Flex Your AS: Flex 3, Adobe Air, Flash CS3, and Actionscript 3.0 Video Tutorials

How to position a plane:

1. Optional: Create more planes
2. Position the planes by setting the x, y, or z property of the plane
3. Optional: Spin the plane

[flv:http://flexyouras.com/tutorials/Papervision3D/05_Positioning_Planes/05_Positioning_Planes.flv 632 532]

How to spin a camera:

1. Change the Camera3D to a FreeCamera3D
2. Use the yaw(), pitch(), or roll() camera methods in your ENTER_FRAME handler
3. Render the scene

[flv:http://flexyouras.com/tutorials/Papervision3D/04_Spinning_The_Camera/04_Spinning_The_Camera.flv 632 532]

How to rotate a plane in Papervision3D using the yaw() method

What to watch for:

1. Make the plane global
2. Add a listener for ‘Event.ENTER_FRAME’ (previously known as onEnterFrame) with a callback to loop3D
3. Use the yaw() method of the plane to rotate 5 degrees each time ‘loop3D()’ is called
4. Render the camera
5. optional: Make the color material ‘double sided’ if you want to see both sides of the plane when it rotates

[flv:http://flexyouras.com/tutorials/Papervision3D/03_Rotating_A_Plane/03_Rotating_A_Plane.flv 612 508]

How to add a plane with a color material to a Papervision3D scene:

What to watch for:

1. Create a color material
2. Create a plane (and apply the color material)
3. Add the plane to the scene

[flv:http://flexyouras.com/tutorials/Papervision3D/02_Adding_A_Plane/02_Adding_A_Plane.flv 604 508]

This video tut is the first in a series of Papervision3D tutorials.

In this tutorial we will create an empty Papervision3D scene:

What to watch for

1. Create a container, a scene, and a camera
2. Center the container on the stage
3. Render the camera

(I’m using FlashDevelop so all classes will be automatically imported. As you can see towards the end, I accidentally import a class which I have to delete.)
[flv:http://flexyouras.com/tutorials/Papervision3D/01_Setting_Up_The_Scene/01_Setting_Up_The_Scene.flv 604 508]

The ActionScript 3.0 Programming Short Cut gives the simplest examples of the most common tasks in Actionscript: Display programming, loading images, creating buttons, controlling depth, formatting text, etc. Because this is a “shortcuts” pdf, the pdf doesn’t overload you with explanations or examples. Instead it gives you enough to get started and then allowing you to experiment with different variations and ideas of your own. I think it’s a great jumping off point to familiarize yourself with the general workflow of Actionscript 3.0. The learning curve in Actionscript 3.0 may be a little steeper than 2.0, but once you learn how everything fits together with these examples, tackling new more difficult programming problems becomes second nature because Actionscript 3.0 is generally written as expected.
If you’re completely new to programming, you’d probably be better off finding a beginner’s Actionscript book as this doesn’t explain much of the “why” of programming, but it definitely shows the “how”. If you’re familiar with another programming language (especially one based on the ECMAScript standards), this pdf ought to teach you enough to get coding in Actionscript in no time. Also, if you’re familiar with Actionscript 2.0 and you’ve never worked with classes, this is for you. Lastly, if you’ve worked with Actionscript 2.0 and worked with classes and design patterns, there is some very important information (packages, internal, static, events, etc.) covered in the pdf, but nothing that you couldn’t quickly figure out by reading the Flex or Flash CS3 documentation or examples.

There is so much information packed into this book, it’s hard to sum it all up. Basically, if you have an actionscript question from TextFields to XML or loading video to gradient fills it will be answered in this book.

Probably the best part about this cookbook is how well organized it is. You’ll have no trouble finding the term you’re looking for in the table of contents or in the index if it’s something a little more specific. The answers fully answer the question without going on too many tangents. Sometimes it feels like they overexplain some of the examples because the example actionscript code can usually speak for itself.

I have a love/hate relationship with some of their answers because they choose to create a set of custom classes to solve some of the common problems. I appreciate how much time it saves to download their classes and then use their customs methods, but it almost feels like it’s cheating to teach that you’re supposed to use one of their custom classes to code correctly.

There seems to be some inconsistencies in the quality of the explanations as well. I imagine it’s because there are three different authors contributing to the book. Some of the examples are brilliant, while others seem barely adequate. For example, the sound chapter has excellent examples of adjusting volume, pan, and pulling sounds out of the sound spectrum (which is a very exciting addition to Actionscript 3!) which wraps up with a three page spread of code showing a full mp3 application with everything you might want to do with it. On the other hand, there’s the File Management chapter which seems choppy and mashed together and lacks a full package example showing a how all the code fits together.

Whatever way you look at it, there is a lot of value to this book. I know there’s code in the book that I will only use once or twice, but I’m glad to know that it’s there when the time comes to look it up. Although much of this information is available online, you will definitely save yourself hours of time by having this book handy on the shelf to pull out and quickly find the recipe you’re looking for. Although not perfect, I still feel like this book deserves 5 stars because it stands out above the rest of the Actionscript books out there.

Here are the basics of getting a movieclip out of the library and onto the stage using a custom Actionscript class. The key point is to import the linkage name you assigned the movieclip in the library (in this case, “Box”) to make it accessible in within the class. You can then assign whatever properties you want to it (in this case, x and y):

Download the .fla
Download the Document Class

This video shows the basics of setting up a Document Class for your Flash CS3 .fla:

Download the .fla
Download the Document Class