Emanuele Feronato

Talking about Actionscript 3 and Flash.

You should all know Papervision3D, one of the best open source 3D engine for the Flash platform.

The biggest problem with this library, in my opinion, is the lack of basics tutorials explaining how does it work.

Just like what’s happening with Box2D, this is scaring a lot of developers because they just think it’s impossible to make it work.

This is a very basic tutorials, for the absolute beginners, that will explain how to download, install and make Papervision3D work.

First, you will find the last version of the library at http://code.google.com/p/papervision3d/.

We are going to create a Flash project, so download the zip file and not the swc one.

Unzip the org folder: it’s the one containing all needed files.

Then you just have to create your fla file in the same folder that contains the org folder you just unzipped.

Then let’s create the “hello world” of Papervision3D

package {
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import org.papervision3d.cameras.Camera3D;
	import org.papervision3d.render.BasicRenderEngine;
	import org.papervision3d.scenes.Scene3D;
	import org.papervision3d.view.Viewport3D;
	import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.Plane;
	public class papervision extends Sprite {
		public var viewport:Viewport3D = new Viewport3D();
		public var scene:Scene3D = new Scene3D();
		public var camera:Camera3D = new Camera3D();
		public var renderer:BasicRenderEngine = new BasicRenderEngine();
		public var plane:Plane = new Plane();
		public function papervision() {
			addChild(viewport);
			scene.addChild(plane);
			renderer.renderScene(scene, camera, viewport);
		}
	}
}

Now, let’s look at a Papervision3D project as a movie

Lines 2-7: importing necessary libraries

Line 9: creating a Viewport3D variable. Think about it as a nice cinema screen where you see what happens into the world of Papervision3D. The movie will start in a minute, just grab some junk food and a can of cola.

Line 10: creating a Scene3D variable. This is the world itself… so now you have a world and a screen to see what happens into the world

Line 11: creating a Camera3D variable. Like in a movie, the camera sees what happens in the world, and shows it on the screen

Line 12: creating a BasicRenderEngine variable. This is the “action” command the director gives when he wants te camera to capture the action

Line 13: creating a Plane variable. A default plane is our first and only actor

Line 15: adding the viewport to the stage

Line 16: adding the plane to the scene

Line 17: render the scene

And this the amazing result :)

Download the source code with all needed libraries.