Interactive 3D World Map for TATA Communications
STC Associates asked me to produce yet another coverage map for TATA Communications! This time, since the data was pretty light and it included satellites, we thought doing it in 3D would add a bit of shinny. Truth be told, I am a 3D junky (obviously).
(more…)
Dynamic 3D Animation
A cool little flash project built in collaboration with STC Associates for an event during International Telecoms Week (ITW) 2010 in DC. The party was attended by over 1700 guests. They were asked to vote for a keyword to best represent the future of telecom. The result were rendered using this animation.
Originally I started using the built in 3D of FP10: that was a waste. Text looked horrible and native AS3 3D controls are not great. So I switched to Away3D and the amazing TextField3D class. The DOF is a simple blur applied to the ObjectContainer3D. I had a random movement on the camera but that was turned off in the event’s version.
Here are pictures of the animation and projection setup during the event.
OSM Mapped to a 3D Plane with as3Dmod
Building on my first experiment with OpenStreetMaps and Away3D, I decided to cook up two more!
The first one uses a block grid to display the map in 3D space. On zoom the blocks rotate 360. I used the ModestMap TweenMap, displayed in on the left, to allow control and capture the map’s bitmap data.
The second example uses a 3D plane to display the map’s data. I added a Perlin deformation with as3Dmod to create a wave or fabric like floating look.
The stats shows a rapidly increasing memory usage due to ModestMaps’ tile caching (defaults to 256 tiles). Once I have it cleaned up, I will upload the source code for these 
Demo on HYPE's blog
Last night, while waiting for the London Flash Designer and Developer Meetup to start, I decided to create a demo using HYPE and Away3DLite. It is nice to be able to just tinker with complex renderings using very little code and focus on visuals.
In this demo Away3DLite is used to render 900 cubes and animate the camera. HYPE processes the sound being streamed (Magenta) and resizes the cubes accordingly. Two Bitmap Canvas are used to display the 3D rendering of Away3DLite. One is used to create the blur trail. The actual code needed to render this is less the 40 lines. The rest is AS3 structure.
Using frameworks like HYPE and Away3DLite allows us to go back to the innocent days of AS2 and use code as a pure creative enabler. That’s probably why I was a bit thrown off when another attendant of the meeting said he didn’t like using frameworks, which is ironic for a Flex developer.
I don’t think people appreciate how lucky we are to have open source frameworks like these available. Well, I do! Thank you for all your hard work. Please check out HYPE and Away3D for some serious fun!
OpenStreetMap... The solution to Google's limitations
It was with much disappointment that I discovered Google would not allow us to manipulate its map tiles with Flash bitmap processing. Thus limiting greatly what is possible visually with the look and feel of their maps. Of course that also means no Away3D, PV3D, etc…
I managed to customize the look of Google Maps by using Tweener’s de-saturation feature to render the map tiles in Black and White. Many have posted on the Google Maps API bug reports and feature requests. Google is afraid that we would harvest their tiles and does not want to put a cross domain policy file.
I decided to revisit the issue and to look for alternate services that would allow such use. Of couse no luck with Yahoo! and Microsoft, just like Google, they want to protect their tiles.
But behold the power of open source: OpenStreetMap.org and ModestMaps. Using the Flash API from ModestMaps for openstreetmap and Away3D, I was able to map the maps onto a cube and have it renders beautifully. OpenStreetMap allows you to go trigger happy with their tiles, just as long as you add their security policy file to you project (see the source code). You can even download the tiles for offline use!
Randomized 3D Layout using Coordy and Away3D
New year, new homepage! My new year’s resolution: Publish a new experiment every month… And update this blog more often!
This month it is using a newly discovered layout API called Coordy. The 3D is rendered using Away3D and tweens are handled via TweenMax. For coloring the cube I draw a random feed from the Kuler API and the blog data is a custom RSS Feed from my WordPress blog.PureMVC was used to structure the application. Coded in Flash Builder Beta 2 and designed in the Flash IDE.
Update: Added a new component: as3sfxr. This is a Flash 10 library to dynamically generate sounds for classic arcade games. It even included a random function!
Update: Souce code here.
Dashboard and content bubles...
After sitting in limbo for a while TATA Communications and STC Associates finally launched the updated New World Ready site. Due to launch in October 2009 and subject to a very aggressive timeline for completion, I decided to use the GAIA Framework to build the site. On top of SEO optimization and Deep Linking, GAIA handles dynamic assets loading (like XML Data, Images, etc…) flawlessly. A real time life-saver.
Developed for the earlier version of the site, I had to update the 3D quiz to run in the flash site. I also developed a simple but custom video player. Coded in Flex and designed in the Flash IDE.
3D Carousel using Away3D
Latest iteration of my 3D carousel. Built for re-use, since this is a popular format these days. It uses Away3D, an extensive XML config and external XML data. Constructed using PureMVC, it makes extensive use of the ExternalInterface to interact with the site (and Google Analytics).
Sound Spectrum Rendered using Awa3DLite
Using Flash I generated animated sound spectrum renderings and edited them into two videos. The second video uses the new Away3DLite framework for Flash player 10. Amazingly the swf came in at 28kb and the framerate is great!
First video:
A 2D rendering using bars, circles, blur filters all rendered to a bitmap.
Second video:
3D renderings using Away3DLite and 484 cubes
Video of interactive 3D projects
While going through some of the recent interactive 3D work I produced, I thought it would be nice to create a video showcase. I also wanted to explore the workflow for capturing and editing these flash projects in action. Music is by Danger.