All,
I received such a positive response to my last post in this forum, I figured it was a nice place to start some buzz about our latest demo:
http://www.kaon.com/software/swflash.html
What do you think?
-Joshua Smith
CTO/Alpha Geek
Kaon Interactive
I think… it comprehensively crashed Opera 7.54 every time and didn’t show me any 3D.
I also think that it’s not Java so no-one on here cares 
Cas
No, it IS java! The 3D component is a Java applet. Read the verbose description for an explanation of how it works.
I have Opera 7.54 on my Windows XP box, along with Java 1.4.2_05, and Flash 7, and it’s working great. I’d really appreciate any thoughts you have on what might be different about your box, so we can try to reproduce (and correct) the problem.
Thanks in advance!
-Joshua
JRE1.5.0 here, Dell Inspiron 8200, default Opera mag 150%.
I got it to run once - looks nice.
But pray tell - why embed Java in Flash?
Cas
[quote]JRE1.5.0 here, Dell Inspiron 8200, default Opera mag 150%.
I got it to run once - looks nice.
But pray tell - why embed Java in Flash?
Cas
[/quote]
I’ll check it with JRE 1.5.0 on another machine (I’d never install a .0 release from Sun on a machine I actually need to use!), to see if that’s the issue. The magnification doesn’t seem to be a problem.
[Update: I checked it with JRE 1.5.0, and it works fine! Hmmm…]
Putting actual 3D rendering into Flash is something of a holy grail in the Flash world (every Flash developer site seems to have a forum dedicated to it). Interactive 3D is obviously a very good way to convey complex product stories for physical goods. And Flash is a very good way to author and distribute marketing materials surrounding those goods. That is, both Flash and 3D are important for telling “product stories” on the Web.
But putting the two together has been impossible, until now. ActionScript (Flash’s programming language) is much too slow and under-featured to write a decent 3D engine in, and the Flash client lacks a “plug in” architecture to allow 3D to be written in another language. You can pull Flash movies into a 3D player, like Viewpoint, but you have to do most of the authoring outside of Flash, which makes this approach impractical for any but the most expensive, complex projects.
Using Java to deliver the 3D component, and using web technologies to pull the pieces together is (we conjecture) a great solution to the problem. Like Flash, Java is installed pretty much everywhere (750 million machines, at last count). Java is certainly fast enough to render real-time 3D. And as this demo shows, web integration of the technologies is quite seamless.
That’s why we embed Java in Flash.
-Joshua
Doesn’t work for me. But I’m running Linux so probably not your target demographic.
I get the flash stuff, but no 3d.
FYI. The applet loads (a bunch of logging stuff is dumped to the console), but it never seems to display anything. I’m also running 1.5.0 (+ firefox browser)
[quote]Doesn’t work for me. But I’m running Linux so probably not your target demographic.
I get the flash stuff, but no 3d.
FYI. The applet loads (a bunch of logging stuff is dumped to the console), but it never seems to display anything. I’m also running 1.5.0 (+ firefox browser)
[/quote]
Could you do me a favor and right-click the Flash movie? What version of Flash does it say you are using? (Version 7 is required for transparency to work, which is necessary for this demo.)
Thanks,
-Joshua
Apparently, despite the marketing fud, it doesn’t seem to be actual 3D in Flash. It’s rather a separate applet being controlled by a flash file through the browser’s Java script.
But still this is not necessary as the applet seems to be completely stand-alone.
Seb
…and i’m lucky if i get more than 2-3 frames per second from my maxed out apple (1.5GHz G4 laptop + 9700 (128MB))
Excuse me for the idiot question, but didn’t Ideaworks start distributing a java-3d-in-Flash library a couple of years ago?
I know they were desperately looking for something useful to do with their 3d software renderer written in bytecode, and I thought that a flash add-on was one of them…
[quote]Apparently, despite the marketing fud, it doesn’t seem to be actual 3D in Flash. It’s rather a separate applet being controlled by a flash file through the browser’s Java script.
But still this is not necessary as the applet seems to be completely stand-alone.
[/quote]
Quite right: It’s “in” Flash in the same sense as there is money “in” my pocket.
From a technology standpoint, you’re right that you do not need Flash – our viewing platform is quite capable all by itsef. But being able to use Flash to tell a linear product story, and then incorporate interactive 3D (implemented in an applet) is a big deal to creative types, who really love to author content in Flash.
This integration example, like the rest of our software, is really about improving the workflow in creative services, product development, and product marketing. The people want to use Flash. Give the people what they want! 
-Joshua
[quote]Excuse me for the idiot question, but didn’t Ideaworks start distributing a java-3d-in-Flash library a couple of years ago?
I know they were desperately looking for something useful to do with their 3d software renderer written in bytecode, and I thought that a flash add-on was one of them…
[/quote]
I think that engine is now part of their mobile gaming platform.
They have a product called “Optimaze” which is a compression tool for Flash. They used to have a product called Vecta3D, but that seems to have disappeared. The vecta3d web site redirects to the optimaze site. As near as I can tell from the screen shots, Vecta3D was very similar to Swift3D from electric rain. Swift3D is strictly for pre-rendered animations – they do not try to do the projections in real-time. Vecta3D might have been interactive… it’s hard to tell from what I’ve been able to find.
Basically, using just ActionScript, the Flash programming language, you can generate interactive 3D with shaded polygons. Lots of people have done this, resulting in lots of little origami space ships flying through Flash-land. Trouble is that there is no addressable raster primitive in Flash, so texture mapping is next to impossible. Also, ActionScript is really slow (compared to a JIT language like Java), so it’s not possible to animate high-polygon scenes.
-Joshua
Flash Player 7
Works like a charm here (Opera 7.60 (beta) and JRE1.5.0).
Very nice
I installed Flash 7 and JRE 1.4.2_06 on a Linux system here – looks like Flash has some problems…
Flash 7 does not support transparency in Linux. See this demo:
http://www.webwasp.co.uk/tutorials/a27-transparent/index.php
Also, there seems to be a problem with LocalConnections on that platform, so communications from the Java applet back to Flash are severed as well. See this demo:
http://www.mustardlab.com/developer/flash/jscommunication/
So it looks like the technique will not work in Linux/Mozilla until these problems are resolved.
-Joshua