Shockwave 3D vs. Flash 3D - a discussion...

[gerbick]

Hi there... just some quick questions about what you guys may think about Shockwave 3D versus Flash 3D.

I normally tend to hate to ask questions like this; however, which are you guys favoring? Although I am just now getting used to Flash, just received my Swish3D plug-in for 3D MAX, and what not, I have began to play with Director 8.5 (been a LOOOOONG time since I used it... I think version 6.0 was the last time I used Director, serious) and got the free plug-in for exporting from 3D MAX, Shockwave 3D files (*.w3d files)... and beyond some of the glitches I have found (like animations outside of Character Studio and Reactor seem to be overlooked on export), I am finding myself more enthused with the premise of Shockwave 3D.

But not Director. And I thought Flash had an interface that only a fanatic, or mother (no disrespect to the Flash wizards here at Flashkit.com, my respect to those able to pull the power from Flash like they do) could like. Director is just... well, cluttered, and not friendly... AT ALL.

But, I do like the results... texture maps, actually relatively small sizes for simple animations...

so... which do you guys like the most? From a results perspective... or any that you wish to share.

[Mr Mayonnaise]

It's kinda sad really, since shockwave is so much more expernsive than Flash, but check this out to see shockwave 3d at it's finest. -- [link]http://playcom1.netbabyworld.com:8080/boatrace3d[/link]. It's absolouley amazing. But guys, be honest, do you reckon it is actually possible to make a game like this, (or even better ) in Flash????

[momin]

Hi,

I am also *experimenting* with director 8.5.

Have to agree the results are very impressive. I have played around with it for about 2 weeks now, and I realised that to get the most out of even the 3d of director 8.5, I will really have to learn lingo! :-(

I love flash 3d (with swift 1) and can get very good results. the directr 3d is far superiour, but i tend to agree with you regarding the awful interface. I have tried playing around with Character studio and exported it to dir8.5, and have got some strange results. But then I am new to Character studio 3 and Max 4.

From what I understand director 8.5 addons (downloading third party 3d behaviours) will make it a lot easier.

I will definatly continue playing around with 8.5 but for now will remain developing with flash.

[newtheory]

I have been hearing a lot about this 3d plugin for Shockwave. I am a flash guy, but I’m just starting the task of learning lingo and all that jazz. Can anyone give me the name(s) of the plugin(s) that will export to Shockwave? Two respect points to the first person who tells me. I think 3d in flash is great I mostly use illustrate in 3ds max to export to flash, because I think its the smallest file size 3d. I say this without much experience in Shockwave. Again could someone tell what the plugin(s) name(s) is/are? Thanks.

-Aaron

[theMatrix]

You can download W3D exporters for MAX from

http://www.macromedia.com/software/d...ters/discreet/

good luck!

[gerbick]

the exporters for 3D content from 3DS MAX 4(and 3.1) are free from Macromedia.com - go to the Director Product page, and it will be there. Maya also has an exporter released for free. Catch is... you have to have those programs, as well as have Director 8.5.

As far as smallest size... that is really not always the case. I have an animation, a rubiks cube, and it is within Flash (via Swift3D MAX plug-in) and it is 243k, with animations, what not... and the same file in Shockwave (I am still tweaking the Lingo code though) is only 83k. And that is with a (simple) JPEG texture map on one side. The Flash version looses this texture.

I have some others... but so far, Shockwave3D has been either as small as, of close enough to consider it a winner, as far as file sizes go. Occassionally (sp?), Flash does win out, big time...

Originally posted by newtheory
I have been hearing a lot about this 3d plugin for Shockwave. I am a flash guy, but I’m just starting the task of learning lingo and all that jazz. Can anyone give me the name(s) of the plugin(s) that will export to Shockwave? Two respect points to the first person who tells me. I think 3d in flash is great I mostly use illustrate in 3ds max to export to flash, because I think its the smallest file size 3d. I say this without much experience in Shockwave. Again could someone tell what the plugin(s) name(s) is/are? Thanks.

-Aaron

[acepage]

Its really about what you wanna pay. You can get good 3D in flash for about 400 or 500 US (including Vecta or Swift). You can get amazing 3D in Shockwave for about 1000 or 2000 US. If you buy 3D Studio Max and Shockwave then your gonna have to pay a lot. So the 3D you want is really about how much you wanna pay for it.

[gerbick]

Flash, is only 300-400 US, true. Vecta3d 1.0 Standalone is 59 US. Swift3D 1.0 Standalone is 169 US. The Vecta3D MAX Plugin is 194 US. The Swift3D MAX Plugin is (I prepurchased) 225 US...

Then, MAX itself is (for us non-students) 3000+ US.

True, Director Shockwave Studio 8.5 costs 1080+ US.

But, for advanced 3D design, the user will have MAX anyway... and for people like me, who bought all of the versions of Vecta/Swift, where are the savings?

It's the time involved on learning (or relearning in my case) Director is where Shockwave3D starts to not shine.

I think that I represent a small portion of the group here though...

Originally posted by acepage
Its really about what you wanna pay. You can get good 3D in flash for about 400 or 500 US (including Vecta or Swift). You can get amazing 3D in Shockwave for about 1000 or 2000 US. If you buy 3D Studio Max and Shockwave then your gonna have to pay a lot. So the 3D you want is really about how much you wanna pay for it.

[sonofdolemite666]

Bottom line is that using Shockwave3D you can create anything from Everquest to Final Fantasy to Quake and be able to play online with multiple users.

[Markosef]

are you sure you can do all that with SHOCK 3D??
I haven't seen anything similar at shcokwave just some stupid games which are sometimes worse than those in FLASH??
do you havesome good examples of good games in SHOCK???
at shockwave.com there isn't anything and if they can't make anything decent i doubt that other can, exspecially some multi-player quake game.
Although i wish it could be.

[D-Meister]

Dir8.5 is still very young.

Right now people are just playing around and all.

It's amazing for Product presentations, walkthrus and all, but a 3D game is a whole different ballgame.

Flash3D is nice, but fake. It's cool to have cubes spinning around on the website, but you can't do anything interactive with it. I mean really interactive, not just spinning-cube-stops-then-you-can-ckick-on-something-and-go-to-another-keyframe !

I believe that we'll be seeing some mind-boggingly cool shockwave 3D in the future.

Once the plugin is as wide-spread as it's little brother, the flash plugin.

$0.02 !

[Markosef]

I saw some games in 3D shockwave but they are so big and they look nice, but first i also needed to download some other plugin and then i am not sure if it is shockwave or something else, some boat racing. It is crapy game but looks like some game from nintendo 64 so it is ok i would say and it is 3D. HOPE that some people will soon start to make shockwave games which use some 3D because this one i found are crap and FLASH games are much better and also have smaller files.

[gerbick]

WildTangent? I think they had a boat racing, as well as car (monster truck) racing game as part of their demos. been a while since I been there...

anyway, totally believe that Shockwave3D is real new/young/undiscovered. Heck, think about it, Flash3d is JUST NOW coming into it's own...

Originally posted by Markosef
I saw some games in 3D shockwave but they are so big and they look nice, but first i also needed to download some other plugin and then i am not sure if it is shockwave or something else, some boat racing. It is crapy game but looks like some game from nintendo 64 so it is ok i would say and it is 3D. HOPE that some people will soon start to make shockwave games which use some 3D because this one i found are crap and FLASH games are much better and also have smaller files.

[plug]

check out this (got it mailed to me from a buddy)

http://www.noisytoys.tv/testing/wallball

[pdlmobility]

I think the difference is actually considerable.

When you animate 3D in swift or vecta it renders the animation into frames. The playback is made of frame by frame animations.

D8.5 shockwave actually puts the 3d model into the users machine and it is rendered on the fly with direct 3d.

So in shockwave 3d you can have true 3d interactivity, whereas with swift and vecta you have to make renderings for each point of view you want.

That's why the shockwave stuff is so small, its not rendered vector images, its a little 3d file and the player has the realtime renderer built in.

someone please correct me if I'm wrong

[gerbick]

I agree with you pdlmobility. However... the rigors of getting Shockwave3D to work correctly is so time-consuming... well, maybe not to a Director wizard, but man, it is so frustrating that my animations, for the most part, are not working when I export to Shockwave3D. but, I can render an animation within Swift3D MAX plug-in, and it does fine on export.

I do like using, and keeping textures. And, I still argue that the filesize, if done correctly, can be smaller in Shockwave than Flash, and Lingo adds some REAL COOL stuff to the mix, even moreso than ActionScript, but due to my unfamiliarity with Lingo, it is taking me longer to get a product out than with Flash renderers.

confused? yep... I am.

I still like them both though. Just need to find the sweet spot on the animations... Character Studio is just so alien to me... I would rather use keyframing.

I like both results, but the photorealism is just... well, what I am looking for...

[pdlmobility]

... the rigors of getting Shockwave3D to work correctly is so time-consuming...

Yeah, well I think everyone, even hardcore director users, all agree that the director inerface is cluttered and cludgy, and there isn't enough quick and dirty premade tools and effects set up in the program. Look how long it took them to get pre made lingo behaviors for the standard actions everyone needs.

...I can render an animation within Swift3D MAX plug-in, and it does fine on export...

Swift is very cool. a bit limited but very cool.
I would have to say though that I found Illustrate to have much better wireframe rendering quality and size, though its difficult to tweak cause it has so many adjustable parameters.

... Character Studio is just so alien to me... I would rather use keyframing...

Its a difficult plugin to use for Max. Again I think the reason is its sophistication and advanced toolset that make it so difficult. I've been doing 3D for over 5 years and aligning a mesh to the biped just makes me want to scream.
You can really see the power of character studio if you get a bunch of motion capture files, then you can splice motion sequences together to create combined movements.

...I like both results, but the photorealism is just... well, what I am looking for...

absolutely. I wish they would just put 3D live rendering into flash instead of trying to push director. Its too expensive and confusing for what web people are trying to do. Someone else is going to beat them to it if they don't wise up.

FYI there is a game development streamlined version of Max coming out that is supposedly free, to capture the "mod" game design community. Maybe we could suggest they export shockwave player format, so we could make all 3d sequences without actually touching director.

If wishes were horses....

[gerbick]

Originally posted by pdlmobility
...I like both results, but the photorealism is just... well, what I am looking for...

absolutely. I wish they would just put 3D live rendering into flash instead of trying to push director. Its too expensive and confusing for what web people are trying to do. Someone else is going to beat them to it if they don't wise up.

Probably why they have this link up now:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/d...pecial/survey/

hmm... now, I wonder if we can get enough people to actually petition them to SIMPLIFY/Lower the cost of Director, or fold it all into Flash...

FYI there is a game development streamlined version of Max coming out that is supposedly free, to capture the "mod" game design community. Maybe we could suggest they export shockwave player format, so we could make all 3d sequences without actually touching director.

If wishes were horses....

yeah, gMax actually has a Flash/Shockwave (it is definitely not your typical Windows GUI, that much I DO know, but the Discreet guy would not answer my questions) frontend. I think they are not excluding anything, and when it really boils down to it, gMax will be ultimately for games anyway. I can definitely see a Shockwave3D output in its future.

So... how can I get enough people to hit that Macromedia link, and help out with the "future" direction of Director

[AzN.What]

warez ownz buting stuff i kno this gonna get deleted tho

[eyezberg]

Hi Folks
(my 1st ever post here, hi there :-)
's far as I read in the excellent mag 'CreateOnline, the guys at macromedia will never (say never) include 3D in Flash, 'coz what they want is keep the palyer (ie plug-in) as small and downloadfriendly as possible!
And the stuff you can do in Flash (fake 3D, it's really 2D projections)is really only eyecandy, no?
Grab a hold of the july issue of the mag (issue 014), it is sold in the states (it's from the UK), really good articles in there about everything concerning Flash, interviews with the Macromedia guys and so on..