The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash [Paperback]

Richard Olsson (Author), Rob Bateman (Author), The Away3D Team (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430225416 | ISBN-13: 978-1430225416 | Publication Date: December 31, 2009 | Edition: 1

The ActionScript 3.0 language brought a lot more power and flexibility to Flash, enabling developers to build powerful applications that hadn’t been possible before. One usage of this increased power is in processing 3D graphics, and many Open Source 3D engines sprang up. This scene has matured now, and there are a few clear winners in the 3D engine space – such as Away3D, Papervision3D and Sandy.

With the release of Flash CS4, Adobe added some basic 3D support into the main Flash IDE, increasing the public’s awareness of what’s possible. At the same time, the support they added was very basic, meaning that to perform any impressive functions developers still had to use a dedicated 3D engine, so the interest in these engines has grown and grown.

This is the first book to deal with the popular Away3D engine, and one of the first up-to-date books on 3D in Flash. It is written by the Away3D development team.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rob Bateman is the lead developer of the Away3D engine. He is a frequent presenter at various Flash and technology related conferences. Rob founded Away Media Ltd which specializes in Flash 3D related consultancy services.

Richard Olsson is a Swedish freelance Flash developer, Away3D team member/developer, and author of official documentation for the on-going Away3D documentation project.

Alongside these two, several members of the Away3D team will contribute tutorials to the book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430225416
• ISBN-13: 978-1430225416
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,027,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Welcome Addition to Flash Community Library, September 19, 2010

By 

Devon O Wolfgang - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash (Paperback)

While certainly more targeted at beginners, intermediate users of the Away3D library will find plenty of tips and tricks here to make the book worth adding to their library. I've used Away3D in a few projects, but still found the examples and techniques in this book quite helpful and fun to go through. One of the things that always bothered me with Away3D was the reliance on the generic 'init object' in class constructors, so I really appreciated that from the beginning the authors rely on using public properties in code examples.

I do hope the authors get the opportunity to write a more advanced book on the subject though.

One quick word of warning I would offer - if purchasing this book, make sure you update your copy of the Away3D library from the svn server rather than simply downloading the latest .zip file from the Away3D site.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, May 30, 2010

By 

JKaris - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash (Paperback)

If you are looking to get into 3D in Flash and more specifically Away3D there is no better way.

Book starts of simple and gradually turns up the difficulty - plenty of examples to build and they are explained well also.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on Flash for 3D, May 19, 2010

By 

Mr. Clark Stevenson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash (Paperback)

This book is really excellent.

If you were anything like me, papervision was a bit of an underground society. Every tutorial on google is outdated, the PV3D project seems to be not in development any more? Etc.

In any case, 3d is something which has been bothering me for a long time in AS3. Away3d is easily the most upto date and alive 3d engine with a great community.

This book is well written and it starts me off on a pace which i understand with clean, small and well coded excercises as well as some longer tutorials.

It has allowed me to go from 0 understanding to being able to pursure new 3d experiments. Excellent.

If you want to learn 3d in the flash runtime, there is no other guide to get you the skills which rival this book.

Congrats to the authors and the development team of Away3d.