I hate to say it but not many Plug-in Media projects are optimised for low end machines. We usually squeeze every bit of performance out of Flash to fill every part of the screen with crazy 3D, pixels and video!
But! We found one that works really well! And it works well for two reasons :
It doesn’t stretch the processor (unlike our Papervision3D projects like Big and Small and Zingzillas)
All of its interactions are via the mouse (unlike our games that are usually controlled with the cursor keys).
I reckon we could probably even squeeze a bit more speed out of it with judicious use of cacheAsBitmap, but as it is, entirely made with vectors, it runs pretty well!
The Plug-in team members on this project : Creative direction by Dom Minns, programming by Paul Hayes and Nicola Birtwistle, art by Richard Butler, music by Dom and his friends, produced by Ben Simpson.
Having finished my first iPhone app in Objective C I thought it was probably time to have a go at setting up my Nexus1 with AIR for Android. Yes. I’m a digital slut. And no. I’m not gonna pick a side. Deal with it.
But anyway, I digress! I found Lee’s very cool intro to Android videos which have been a big help. But I did get a warning from Stephan Jones on Twitter who tells me that there is a virus on the site, so possibly make sure you’re running virus software first! UPDATE : Lee and Serge both assure me there’s nothing wrong with their sites so I can only assume Stephan’s virus checker was being a little overzealous!
A few things caught me out, if you navigate to the tools folder in terminal you can’t just type adb devices as the permissions on the files didn’t seem to be set right. the easy workaround is to type ./adb devices or else change the permissions with chmod if you like that sort of thing.
But the biggest thing was that it just wasn’t recognising my phone. I’m not sure if Lee mentioned it or not (maybe I wasn’t paying attention) but you need to turn on USB debugging on the phone itself. Go to Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging. That’ll do it!
In my last post I mentioned that it should be possible to make a 3D globe in JavaScript using three.js. I was even considering putting it together myself but I didn’t need to because the awesome Mr Doob stepped in to prove it!
Sadly I’m only seeing 1 frame per second right now in both Chrome and Safari – I’m not sure why? I’ll reboot in a moment and try again. But I’d be interested to know how it’s performing for you – apparently the Doobster is getting 28FPS (albeit on Linux/Ubuntu). Let me know.
I just found this article about Apple acquiring 3D mapping company Poly9, whose site has been taken down since the acquisition.
As far as I can tell, the French-Candian Poly9 is most well known for their in-browser 3D globe, that on the surface looks like a JavaScript library but is actually Flash (albeit with HTML overlays). The right-click menu has been sneakily hi-jacked so it’s quite well disguised, although I’d recognise those scroll bars anywhere! (and of course check the generated source to see the Flash object embed tag).
I’d be very interested to see what Apple are hoping to do with this technology, I’m guessing they’ll be de-Flashifying it pretty soon, certainly a simple 3D globe like this should be possible in HTML5 Canvas with something like Mr Doob’sthree.js.
I’m wondering if Poly9 own any other technology or patents that could be useful to them..?
It was such a great experience, the team at Lynda are so professional and they have many recording booths with the best gear. I think there were 6 courses being recorded while I was there so it’s quite a production! And they have teams of editors cutting out all the gaps, and fixing my mistakes (thanks guys )
So come learn about importing 3D models, particles, interactivity, ViewportLayers, and much, much more. I’d love to hear your feedback and find out how you get along so let me know!
No sooner than I’ve got back from Kansas City for the excellent D2W event (thanks Dee!), the official seb.ly tour continues! Transatlantic trip #5 of 6 is looming with my third trip to the west coast for FITC San Francisco. And it’s shaping up to be a very special one indeed.
I’m running my very enjoyable Flash games workshop, it’s so much fun and you’ll walk away will several game engines, including asteroids, space invaders, a platform game and a top down racer! And in my presentation I’ll be getting a hold of a drum kit to demo the latest development in my visual sampler experiments.
Legendary Flash superstars such as Yugo Nakamura, Colin Moock and Erik Natzke will be there. And also the best particle guy there is, Robert Hodgin. And as it’s in San Francisco you can be pretty sure that most of the Adobeans will be there, and Kevin Lynch will be presenting.
And now you can get 10% off! Although you have to work for it. You have to learn how to spell my surname – the discount code is Lee-DelisleAdd it to the registration form here and I can’t wait to see you there!
What can I say about FlashBelt that hasn’t already been said? It’s such a great conference and Dave did an excellent job yet again.
Sadly I missed a lot of sessions as I had last minute changes to my own presentation, but managed to make it to the classic double act Richard Galvan and Mark Anders presenting the Adobe keynote.
Other notable sessions included Jared Tarbell, with beautiful and inspiring work (he’s laser cutting stone now!) and Jer Thorp sharing his early computing experiences that resonated with my own history. Despite the fact that I missed a lot of presentations, there was such a great vibe and I really enjoying hanging out with good friends, old and new.
As for my session, well not many conference organisers can get you a drum kit at a moment’s notice. Which was just what I needed for my visual sampler (full post coming soon).
I also introduced a new “anti-tween” engine, Tweaser and I’ve opened it up for beta testing. So keep an eye on the next post or two (and my twitter feed) if you’re interested in signing up.
I got some great feedback (thank you!) and I’m glad you enjoyed my new experiments.
The parties were as good as ever, and what FlashBelt would be complete without the obligatory drunk singing at the legendary Nyes piano Karaoke. The same pianist is there every year with the same bawdy humour, the same songs, and the same dodgy viagra jokes. I sometimes feel like his life must be like some crazy booze soaked groundhog day. But I would so miss him if he wasn’t there!
I’m very pleased to announce that I’m running 2 days of training in Birmingham (UK) at the end of July, along with my friends at FlashMidlands. And if you book the Super Early Bird tickets (before June 15th), you’ll get both days for only £249! (saving £180 from the full price!) But I’d hurry, these courses usually sell out.
I’ll show you how to get started with Papervision3D and before you know it, you’ll be working with models, texture baking, depth of field particle effects (see image above) and of course, FLARToolkit using SimplAR. I’ll also be revealing many of the optimisation and production techniques behind high quality Papervision3D projects.
On the second day we’re going to look at making Flash games and programming animation, especially concentrating on interactivity, optimisation and making the games feel just right. And you’ll take away the base code for Space Invaders, Asteroids, a top down driving game, 3D soccer shootout, a platform game engine, a simple framework and more!
Naturally I’d encourage you to come to both days, but of course you are free to choose a single day if you prefer. The last course I ran in Brighton got a 97.78% approval rating and you can read more feedback here.
As cool as bell-bottom pants according to Keith Peters! Which is pretty damn cool. And it can be really fiddly setting up the FLARToolkit, so I’ve finally released some of my AR code. Just in time for it to go out of fashion.
It uses the Alchemy branch of the FLARToolkit and includes everything you need to get up and running. It also has a very optimised automatic threshold adjustment system that takes virtually no extra processor time.
Here’s a quick intro :
It’s easy to use, there’s just one class. And I’ve also included swc files for the FLARToolkit Alchemy branch and the latest revision of Papervision2.1. You just need to extend the class and override the add3DObjects function.
package ly.seb.simplarexamples{import ly.seb.simplar.SimplarBase;
import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.Sphere;
[SWF (width="640", height="480", backgroundColor="0x000000",frameRate="30")]publicclass AR_Sphere extends SimplarBase
{
override publicfunction initialise() : void{var sphere : Sphere = new Sphere(null, 40);
sphere.rotationX = 90;
sphere.z = -50;
//add it into the container that is updated //relative to the pattern marker
container.addChild(sphere);
}}}
Check out the screencast below to see how to use a custom marker, handle when the pattern is lost and found, and load a 3D model in.
There area couple of extra things I’d like to add to the code, at the moment the size is fixed at 640×480 and the image is not mirrored; both things I would like to fix in the future.
I’d like to thank thesven.com for his FLARToolkit Alchemy code that saved me masses of time! Thanks also to Jesse Freeman and Kyle Kellogg for helping me test this.
I’ve just come back from weeks of travelling, through Amsterdam, San Francisco, Cologne, LA, Stuttgart, New York, Boston, and Cape Cod.
And I’m barely back in the UK for a couple of weeks before going back to the US for FlashBelt in Minneapolis. And I can’t wait! This’ll be my fourth FlashBelt (I think?) and it could just change your life! Yes I know it sounds dramatic, but the truth is that last year, it inspired me to make some huge changes to my professional life, and I’ve benefited massively from it.
FlashBelt is just as big in scope as the large conferences like Flash on the Beach and FITC Toronto, it has 3 tracks, 3 days (plus 1 workshop day) and has all of the top speakers. Except that as there are only 400 or so attendees, it’s really welcoming and inclusive.
Our excellent host Dave Schroeder creates a warm and friendly atmosphere, and all the speakers and deligates happily mingle and share. It’s a genuine community event and Dave is offering a student discount and even a 75% discount to anyone adversely affected by the economic downturn. Get on over and buy yourself a ticket – they may well sell out.
I’ll then be straight on to D2W – a designer developer workflow conference in Kansas. Every company I’ve ever worked with has massive problems integrating design and development, so it seems like a conference about this could be hugely beneficial.
So come along and find out how we’ve solved many of the problems to create a pretty smooth collaboration between artists and coders at Plug-in.
Later in the year : FITC San Francisco, Flash on the Beach, FlashPitt, Full Frontal, FlashCamps in Birmingham and Manchester
so 
