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Blender > ActionScript Exporter

20

torus.jpgAnyone who works with Flash should find this interesting. Blender user Dennis Ippel has created a script which can convert Blender objects in Flash ActionScript 3.0 objects. This allows the creation of realtime-3D rendering within Flash (which is more typically used to render two-dimensional vector imagery). For more information, visit the exporter's official page, or its wiki entry.

 

 

The most useful information can be found on the official page, including a setup tutorial and a small demo created with the script, showing a rotating torus (pictured). Supported Flash 3D engines are Papervision3D, Away3D, and Sandy 3.0, and it is compatible with Windows and Mac OSX. Thanks to Dennis for this useful resource!

20 Comments

  1. @Tessa :
    I think I have the same question as DramaKing, for sure I understand it need and require *flash plugin browser* to show result on the screen , via a swf surely. But does it need to have Adobe Flash ( the authoring/expensive tool ) installed on the system to start to export some objects ? and if yes wich version ?

    This technology look promising !

  2. @David Revoy ( Deevad )

    Yes you need something like Flash or Flex to compile it into an swf file. Also since the flash platform doesn't support 3D natively you also need a 3D engine like Papervision3D, Away3D, or Sandy 3.0

  3. Would it be possible to write a generic Flash component that could load external 3D object data? That might be a cool way to display content of 3D object libraries without needing to manually create a Flash file for each object..

  4. @Bart
    Yes that would be possible. Long time ago I made a very simple 3D engine in AS2.0 that would display the contents of obj-files. It was very crude and simple though.

  5. @Bart
    I'm sorry I don't. I only have some old screenshots showing its wire and solid-modes:
    http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/892/3dflashv0372ip2.jpg

    As I said it was very crude and simple - it didn't even have a z-buffer! it just used a simple painters algorithm and backface culling to depth sort and optimize all the face. I experimented with a z-buffer, but I found AS2.0 to be too slow for it to be really usable.

    I was about halfway done with my texture/uv functions when I heard that the new AS3.0 would be about 10x faster than AS2.0, so I thought that there was no point in finishing it.

    But if you want to see whats possible with flash and 3D, you should check out the Papervision and Sandy demos - they are really impressive! Thats really the way to go if you want real 3D i flash. It is just too much work to build your own 3D engine now. And since the engine is already made, you would only have to make the obj parser.

  6. To anybody familiar with exporting Collada files for Papervision 3D, I am curious how this is more flexible. In the main .AS file, the code must still reference the Blender AS code in order to draw an object, almost identically to how it would reference the Collada file.

    Is there more flexibility in generating the 3D object using AS code than there would be in a Collada file? Once Papervision gets more into reading the animations from a Collada file (if it doesnt already) only having the model described in AS might be a limitation in comparison.

    Any thoughts?

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