Squirrel Tao

Aegia Physics Code Samples in Director 11

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:00:27 +0000

Somebody has already made some code samples available to the Director user community, using the new Aegia Physics plug-in for 3D work in Director. I was glad to find these, since it was a disappointment to me that Aegia did not make any samples or tutorials available upon Adobe’s release of Director 11. I remember when the Havok Physics Xtra was made available for Director back in the olden days, Havok made a nice collection of tutorials, demos and sample code available to the community. Looks like we’re on our own here for the time being.

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WOW 3D Physics Engine for Flash

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:57:22 +0000

There is finally a 3D physics engine for Flash. Called WOW-Engine, it is still under development. It extends Alec Cove’s APE 2D engine, uses the Sandy library for all 3D math and incorporates data structures classes written by polygonal labs. It’s a very promising beginning. The future of Flash 3D programming and game development looks brighter and brighter. At least if Director ends up dying after all, there will now be a viable alternative, especially considering that the Havok 3D physics engine for Director has not been updated since Director MX 2004, and Adobe and Havok do not appear to formed any new partnerships.

3D programming, Sandy

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Creating a Simple Hinge in Shockwave 3D Using the Havok Xtra

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:25:03 +0000

Today I finally figured out how to create a simple hinge in Shockwave 3D using the Havok Xtra’s linear dashpot. In the past, I was frustrated by Havok’s linear dashpot, because by default it connects two movable rigid bodies’ centers of mass. I wanted to be able to connect them more precisely, such as by their corners. I found that it is simple to accomplish this by assigning pointA and pointB of a linear dashpot to the desired vertice. First I attached two cubes using two linear dashpots. Then I set point A of the first linear dashpot to be positioned at the desired corner on the first cube and point B at the desired corner on the second cube. I did the same with the second linear dashpot. My demo source code is nothing but a toy app, but it’s enough to get the concept. Once you get the concept, you can adapt it for your own project. Be warned that when you increase the size of the boxes, the results become unpredictable. To adapt this to your own code, you may need to experiment with the vertex lists of the faces of your own model. Download source.

havok, hinge, lineardashpot

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Director, I Missed You

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 01:00:05 +0000

Playing with Director again is like coming home. Director was the first system I learned to program in. Lingo was my first scripting language. I love Lingo! In spite of being verbose, it’s also concise. Sounds contradictory, but it’s true! I won’t use JavaScript in Director, even though I know JavaScript, and Director supports it. I prefer Lingo. You can do so much with so few lines of code. Here’s what I have to say about Lingo, after having used JavaScript, ActionScript, Visual Basic.NET, and Java: Lingo is the easiest of all!

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Going Around in Circles - Back to Shockwave 3D Now

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:32:24 +0000

Why Shockwave 3D?

In my long and winding quest to do real-time 3D programming on the Web, I’m back where I started — with Shockwave 3D. Much as I love Sandy, I need at least joints and collision detection, and the only existing Flash physics engines are made for 2D. I’ve put considerable thought and effort into extending Flade (now replaced by APE) to 3D; but I’ve concluded that even if I succeeded, it would take some time for the code to mature. When I first started, I set out to learn Java 3D, but I soon abandoned it for Shockwave 3D. Then I abandoned Shockwave 3D for Flash, once Sandy came on the scene. In my naivety, I thought I could hack out a physics engine the same way I’ve always been able to hack out everything else I’ve needed. Once I learned how complicated physics engines and game engines are, I turned to the Torque Game Engine.

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