Sandy3D, first impression

I was trying my hands on Sandy3D yesterday, I was overwhelmed with the features and the ease of use of this package. I tried it with FlashDevelop IDE and free Flex3 SDK and the development environment is simple, sweet and straight forward, loved in the first place itself. Then I went ahead and tried in FlashIDE and found its the same simple process.So whatever environment you choose, its going to be simple and easy. Here is the output of my experiment.
The process of creating 3D in Sandy3D package(and basically all kinds of 3D packages) is as follows:
1. Create the primitive objects
2. Create the materials
3. Add the materials to the appropriate objects
4. Create a Group of all the objects
5. Create Camera
6. Create the Scene Object
7. Render the Scene

Creating 3D objects has got various options like Line3D,Plane3D,Box etc. Well, while creating the objects there is a option to make the drawing unit as a triangle or quad.By default it makes in triangles and can be changed to quad.This is especially draw my attention as in the beginning 3DSMax never provided real QUAD based geometry edit option, but slowly it had been added. So ‘quad’ as a building unit is really a good news for me as a 3DArtist.Now, there is another great option is there for the 3D objects is ‘backfaceculling’.This option shows/hides the opposite side of a face. That means, by default Sandy3D does not render the backface of a geometry shape, this is ideal for speed and resource.But sometimes we need to have both the sides of a geometry to be rendered, then we need to make use of ‘backfaceculling’.It goes like
this.myBox.enableBackFaceCulling = false;//by default its ‘true’, to avoid rendering backface
Creating materials has got option to create transparency, use light etc.One good option I found is, if one wants to make the rendering of objects, kind of cell rendering, one can do that by providing line information in the material itself.Cool. All the lighting and material information is stored as ‘Appearance’ object.
Next is to assign the material to the object.This is done by assigning the ‘appearance’ property of the 3D objects to the ‘appearance’ created, while creating the material.Once done with it, one has to make a group of all the objects going to be rendered.There is a ‘Group’ class to be used to make this and the ‘addChild()’ method of group object adds objects to the group.
Creating a Camera object is done by ‘Camera3D’ class. This has got options to set FOV(Field Of Vision), Far Clip Plane and Near Clip Plane along with the position and transformation property.This is cool.
Creating a Scene is done with ‘Scene3D’ object.It takes the name of the scene, container of the 3D objects, camera object and the root group of all the objects for current scene.
The very last step is to render the Scene by calling ‘render()’ method of the scene object.
I am providing the source files along with the FlashDevelop project, so that you can directly open inside FlashDevelop.
All in all, I found Sandy3D is quite promising and can be used in a production environment.

The Phoenix Experience (from Aviary)

Today I got the invitation for Aviary.I was so excited that I tried it out right when I got the invitation.Well, I was further excited to see the way the tool has been made. Its all flash and looks like working in native desktop application(Photoshop itself).I have attached some screen shots to make you believe that now there is really no difference between a desktop application and a web application.Thanks and congrats to the Aviary team to come up with such a brilliant idea. I wish all the best and keep your good wok going, for the team.

Lets talk about Phoenix, now. Its an image editor and reflects the tools a great image editor should be having.To start with I had uploaded one jpg image and launch the Editor. Phoenix launched itself and I am surprised with the tool sets it provide to me.I felt like I am opening Photoshop itself.Phoenix has got layers, history, selection tools like lasso, magic wand, fill tools like paint bucket and gradient fill(can customise gradient as in a good photo editor).Well, the usual short-cuts like ctrl+s(save), ctrl+z(undo) are also working inside the application. Further more one can export the images in various formats starting from jpg, png,gif to psd.This is tremendous work.From the first instance itself I fall in love with it.
Well, along with my invitation acceptance, I have got 5 invitations to share. Anybody interested in it can write down a comment here along with your email id and preferred username, so that I can send you one invitation.Since I have only 5 invitations, I would be sending them as first come first serve basis.

Is Python the new defacto standard of web programming?

After taking a look at Google App Engine, the first thing came to my mind is Python. To develop and take advantage of this hugely appreciated attempt of Google, the Google App Engine, I must know Python. Then I took sometime to see the reaction of the world. And as expected I found the answer to be true, that Python is going to rule the new Web.

While going through Aral’s blog, “Sounds simple? It is. This is game-changing!” I confirmed my thoughts, yeah its Python, which is going to be everywhere. Even according to this post, nicely described the new web, Python is the new Basic.

So all in all, a new era is around the corner for the web and web developer. I am always excited about new things in the right direction and for good, so for me its a very good and exciting news. Hello Python, welcome to your world and thanks Google for making and using web standards and innovations, the way it should.

AIRup your desktop application, Shu.

Ever thought of making a standalone application out of your already built AIR application? Shu is the answer.It simply takes an AIR application and packages it to a standalone application.Is not that amazing ? Once one completes the creations of AIR application on its favorite IDE may it be Flash, Flex, APTANA or whatever, the AIR application can easily be made a desktop application with Shu. Well, I think that also means, that whichever AIR runtime user is having or not not having my AIR application is bound to run.I have not tested it yet, so will comment about that once I do the test.

For me the question is how we look at AIR as a development platform? Is it going to completely wrap up the desktop applications? In the beginning I used to think so, I will never need to develop a desktop application, all I have to do is develop AIR applications.But products like Shu made me think twice.

First impression of Zemanta

Today while going through the regular blog reads, I came across ‘Zemanta‘ and trying it for the first time here.I thought to give it a try itself. Well, I am in Firefox and the installation went really smooth. Restarted the firefox and now inside my blog edit mode. As soon as I went inside the edit mode and tried to type out something, the plugin started updating on the left side of the regular wordpress edit mode.

I am finding it really cool and my first impression is wow, I am hoping that this will stand up to my expectations and keep its faith as a real cool add on.

Photoshop goes online

Well, another great move by Adobe. Here is the link to start your photoshop experience online. With Adobe Photoshop Express, Adobe is making a statement. Here comes my applications, lets begin with Photoshop. What I can see is, what we were talking for quite a long time. Everything is going to be online, one just need a platform to connect to net.

Well, well this new incarnation of photoshop is also shouting out loud that Flash is the future. This application is still in BETA and only for “United States” but one can register it and start the online photoshop experience.

Cheers to Adobe.

New releases Flex4,PureMVC,Box2DFlashAS3

Flex4 (Gumbo) is under rapid development. The best part is one can watch the path it follows during development and participate in the development too.Since Adobe has already open sourced it.

One of the best Opensource Actionscript framework PureMVC is now ported completely into AS3. And this awesome framework has got a new home for AS3 too :). That is a great news for me as I was trying to get my hands on the framework but cold not find the opportunity as all of my current projects are in AS3.

Well, well good news are still there. One of the best Opensource 2D Physics engine is now completely ported into AS3.Yes I am talking about Box2DFlashAs3. Now I can even try 2D Physics.

Wow, a lot of things are happening around AS3 and the big thing is arround Opensource flash . I think I must take some time out to play around with all these and many more in the Actionscript3 world. Enjoy Flashing

An old friend and a lot of hope in life

This is simply the most amazing thing to happen to my life.One of my dearest friends mailed me.whats the hell? what is so amazing about it?!
This mail came after 8 long years and with doubt of reaching me.The story goes like this.After getting our architectural degrees, we separated and life had never given us chance to be together or even to talk with each other. We never knew whether each others’ ids are still active or not.For past some months, I was always thinking of getting in touch with my friend, but all in vain.I could see all others in one or other social networking sites, but this fellow!!!I never found.The email id we shared back then was not active for my friend too.Googled, but no match. I thought in this era when every one is talking about information flowing arround, digitally transmitting things, can one person avoid net.But thats my dearest friend, who still seems to be not comfortable with net. From whatever information I was having back then, I thought I will make a trip arround and search for.I was working out the same in my back of my mind, but then I started believing in my telepathy potential and GOD’s grace. Well, then came a mail saying if this id is still active, please mail me back, I want to be in touch.WOw, WOW and wow. That worked.Thanks God, We are in touch again.A big thank and lots of love to my friend too.
I must say, what I have earned in all these years are some real good friends, who always make me feel good, who always proved that I am right even if I think I am not.
Now, I am thinking of practicing telepathy, so that I can transmit information even matter if needed .Fealing like the old Mythological days.And this is again proving me, where there is a will there is a way.One must have a will and the way will automatically come.We might not see the way in the wildest of our thoughts, but the way is always there, if you have the will.
I am so happy to get my dearest friend back.

Believe in the best in you.

Well, India beat Australia. How does that sound?
Yeah, WOW. Thats a win India required and got convincingly. A big congratulations to the team. The whole team played well. The captaincy, the fielding, the bowling, the wicket keeping, the batting, the situation management and what not, just everything is done so very good. All the players, all the players are just put it and showed how cricket should be played. A gentleman’s game should be played like a gentleman. I am just thinking whom to praise, could not decide, because India just played as one, one team, one spirit and unbelievable game.
It is the belief of the captain(Mahendra Singh Dhoni) on the players. Its the belief of players on each other. Its the belief of team. Its the belief in truth as its always be ‘truth always wins, sooner or later’. Despite of all odds India is standing tall. Its actually making me believe in truth and honesty. Believing in self and ignoring all, that is around to put you down, makes you a success.
I am not saying that all of the team Indian was perfect in the game today.But they believed in themselves and on each other.There were catches missed, there were mis-fielding, there were mis understandings between each other, there were bad bowling, there were bad quality batting, but in the end India won, for the faith and belive. They keep faith on self and belive on their potentials and won the battle.Team India was decent, explosive in their game and examplanary as sportsmen.
I must thank Sachin Tendulkar for his unbeaten century.This is not just the way he made his game today, but for all those good things he made in the field.He was silent, self contained, well behaved ( even if the opposition is throwing anything at him ), explosive in his game and mentor for juniours.
All in all cheers for the team India, thanking you for making us proud.Keep the good spirit up, all the best.

webservices in flash cs3

Well, I am recently working on a project which required webservices to be consumed in Flash CS3. But surprisingly I found one can not use Flash CS3 to consume webservices directly. The classes were previously present, but removed. One of my colleague’s made it possible to work with webservices by compiling some Flex2 classes inside a SWC. But my curiosity does not end there as always. I tried to dig into the problem and found these two links, very useful.

wellconsidered

Using flex compiled code in flash

The search still continues

Here is another good way.

One more link for the usage service.