Update on Papervision3D

A very busy period at the moment but I thought I would just post an update on where we have reached with Papervision3D.

Success, basically. We now have our matrix as a 3D object within Flash which we can rotate and move around. We also have movieclips assigned to the individual cubes which animate if we want them to etc. The last part is not quite there. This is the part where you click on the movieclip'd cube which takes you to another image. So close to sussing it, a few scratching of heads and hopefully we will get the last little bit done, and this can finally become part of the Abbey project.

The hold-up for us was the Collada file. If the Max model is not set up correctly with material ID's etc then the Collada file will not work. We even took the Max model as a 3DS file into Swift3D, and then immediately exported it out to Papervision3D. (This creates a folder of sub folders containing all the information required, including an AS3 file, which does not happen if you export to a Collada file from Max.)

It needed me to realise the problem was with the materials, Paul as a Flash designer understands how to pull it into Flash, the publish settings, parameters etc but not Max and materials within Max. So when the Collada file refused to see the materials within Flash, we wondered if it was how the Collada file is created / exported. Using Notepad to look at the code within the Collada file, I saw it mention material ID's, so went back to Max, made sure that each material used was saved to the library with it's own material ID. The file then newly exported and brought into Flash worked.

I will post a step by step tutorial on this blog once the Beaulieu Abbey project is finished, as we found some of the tutorials we have visited have assumed software knowledge on the part of the user, and if they have not used the software before i.e. Max as a Flash designer, the tuturial then fails and frustration rises. Hopefully it will help other newcomers to Papervision3D and Collada.

Hopefully next post you will see the KubeMatrix in action...