I'd like to be able to warp a YouTube Player object in Flash around a sphere shape.
Is this possible?
No. Youtube player or similar objects use StageVideo, this thing is in a separate layer than everything else, including Stage3D. You can try grabbing that video each frame and making a texture out of that to draw over that sphere, I expect it'll be very slow if at all possible.
Also, "wrap", not "warp".
If instead of using the Youtube player you got a video URL you could try to use a VideoTexture with Away3D. Truth be told, depending on the resolution of the video that will probably be a resource hog.
Here's a tutorial with a plane instead of a sphere, but it should be pretty similar.
http://www.ilike2flash.com/2012/11/videotexture-with-away3d-4.html
I've had more success with projecting video on 3d meshes using C++ frameworks like Cinder or OpenFrameworks.
Related
I am developing a 2D game using Adobe Flash Pro CS 6 and ActionScript3. I am having some trouble in developing some effects e. g. bomb blast, particle effects etc. I want to know, whether I can use After Effects for those and then use them the game. Please suggest me.
There's no problem of using any graphics data from any program in Flash as long as flash can support the file format.
In case of After Effects graphics, you'll probably have to export them as a PNG file sequence, so they'll most probably be pretty large in file size.
To import:
You can either make a movie clip and just import the first image of a sequence with CRTL/CMD + R and Flash with be "smart" enough to suggest to load the other files of that sequence.
If you want, you can load them during run-time, add them to the array/vector, create a Bitmap object and change it's bitmapData property on enter frame/timer to animate it.
If you are decided on using the actual After Effects graphics rather than emulating them using an Actionscript 3 particle effect, I'd actually recommend exporting them as video on an alpha channel and then converting that to flv and then hosting them individually and streaming them in via Netstream and placing them on the proper layer via an addchild. If bandwidth isn't a huge concern here, this would be a good method for achieving this effect.
Here is some documentation on Netstream. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/dev/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118a9b90204-7d4e.html
If this seems like it might achieve the desired result, I can explain further if needed.
My goal is to test Flash 3D environment performance by generating lots of 3D cubes, rotating them and reading FPS.
I know that I can rotate 2D objects in 3D space. For example, I can construct a cube with 6 movie clips, rotating them and putting them together accordingly. Then I can generate lots of these cubes in random x,y,z locations (predefined area in front of viewport), rotate them and read fps.
But then I read about this hardware acceleration and it's unclear to me, when it is activated/used. Certain conditions must be met. I know that it must be allowed by the user (right click->settings->enable hardware acceleration) or if it is embedded through object tag, wmode=direct must be set.
That's from viewers side, but what from developers?
If I draw a simple red rectangle on stage, and user has enabled hardware acceleration, does that mean that graphic information will get rendered on GPU?
I'm reading various sources and "Adobe Flash 11 Stage3D Game Programming" book, and from what I gather, in order to render graphical information on GPU, I have to explicitly call Stage3D class in AS3, then I can draw my 2d/3d objects there.
Which is it - if I want my app to be run in hardware acceleration mode (and its enabled from viewers side), does it happen automatically no matter what the content in my flash file? Or do I have to add the Stage3D class there.
Thank you.
Will be waiting for the answer.
First off: Don't mix up 2 distinct concepts in Flash:
General Hardware Acceleration
This was introduced mainly for video playback in Flash Player 10. I am not sure if it used for graphics at all. It has nothing to do with rendering 3D Graphics directly on the GPU.
GPU Support
With Flash Player 11, Adobe introduced Stage3D. This is an interface through which Flash can render graphics utilizing the GPU, if available. On Windows it uses Direct3D, on Mac OpenGl. The classic Flash DisplayList Graphics API does not support this. You have to go through the Stage3D Api, as explained in the book you have mentioned. To use GPU Support in the browser the embed tag needs the attribute wmode set to "direct". Working directly with the Stage3D Api is not easy and you have to learn the concepts of 3D Programming, Shader Programming, etc. for doing this. There are some libraries which help working with Stage3D. For 3D there is i.e Away3D. If you just need 2D graphics with gpu support, Starling is a very popular framework these days.
Here's a function that converts a movieclip into a bitmap. I use normal flash to create what is going to be shown on screen, then convert the movieclips to bitmaps and delete the movieclips:
private function fConvertClip(pClip: MovieClip, pWidth: int, pHeight: int): Bitmap {
var bd: BitmapData = new BitmapData(pWidth, pHeight, true, 0x00000000);
bd.draw(pClip, null, null, null, null, true);
aBitmaps.push(bd);
var bmp: Bitmap = new Bitmap(bd, "auto", false);
bmp.smoothing = true;
return bmp;
}
Don't turn on the hardware acceleration setting. In general, you control what's on the gpu with code. Bitmapdata is on the gpu so you convert everything that goes on the screen to bitmaps.
gotoandlearn.com has great tutorial videos on this.
You can create anything in normal flash - shapes, gradients, dropshadows, dynamic text, programmed coloring, etc. - and convert it all to bitmaps with programming while your game is running. You don't need to import images/spritesheets/animations. Have artists give you everything in vector. So when the user wants to change the color of a car, you simply convert the code instead of loading/importing a bitmap of the car in red.
I made a simple game where squares collect crystals and bring them to a base and replicate. They are just .png images that rotate and move and yet when their number becomes greater than 500, the game starts to lag out. In Java I'm able to do a similar thing with 30,000 units. Could I be doing something wrong or is Flash just not that capable?
I'm using Flash Builder.
I get the image like this:
[Embed(source="../lib/red.png")]
public var redImgClass:Class;
public var redImg = new redImgClass();
Then I pass redImg to a "unit" class which takes an instance of "Bitmap"
I change its "rotation" and x,y members every frame.
Am I doing something wrong here?
you're not using Stage3D. If you use Starling, ND2D or write your own Stage3D wrapper you'll be able to get better performance.
You can also take a look at Jackson Dunstan's blog, this post is especially helpful: http://jacksondunstan.com/articles/2279
Another possible answer is to use blitting, that is, use a single Bitmap object to draw everything on via copyPixels(). This requires that your rotating crystal PNG be replicated into a sequence of rotated images, which you then use instead of directly changing rotation property. This approach is more performance-friendly, and does not depend on video card performance like Stage3D does.
Adobe's manual on blitting
Some discussion on blitting done by game devs
Daniel's answer is correct in that you should use the Stage3D APIs for greater performance. He didn't however mention that you should seriously consider using Starling, which wraps the Stage3D API with much easier to use classes:
Learn more about Starling here.
Example of the level of performance you could expect from Stage3D.
Starling is what you`re looking for (http://gamua.com/starling/)
i tried the hello example on the adobe site.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/hello-triangle.html
it works, but the context3D seems work on the stage's background in the lowest level. if i draw anything it will cover the 3d context.
i want to bring it to front or set it to a certain level. how can i do that?
also i was told if use 2d api and 3d api together , it will lower the performance of 3d,is it truth?In my works ,i still need 2d api ,for example, drawing the textfield .
Everything goes like this (from bottom to top):
StageVideo (1 or more instances) > Stage3D (1 or more instances) > Your regular display list.
And yes, regular display objects may degrade performance of Stage3D, therefore it may be better to use Stage3D alternatives of those. Some Stage3D accelerated frameworks already has some of those built in (like TextField in Starling).
No, you can't bring it to front.
2d and 3d not relates to each other. But of course, if you write 2d stuff that eat 100% of cpu, you'll get overal slow performance.
the only way is to get from the bottom layer of stage3D instance the rendered bitmap and display it on top of you displayList.. but it should work on each frame, thing that will affect the performance a lot and of course no mouse interaction... this solution will work only to display rendered scene on top of stage3D.. just a simulation
I am making a game, which is having a theater as room. However right now, it's only meant for simple "swf" shows. But i was wondering, if their is a requirement of a video, then is it possible to convert a plain video, to embed itself in an isometric environment. The video's dimensions would need to be skewed. Is it feasible ?
You can probably rotate the video into position using the 3D API. Try using rotationX, rotationY, and rotationZ. Also you might need to adjust the camera to not draw perspective.
There are also a whole bunch of AS3 isometric engines out there. Some of these might even support video.
I think you will need to use the flash.geom.Matrix class for this, because Isometric is different than 3D in that it maintains its size regardless of distance from the observer.
Have a look at the docs and you will find examples of how to skew an object.
flash.geom.Matrix