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Thread: Community produced open source 3d engine.

  1. #1
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    Community produced open source 3d engine.

    This may actually seem like a double post on the 3d, but I believe that it is relevant to both forums. I hope that this is ok to post here too, but mods delete if appropriate:

    I'm currently working on a community produced, open-source, 3d engine in AS2 and AS3 and wondered if anyone would be interested in contributing to the following AS2 Vector class:

    http://zest3d.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4

    Any input would be much appreciated and welcome. Thank you!

    RipX

  2. #2
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    Just wondering why you're not going with Sandy/ Away3D or papervision, and develop your own branch to do what you'd like, then in theory it could be added back to the main package ?

    Also which may be of interest, the guy who did the ecoZoo site is planning on open sourcing his engine, which really rocks big time.

    Squize.

  3. #3
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    Hey Squize, hope that you are well....

    Yeah, for me, I see this mostly as a personal education in 3d math and managing such a project should be rather fun. I hear that papervision will soon have to be paid to attain a download of the source code (maybe i'm mistaken) and perhaps some of the other engines may follow this model (I hope not). But ultimatly I would like to make it so that there is a definate free open source solution.

    I've seen the ecoZoo site and was really impressed with what I saw, but it looked like papervision with a tween engine of some sort. Didn't realise that it was his own engine.. anyway, very impressive.

    Also, I hope to direct this to be a lightweight engine, running on older machines that may exist in libraries or schools or third world countries, thus enabling a large demographic to use 3d graphics in flash.

    RipX

  4. #4
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    I'm really interested in pre calculated sine / cosine tables as described here:

    http://zest3d.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5

    any ideas?

    RipX

  5. #5
    Custom User Title Incrue's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by RipX
    Also, I hope to direct this to be a lightweight engine, running on older machines

    RipX
    Them forget flash

  6. #6
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    @Incrue: I understand why that may be a responce however, I would still like to develop in flash, as many browsers in the demographic described above, have the flash plugin and the purpose is to accomplish this in flash!

    RipX

  7. #7
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    I did the same for the very same reasons mainly for self education. I wont learn much if I take a existing engine- from a coding perspective.

    @RipX: how come the whole forum and blog don´t list a single demo?,- are you starting with a engine or do you already have some interactive swf demos?

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    Hi Render...

    Actually, I've written a couple of pseudo examples and recently made a simple moving 3d landscape based on heightmaps etc but not in this engine...i'm starting this thing as a more full scale engine from scratch today! I figured in doing so, it would be great for members of the community to get involved and follow this from its very early stages and hopefully contribute to the parts that mistify my brain in the later stages.

    Also i've found there seems to be a lack of step by step examples detailing the progress of developing in this way, so I hope that it lets people will check it out and learn this stuff along the way for time to come!

    So to answer your question, i've got a couple of demos of 3d stuff i've written but not in this engine so to post them in regard to this engine would be pointless!

    Note aside, I know that you've been working on 3d stuff for a long time, any input from yourself at any point would be fantastic!

    The classes that i'm working on are being slowly added in the developer lounge over at: http://zest3d.freeforums.org/viewforum.php?f=2

    RipX

  9. #9
    When you know are. Son of Bryce's Avatar
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    I'm very interested in following the development of this engine. I have some experience using Papervision but I have no idea what's going on underneath the hood. If I wanted something too unique I would have no idea how to implement it.

    This is a cool project RipX, I'm glad you're pursuing it.

  10. #10
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    "I hear that papervision will soon have to be paid to attain a download of the source code (maybe i'm mistaken)"

    I hope so ( Ths mistaken bit ). I can't see it being a paid for option as there are other branches of development based off it, there are a lot of people contributing to it, and the guys who develop it earn an obscene amount of money developing sites with it / giving presentations etc. already.

    To be honest I can only see the point of doing this as a learning exercise for those who join in, so hopefully you'll get some people who are keen to learn how to do their own engines.

    I did an optimised version of the distort class from Sandy:
    http://blog.gamingyourway.com/conten...y/Polygons.swf
    But that's as3, and if you're doing everything from scratch, well then it's all from scratch and my class is no real use

    Squize.

  11. #11
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    so hopefully you'll get some people who are keen to learn how to do their own engines.
    Yes...I hope so

    I posted the zest3d.core.data.Matrix4 class at http://zest3d.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5 if you guys want to check it out, there is a link to a nice tutorial by Senocular on the thread before the class post. Anyone wanting to learn this stuff should check it out!

    RipX
    Last edited by RipX; 07-14-2008 at 08:32 PM.

  12. #12
    Custom User Title Incrue's Avatar
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    New flash will came with a matrix3d class,if i were you i would wait to learn how do build a 3d engine for it
    About the forget what i mean was, if you really want it to run in not so new computers, this is too much for flash right now.

    About sine/cosine, maybe you want also to try this, the poly guy claims its 14x faster
    Also take a look on linkedLists, they are insanely faster tham arrays

  13. #13
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    Excellent resource Incrue, i've sat and played with this for a short while but I already see that as soon as you wrap it inside a method its speed is close to that of the built in Math class again. I posted the results of some benchmark tests here:

    http://zest3d.freeforums.org/viewtop...2&t=8&p=16#p16

    RipX

  14. #14
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    Yeah you need to inline those to make it worth while, he does say on the site about it "However, you have to use it directly - do not place the code inside a function, because the additional function call sweeps out the performance gain, and you are left with an approximation that is actually slower compared to a native Math.sin() or Math.cos() call"

    I guess you ported them to as2 hence the slight speed increase which shows a loss ( According to the author ) in as3 ?

    In terms of as3 I've found it really worth while to do the whole optimisation thing again, something I've not done since as1, as you're more often than not running big ass loops over and over, so a couple of ms saved here and there makes a huge difference.
    So if you can inline those methods in the as3 build of your engine I'd really go for it.

    Squize.

  15. #15
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    Sounds like that makes alot of sence to me!

    To keep you guys up to speed, i'm going to be working on the Matrix4Math class library today. Just a bunch of statics to perform mathematical computations on the zest3d.core.data.Matrix4 class.

    RipX

  16. #16
    formerly hooligan2001 :) .hooligan's Avatar
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    Build your own 3d engine, that's crazy talk. All seriousness, this project sounds like a really neat idea. I always found if I want to learn something I need to build it from the ground up.

    Community based sounds interesting, hope it all works out.

    Hope to be using your engine soon

    .hooligan

  17. #17
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    lol...I may as well be.. I've already got this to a point where I have a rotating polygon using a matrix class to compute the calculations! Nothing really that I would consider able to demo, but it is starting to get some simple results - So anyone wanting to learn this stuff should really get involved now...i'll have PV by Sunday! Yeah right rofl

    Tomorrow, I hope to get a simple cube demo out, we'll see! g'night y'all!

    RipX

  18. #18
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    actually, i posted it anyway

    http://zest3d.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11

    RipX

  19. #19
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    project sounds like a good learning experience. But shouldn't the focus be on flash 10 3D engine?

    if I was going to make one I would be targeting the latest player / technology. I think that providing an AS2 3D solution is going down the wrong path.

    Good luck though.
    lather yourself up with soap - soap arcade

  20. #20
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    Yeah, I understand that rational, In the future I would like to get involved with the F10 3d API , but as I posted somewhere else I just want to build this a learning exercise and to run 3d on low spec machines and machines commonly found in areas that don't renew tech. I feel like many of the current engines have some excellent features but add a bit of initial overhead onto the processor.

    More to the point, if I build a 3d engine with a nice snazzy 3d api what am I going to learn about 3d math? I suspect, very little!

    RipX

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