Eco Zoo

As 3D Flash sites continue to hit mainstream, determining when, how, and where to use it becomes even more of a challenge.  As a Flash/Flex developer or designer it’s pretty easy to get carried away with creating 3D Flash sites for the sake of creating a 3D Flash site.

In this article,  Airtight Interactive will describe some of the technical constraints to be aware of when building 3D Flash sites, then will give examples of recent sites that they are doing 3D right.

What is 3D Spiral?

Flashloaded presents a new innovative Flash component called 3D Spiral.  The 3D Spiral is a Flash gallery component that displays images on an interactive 3D rotating spiral using the Papervision3D engine. 

Features to be expected of 3D Spiral are:

• Customizable height, width and spacing
• Control what images are loaded via XML or ActionScript
• Double sided thumbnail view
• Customize how the thumbnails animate on
• Mouse and keyboard interactivity
• Built-in skinnable scrollbar and preloader
• many more…

Examples of 3D Spiral in Action:

Wide Spiral Rotating On Fixed Axis With Scrollbar

Spiral Rotating On Fixed Axis With Scrollbar

Tall Spiral With Free Mouse Movement

Everyone put your hands together for the Away3D team for putting together this great demo that demonstrates the latest and greatest capabilities that Away3D has to offer.  This amazing piece of 3D animation is the cause of the release of Away3D 2.2.  Almost everything you see along your journey in this 780 kb all in demo is code generated.  

Some of the new features in Away3D 2.2 include:

• Collada bones support and improved features
• Triangle caching
• Bounding box and bounding sphere calculations
• PathExtrude, PathAnimator and PathDuplicator
• Simple shadows
• Object based renderers
• Obj Exporter
• ElevationModifier
• Elevation2AS3

Additional Resources:

Looking for some fresh examples of using PaperVision3D GreatWhite?  Dehash.com has put together a great list of Papervison3D GreatWhite examples. All examples include source code and running swfs.  Below are snapshots of 7 of the 18 examples you’ll find at Dehash.com.

One other thing, the source code is released as open source under the BSD License which is an open license with few restrictions.

Lines3D Example

Simple ParticleField Example

InteractiveScene3DEvent Example

Two Sided Plane Example

Blender Collada DAE Example

Rotating Cylinder Example

AS3DMod Sandbox Example

What is ImageViewer3D?

ImageViewer3D is an image viewer with a little hint of the Tiltviewer, a Flickr image gallery created by AirTightInteractive.  ImageViewer3D has been created by Arno Manders using Away3D, Tweener, and Adobe Flash.  The interactivity and feel for this image viewer is really eye-popping.  Its feature set is limited, however, being that this Flash component is free; I’d say it’s pretty impressive.

Features to be expected of ImageViewer3D:

• Slideshow option
• Flickr integration & search
• XML picture load
• Multipage option

Additional Resources:

Coverflow and Papervision3D hook up to create IgalleryX.  IgalleryX is a gallery that displays a stack of multiple photos, swfs, or videos with a reflection and perspective effect.  All photos can be accessed by a skinnable scrollbar, mouse click or flipping by mouse wheel.  Not only is this XML driven menu very robust, but with the integration of Papervison3D  it is also pretty fast.

Features to be expected of IgalleryX:

Extended Content Viewing With Desciption

Skinnable Scollbar

Support for Video, Images, and SWF Files

Additional Features:

• Fullscreen Support
• CSS + XML Driven
• Customize Reflection with 7 Parameters
• Many more…

Additional Resources:

• Preview this file
• More components from creator
• Download Papervision3D

ImageWorld3D is an interactive 3D picture gallery environment, which makes use of the newest breathtaking web technologies around. Based on the most popular ActionScript 3.0 Classes such as Papervision3D, Tweener and many more, the customizable options of this 3D environment are simply amazing. ImageWorld3D is ready to use out of the box. No need for programming skills.

Preview

Features Include:

• Easy to setup with a XML settings file.
• Create unlimited camera perspective effects with your own settings.
• 4 how to camera settings included.
• More than 40 other customizable options.
• Full 3D space handling with mouse on all axis
• Switch between 3D viewmode or 2D flat viewmode instantly
• And many more

Papervision3D has taken the industry by storm and great content is being created from it all.  Other galleries that revolve around this concept are 3D Sphere, 3D Curve, 3D Pic Tail, and 3D Wall.  Enjoy!

Flashloaded takes on a new twist to Papervision3D components. This component displays images on an interactive 3D Sphere using the Papervision3D engine. It includes different opening animation effects as well as full mouse interactivity. Thumbnails can zoom in towards the camera when clicked or the camera can zoom in towards the thumbnail.

If you enjoyed their previous release of 3DWall, you will definitely like 3D Sphere.

Features Include:

• Alter sphere settings like the sphere radius, number of horizontal and vertical segments, camera distance, etc.
• Adjust opening animation effects for thumbnails
• Choose from multiple navigation styles
• XML Driven
• Reacts to mouse movement by rotating around the X and Y axis
• Display skinnable tooltips for each thumbnail on rollover.
• Built-in skinnable preloader
• Much more!!!

Take a look at the examples of this new component below or visit 3D Sphere’s homepage for more info

TRANSPARENT SPHERE

COLORED SPHERE WITH GLOW

HALF SPHERE WITHOUT BACK

THUMBS WITH CUSTOM BACKS

OPENING TOP DISPLAY

CONCENTRIC DISPLAY

Mark Barcinski & Adrien Jeanjean from barcinski-jeanjean.com have released VectorVision, a very cool extension to draw crisp vector SVG graphics and vector fonts directly from PV3D, with minimum pixelation. Check out an example created with this new tool.

Download the source code and witness it for yourself!

The Virtual Space is an AS3 component that can be used to create virtual-tour type visualizations very easily. Simply specify 6 images to be used for top, bottom, left, right, front, and back. Then, position the camera, set the initial view, and specify interaction parameters.

Features Include:

• Animation settings for displaying space without user interaction
• Configurable mouse interaction
• Style properties for image backgrounds and containers
• Initial view settings

I haven’t seen too many effective attempts using Papervision3D in this manner. I think this component is going to supply the proper tools needed to create many creative virtual tours or walkthroughs. AFComponents really took this a step further by expanding the use of Papervision3D beyond its typical cool effects. Nice job to the guys over at AFComponents.