Let us present you prototype of a new service, which lets you to convert 3D-scenes into Alternativa3D engine format. Scenes may be viewed using chosen camera controller type, and you can post a links to scene on other sites.

Precess is quite easy — you upload scene file, set paths to all used textures, ajust some viewing parameters, and get flash-module ready to be used by others.

At this moment AlternativaPlayer imports scenes in 3ds-format, and we’re planning to support more popular formats soon.

Looking forward for your comments and suggestions at this forum thread.

AlternativaPlayer

There is the Alternativa3D 5.0.2 update on the site.

Changelog:

• Renamed Mesh methods:
  • addVertex -> createVertex
  • addFace -> createFace
  • addSurface -> createSurface
  • addAllFacesToSurface -> moveAllFacesToSurface
• Face property num renamed to verticesCount
• Added an ability to exclude objects from collision detection in CameraController (collisionIgnoreSet)
• Added an ability to handle camera movement start and stop in CameraController (onStartMoving, onStopMoving)
• Optimized polygons sorting during BSP-building
• Optimized operation sorting (signals system)
• Added singular mapping check for faces
• Bugs fixed in 3DS files loader (TD-1063, TD-1073, TD-1074, TD-1083)
• Fixed bug in TextureMaterial cloning (precision didn’t copy)
• Corrected some documentation errors

With a great feeling we’re pleased to inform you that we managed to win at Russian Flash Awards in two categories — “3D” and “Technical achievement”. Anton Volkov and Vladimir Babushkin flew to the capital to take part in a ceremony. They’re back with some diplomas and two strange-shaped prizes.

The present from Adobe is an invitation to represent Russia at Adobe Max 2008, this December in Milan.

Thank you everybody for your support and critics!

During last month we cleaned up the code, fixed annoying bugs, fasten engine performance by 25%, wrote documentation for classes and methods, and created some articles and tutorials for developers. We developed platform website, prepared licences, made through user registration for all Alternativa services, translated texts to English and placed everything on a new hosting.

Let us invite you to alternativaplatform.com!

You can get to know about our company and our products, register and get your free Alternativa3D non-commercial engine library.

There are some new services for developers:

• docs.alternativaplatform.com — documentation, articles and tutorials
• help.alternativaplatform.com — help on classes and methods
• bugs.alternativaplatform.com — bug and suggestions tracking system
• forum.alternativaplatform.com — experience exchange and talks

Welcome!

Finally, happened something we’ve been waiting for — Flash Player 10 preliminary version called “Astro” came out. New version lets to use in Alternativa3D faster and more quality drawing system and to optimize some counting routines.

We decided to do two develompents in parralel way — for Flash Player 9 and Flash Player 10. We’re planning to keep equal functions and API to make projects compilation easy for both players. So, after first 5.0 release we’ll release 5.0 FP10 too.

Here are earlier published demos with new drawing system without adaptive triangulation.

You have to have Flash Player 10 installed.

First of all we would like to say that some silence in blog was connected with very hard work, part of which is our beloved 3D-engine at its 5th version. Now we can tell that new architecture was worth working on it. With a great pleasure we created these two small demos for you, to show engine abilities.

Alternativa3D tech specs:

• Signals system — only nesessary calculations;
• BSP — quality polygon sorting, “sharp” crossings;
• n-gons support;
• reusing layers (only changed regions redrawing, polygons are independent);
• objects hierarchy;
• only necessary matrix, coords and UVs recalculating;
• perspective correction — dynamic triangulation;
• collision detection.

Isometric mode was also optimized and now works much faster.

And this is not all. In a future we’ll create and implement some new features::

• dynamic lighting and shadows (point and directional lights);
• bump lighting;
• parallax mapping;
• automatic UV-mapping;
• sprites, 3D-sprites;
• sprite lighting;
• texture objects;
• Global Illumination imitation;
• sprite pre-render system (phases render on server using uploaded 3D-models);
• animation system (including inverse kinematics);
• 3D-objects interactivity;
• physics simulation.

Besides that, Alternativa3D engine is already adapted for coming Flash Player 10. Texture correction and lighting will work faster.

This technology applications are rather wide::

• 3D online first- and third person games;
• architecture visualisation;
• multyuser entertainment media;
• promo-sites;
• advertising (including “3D-banners”);
• science фand educational interactive projects.

We hope that you share our passion. It is spring outside, everything grows and develops, so we are.

As an experiment we just tried to visualize an avatar using latest magically developed features (parallax-effect and bump).

Controls:

• Mouse move — move light source
• Mouse click — change light color
• Mouse wheel or +/- — change highlight curve

Despite all the russian holidays and clear Karpovich’s directive to forget about job and have some rest, I couldn’t let go an idea to make fast “bump light” not only from directional light source, but from spotlight too. This is relatively hard because light goes in all directions, so it seems that you’ll have to count lighting for every pixel… or not? I came up with an idea to modify normals map, to kinda “bulge” it in spotlight coordinates. Main issue is that it is not so hard to count it pixel by pixel, but it is slo-o-ow process. So I was forced to cast a spell find a way to modify normals map using standart Flash filters and blending modes.

We will use that in engine for sure, because our bet is do-it-once counting phases with further maps “baking”. When Hydra will come out with new Flash 10 we’ll just have to pass this routine to shaders.

Size: 1.6Mb

Controls:

• Mouse move — move light source
• Mouse click — change light color
• Mouse wheel or +/- — change material’s highlight curve
• Ctrl + wheel or +/- — change spotlight size
• Spacebar — nex tex

I hope now I can finally turn loose now :) Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

If you also take “heightmap”, you can create so called parallax effect, when texture is changed depending on view angle. We don’t need this for the game engine ’till we’ll got Flash Player 10. It will have an ability to write texture crunching scripts on Adobe’s Hydra language (they say it will use hardware acceleration). So it will be more like pixel shaders then.

Размер: 1Мб

Controls:

• Mouse — move
• Click — change light color
• Wheel or +/- — change specularity
• Space — nextex

Normal maps can be used to lighten sprites in the game. They have to be rendered or paint, but the effects worth it.

Controls:

• Mouse move — move light source
• Mouse wheel or up/down arrows — change specularity