After struggling to master the recently released, open-source Sandy 3D API for Flash, I’ve decided to take another look at 3D programming in Director. Sandy appealed to me because it allowed real-time 3D in Flash. It was also appealing to have access to the source code and thus complete and precise programmatic control. The Sandy 3D API is very impressive. It blows away every other 3D programming effort in Flash that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps most importantly of all, the Flash plug-in has more market penetration than the Director plug-in. But I’ve found Sandy difficult to learn – more so than I had expected. This may reflect more upon me than upon Sandy.

The main consideration that has made me take a second look at Director, though, is my animation needs. Prior to learning of Sandy and becoming interested in the possibilities of 3D animation in Flash, I had looked at the Havok Xtra for Director. Havok allows game world physics to be attached to a Director 3D world. I ended up turning away from Havok, because it seemed more geared to design-time animation than run-time animation. I need to create pretty much everything that matters at run-time. Now I’m taking a look at Director’s bonesplayer modifier, which allows bones and joints to be animated using both inverse and forward kinematics. It can be set up at both design-time and run-time. Documentation is scanty, but there is at least a chapter on it in Director’s Third Dimension. There’s also a tutorial and demo available with Shapeshifter 3D. The only thing that makes me a little nervous about using Director is that I don’t know what kind of future Adobe plans for Director. For now, I’m just going to proceed, if for no other reason than it will kill me to spin my wheels any longer without getting anywhere.