady on your feet yet.I think I am, but this book showed me how much more there was to know!