Customer Reviews

Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move!

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being an old-fashioned programmer, I generally avoid script languages and try to do everything in traditional programming languages with one exception - ActionScript. From my first introduction to the language I've been hooked by its combination of power and simplicity. If you already have an intermediate grasp of ActionScript and want to learn how to make realistic animations using this language, this is the book for you. This book was written for someone familiar with ActionScript to some degree but with little knowledge of math or physics. As a matter of fact, if you are a mathematician or physicist, you probably will not truly appreciate this book due to its accessible style. This book is NOT about controlling tweens and simple animations. Instead, each chapter lays out the rules of physics, trigonometry, matrix algebra, vectors, and 3D mathematics very plainly and clearly while applying it to an animation problem. Part four of the book takes the principles you learned in the first three parts of the book and applies it to 3D animation. Each chapter intersperses code with equations and explanatory diagrams, and then at the end usually summarizes key algorithms in numbered steps. This book has a simply excellent treatment of both forward and inverse kinematics to the point that I would recommend its tutorials to robotics students that are having a hard time finding anything readable on the subject. If you don't think your ActionScript skills are up to the challenge of this book, might I recommend the excellent "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Moock. If you don't know ActionScript, you will by the time you finish that book.

I've been working in Flash and Actionscript since 2001. If I'd had this book when I was starting out it would have saved me countless hours of research and experimentation. Foundation Actionscript Animation is stuffed to the gills with useful programming techniques, yet is also very readable and concise.

Unlike so many authors, Keith Peters is not out to impress us with his cleverness and intellect. His main purpose is to share a wealth of practical knowledge that he's been building up over the years in a practical way. You won't find any cartoons or jokes in this book. Nor will you find digressions and distracting sidebars. Though it covers a number of complex topics in Math and Physics, it does not read like a textbook -- the author strives to explain only what is necessary to get things working.

Sometimes he is downright apologetic when he has to cover a difficult subject. At the start of the chapter on Momentum, he writes "I have reached a point where I just can't ignore mass any longer. Mass is just so tied up in the subject of momentum that I'm just going to have to confront it head on." If anything, this constant apologizing becomes a bit tiresome!

Flash has been an evolving platform over the years, and Actionscript Animation does an admirable job putting everything into a helpful historical perspective, showing how things have changed from Flash 5 to Flash 8. Chapter 2, is such a perfect overview of common techniques for building Flash applications that I have recommended it to some co-workers who are programmers, but who haven't had experience with Flash. The Flash 8 examples are usually in their own section of a chapter, and can be ignored if you're working with an older version.

I recommend this book even to veteran Actionscripters. Though this is not an OOP book, most of the examples are only about a function or two long, so you can easily convert them into methods for your classes. Furthermore, even topics you are comfortable with can worth reading about because Peters may surprise you with a new way to do something. For example, after covering the basics of Trigonometry, he immediately provides a number of useful examples of pulsing and elliptical motion that can be achieved with trig functions, including an interesting example that applies the function to the scale of a movie clip to create a pulsing effect.

The final chapters of the book cover basic 3D animation techniques. While I didn't feel ready to build the next Quake, I was grateful for the author's gentle introduction to a topic that is often presented in a very confusing way. When I was done, felt prepared to tackle a more difficult book on 3D graphics.

Though it's not designed to be a reference book, Foundation Actionscript Animation will certainly find a home near my computer. And next time I'm creating an SWF that involves collision detection, gravity or matrices, this is the first place I'll go for a refresher.

I found this book to be an excellent collection of scripts and theory for the interaction designer, game programmer, experience and user interface developer. The book covers ActionScript basics, OOP and best coding practices, classes, new Flash 8 features, lots of trig, and physics formulas for velocity, acceleration, friction and gravity. I would actually highly recommend this book to any designer who is thinking about picking up ActionScript. The coding practices and sample code will immediately spark your imagination, while setting you on the right track as to how to think about programming and structuring your code. You'll get instant gratification from learning how to build very interactive widgets quickly, while also enhancing your code libraries.

If you are a seasoned ActionScripter but never experimented with particles, collision detection, IK or 3D there are plenty of advanced scripts and theory for you as well. I was happy to see coverage of matrix math and the matrix class, considering their usage in Flash 8

Overall a great compilation of code and theory. It's complete, well written and for Flash 8!

Summary
Although the book has a few shortcomings (at least in my opinion) which will require the reader to have a solid grounding in ActionScript 2.0 syntax in order to make the best use of it, overall I think it is a very well-written, easy to understand and thorough guide to the subject of ActionScript animation. Considering it comes from a Flash developer who is one of the most well-known for this type of work, I think it is a great book to have if you are interested in learning more about that subject.

What I liked best

This book is well-written in terms of the sequence and clarity of the examples. He starts out explaining the basic principles (mostly trigonometry formulas) which underly the different animation behaviors. For the most part this is done in a clear, easy to understand way, even if you haven't studied math for several years (like me) -- all his examples are of common uses of the formula in ActionScript, and he's quick to point out which formulas you'll use all the time and which ones you'll use less frequently.

I also found the way he ordered the content, and the examples within each section, to be particularly helpful. Most topics build on the previous one, with clear and obvious connections between them.

Room for improvement

No book is perfect, of course, as any author will likely admit. These are the most noteworthy problems I found with this book. But let me say up front that I think the book is well-written enough and in-depth enough that it is worth owning in spite of these specific shortcomings:

- Narrow example domain

I can't complain too much about this one, but the examples both in code and in concepts in the book are almost entirely focused on creating video games in Flash. However, I think it's much more common to use these techniques for other things like user interface effects, something which (as far as I remember) wasn't even mentioned in the book.

- Unnecessary basic concepts

In the introductory portions of the book, Keith faces the typical book-author dilemma of "what should I assume is the prior knowledge of the reader." The book includes a couple of sections introducing basic ActionScript concepts such as functions and event handlers. However, I think those sections are ones he should have just left out completely -- the quick summary treatment isn't enough to really teach those concepts well if somebody doesn't already have experience with them, and it's just annoying filler for the reader who does already know what those things are.

- ActionScript version confusion

One of the stated goals of the way the code is written is that "it will work in ActionScript 2.0, and with few or no changes it will work in ActionScript 1 also." I disagree with this choice; I think at this point (two and a half years after the introduction of AS2, with ActionScript 3 already in the public eye) I don't think there's a very good reason to cater to the ActionScript 1 audience. I think it would have been better to just write the examples in pure AS2, and let people who need the code in AS1 work out the differences, especially since teaching AS1 isn't a stated goal of the book.

I wish I had this book a year ago. I spent countless hours fussing over a project that used interactive motion. This books explains in the first 50 pages stuff that would have been very useful in solving my application problems. It's easier to understand than other titles like Flash Games Demystified, or that book on Flash object simulations, etc. This book should be read before tackling the other ones or even bothering with the [...] online actioscript series.

The author does a real good job of not jumping around too quickly, establishing the basic concepts of Flash actionscript's gotchas before delving too deeply into showy tricks. Very unlike Joey Lott, who is a little more schzoid in the lynda [...] series, and often more showy, missing important concepts that need to be understood before moving on.

My jaw dropped when I started reading this book. I write ActionScript code almost every day for various animation effects, but I often run into situations where I need to figure out some sort of trigonometric problem and my logic is a bit fuzzy. This book made the solutions not only clear, but simple and fun. It opened up a world of possibilities. And just to be clear, this book addresses FAR more than trigonometry and how it relates to ActionScript animation. It's a must-read for any intermediate or advanced ActionScripter (beginners might struggle a bit).

This isn't just a great Flash book; it's a great read, too. The author claims this in the beginning even! It breaks down scary concepts like trigonometry, velocity, friction, and kinetics to really understandable language followed by some good best-practice AS2 code examples. This is not a reference book like ASDG, but it could be used that way if you want a good understandable source for animation/trig formulas missing from almost all books I've seen. I like how Keith is nice and humble and seems first to admit he wasn't all that good in math and still can figure this stuff out like the pro he is.

This is an excellent book! It walks the reader through the fundamental workings of Flash, important animation concepts such as trigonometry and physics, and then ties all the information together with examples. The book is well thought out and very comprehensive. A great book on learning how to make things move in flash!

I started learning Flash 8 about 6 months ago, hoping to make some physics simulation programs and games. I started out by buying Foundation Actionscript for Flash 8 and was quite disappointed to find that the subject of math was avoided at all costs. After reading 100 pages or so, I finally decided I'd just buy this book and hope I had learned enough to get me by. Now I regret not buying this in the first place.

Peters starts with the very basics of physics and takes you step by step on how to translate it into Actionscript. As it goes, it explains what the code means and how it works, making it possible to actually learn a lot about Actionscript in general. Although he explains how the physics works, he makes an effort to keep it at reasonable level and I never found myself the slightest bit bored or confused. This book teaches by example, which is the easiest way for me to learn. Nearly every major and minor topic mentioned has its own example with code in the book (which can also be downloaded off the website).

As can be seen from the table of contents, he gets into some relatively complicated topics and even in these, he does a great job of explaining how it works and how to keep your code efficient, making sure to mention any shortcuts that can make things easier.

So to sum things up
-this book is great at teaching you how to program realistic physics-based motion
-it's amazing at explaining what each bit of code does and how it works to the extent that it can be used as a beginning guide to Actionscript in general.

The style, organization and layout all make this book really accessible, easy to read and use by both novice and expert-level A/S writers. It breaks down some pretty complex physics into understandable descriptions -- rather than a bunch of tech-talk -- and straightforward code that I could figure out and apply without sweat. No "headscratching" and/or deep thought required. I like that!