epologee.com blog » Papervision3D

Session at 360|flex Conference

epologee — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:08:38 +0000

For the past few days I’ve been in Indianapolis, USA, where the 360|flex conference was held. I was invited by the awesome people of Powerflasher to come and support Frank Müller in promoting the FDT coding solution. It’s been a fun few days and the weather was great as well, although I spent most time inside the conference center, where the airco was running overtime. Frank actually got a cold with 28ºC outside!

People close to me probably know I have a very strong opinion on live coding during conference talks, so it’s only ironic that my session today consisted of 95% live coding. But that went really well, and the latest FDT beta crunched every build flawlessly. I started out demonstrating the ways in which FDT helps the developer get rid of the standard small stuff, like creating classes, methods and variables, and finished with creating a little Indianapolis 500 racing simulation all in about 70 minutes.

Here’s the result, use the arrow keys to drive the track, and correct, there is no collision detection. The *real* annual Indianapolis 500 race is this Sunday, but unfortunately we won’t be here to see it. We did go to the track after the conference today and rode one lap on it with our rental Toyota! That was pretty damn cool, I’ll tell ya! If I get to go to Indianapolis next time, I’m sure going to extend my stay to be able to attend the race.

My FDT Papervision3D workshop

epologee — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:03:11 +0000

Well that’s it, this year’s coolest conference in Amsterdam, FitC, is over again. Slowly the haze settles and life picks up where we left it the week before. But before I can actually sink into melancholy, my friends at FDT remind me of the next cool thing: My Papervision3D workshop in Krefeld, Germany, yay!

In case you noticed my name on the credit roll at Ralph Hauwert’s workshop last week, I am not a member of the PV3D developer team and therefore my workshop follows a different strategy. Instead of creating or modifying the 3D framework I’ve been working on implementing it into numerous websites over the past two years. With every project there were new technological boundaries that were overcome by creative coding solutions or by changing the project contents altogether. It’s the insights gained in these processes that I’d like to share with the workshop’s attendees. Of course the basics of handling Papervision3d need to be covered first, for which I’ll take you into the only real software solution for developing ActionScript: Powerflasher’s FDT.

Oh and in case you’re wondering, the workshop will be held in Germany and I will indeed be speaking German. I’ve had some practice with that in the past, so don’t worry: Ich spreche nicht so wie Rudi Carell!

Check out the signup page if you’re interested!

Tilt-Shift effect in Papervision3D

epologee — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:10:12 +0000

About maybe a year ago a colleague of mine stumbled upon a flickr group that used camera’s with tilt-shift lenses to fake a “miniature look”. Next to having such a lens, this effect is pretty easy to fake in Photoshop, by appying a blur on a gradient selection. A little while later, via Keith Peter’s blog, I saw this video apply that same effect on video.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Don’t you just love that effect!? Now for a pet project site I was considering putting that tilt-shift effect on a Papervision scene. This kind of effect is pretty easy to set up, although CPU-processing can become quite intensive.

Tilt-Shift miniature effect in Papervision3D.

Maybe I’ll add some little details later, like little car-blocks driving around at the base of the buildings.