Papervision3D + Tweener + After FX = wowzers!

Excuse the silly title, I just wanted to grab your attention and proudly announce that my company's new website is finally finished, www.sandmanstudios.com! Sandman Studios is a full-service creative agency specializing in CG Animation, Visual Effects Production, and Interactive Multimedia.


We had a lot of big ideas of what we wanted to put into the new site and we have a lot more cool things in store, but for the time frame we had to work with, I think we did a great job on phase one of it. We used Papervision 3D on several project detail pages. For example, check out the Papervision 3D in this project called, "The Terrible Tooth". Also, I used Tweener extensively throughout the site. We used After FX in a lot of places, like in the Gorilla animation we did for the LA Zoo.

Not only did we create an amazing website, we also built a custom content management system in Flex to manage it. Which, I am now regretting because my boss wants us to create these for every site we do now. We used AMF PHP for the Flash to database communication. Which made it possible for us to get the CMS up and running in a few days. We also use SWFAddress for the deep linking.


It was nice to work on something for ourselves for once. Even though we were our own client, I think we all realize that even we don't know what we want until we see it.

Yahoo! releases Flash CS3/Flex components

Yahoo! Developer Network releases ASTRA, the ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Applications. A collection of Flash and Flex components, code libraries, toolkits and utilties developed by Yahoo! for ActionScript developers.

ASTRA Flash components comes with the Tree, Menu, TabBar, AutoComplete, Charts, AlertManager, AudioPlayback, and MenuBar components for Flash CS3.

ASTRA Flex components include AutoCompleteManager, ColorPlaneAndSliderPicker, ColorSliderPicker, DropDownColorPicker, IPv4AddressInput, TimeInput, and TimeStepper components for Flex.

H.264 Flash Video Test

If you haven't heard by now, Adobe released a beta update to the Flash Player, codenamed “Moviestar,” that adds H.264 video support to Flash. This is a big step for Adobe in securing Flash as a major choice in delivering video over the web. Flash Player developer, Tinic Uro, gave a great post on his blog explaining all the new video/audio functionality added into this latest update.

Here is my H.264 test. Along with the CS3 FLA source. It is a 165 mb MOV, so give it some time to buffer up. I renamed the extension to FLV, this was the only way I could get it to work. I did test with MP4s, which also work great. It plays pretty good if you have a decent processor. Adobe has some recommendations on what system and connection you should have to view Flash HD video properly. I'll try to keep this test up, at least until my bandwidth is used up for the month.

Next stage = streaming HD TV thru Flash?!?

Adobe AIR update for Flash CS3

Adobe released a beta update to Flash CS3 that will allow you to package and preview AIR application files. Its nice to have it built into the IDE, but Grant's AIRPanel plugin just looks cooler.

Getting Started with AS3

Just got a few good links on Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3 for today. Trevor at senocular.com posted a great tutorial on getting start with ActionScript 3.0 in Flash CS3. New MovieClip() has a tutorial on adding frame scripts dynamically in AS3. And MixMedia has an example of flowing text in AS3.

Flash CS3

Flash CS3! AS3, animation tween-to-actionscript conversion, AS3 UI components, new video components, AI/PSD native import, new debugger, new drawing tools, and so much more! Can't wait to get my hands on this.

I've been so busy over the last 2 months at my new job, that I lose track of whats going on in the Flash world. Cahlan and I now work for different companies, but we both still have a great passion for the new and cool stuff going on with Flash. I'm now the lead interactive developer for Sandman Studios. (Pay no attention to the old website, we've got a cool new one in the works.) Sandman does alot of Hollywood special effects, games, interactive dvds/cd-roms, and of course websites. They have their hands in alot of mediums. Its exciting to see the potential this little company has.

Lately, I've been experimenting with PaperVision3D, a powerful AS2/AS3 3D engine. Here are a few examples of PaperVision:

Cell shading
Star Wars game
Material test
Material test 2
Panorama
Tons more

PaperVision is amazing, its lightweight, very powerful, and opens the door for so many design possibilities! I can't wait until something like this is built into Flash. I will post some of my tests later next week.

Anywho, thats all I got for now.