WHAT IS THE DF3DI?
What is the DF3DI? The DF3DI is short for the 'Director / Flash 3D Interface.' This interface is a set of scripts that allow authoring and playback of Shockwave 3D content directly from Flash 8, using ActionScript 2.0/3.0. Why do we want to do this? For several reasons, primary among them is to broaden the pool of developers that author Shockwave 3D content [ including our students ], to allow developers and students to leverage skills in Flash while authoring hardware-accelerated 3D content, and to promote authorship of web 3D in a modern language that has better support for modern educational issues such as true class inheritance, strong typing, variable scoping, etc. This not only makes for a better teaching platform, but also makes for a stronger development environment in the long run. We’ll write the lingo, you build worlds.
It is the focus of this work to expose to the DF3DI all available S3D properties and methods, with a minimum of modification. That said, there are a few areas in which we have added customization to our package, areas that have troubled S3D developers in the past. The DF3DI contains custom methods that greatly extend the collision detection abilities of the standard S3D implementation. Likewise, it incorporates additions to support better-performing camera overlays and 2D sprites, binning and culling of non-visible scene elements, and loading textures and assets from disk or the web. Finally, we are supporting the standard S3D renderer [ both #openGL and #DirectX ], and also plan to support the Irrlicht 3D Xtra [ http://irrlicht.director3d.de/ ]
It is important to recognize that the DF3DI is a programming interface to the core of Shockwave 3D. Thus, it is not a game engine per se. It has libraries and methods that are useful to creating games and simulations in S3D, but contains to game logic in and of itself. You (the ActionScript developer) would have to write such as a part of your application. There is no drag-and-drop authoring mode: we’re programmers building tools for other programmers. If you want WYSIWYG 3D, look elsewhere.
Likewise, it is important to note that we are not removing the need for the Shockwave plug-in to playback content. The flash plug-in contains zero ability to playback hardware accelerated 3D – the DF3DI merely allows ActionScript control over what is happening in an underlying Shockwave framework. So the end-user would still need the Shockwave plug-in for web delivery [ or your compiled executable for a download / disc methodology ].
Right now, you can’t, because we are still building it. We expect to release a version 1.0 sometime in (we wish we had a better handle on when... been busy with that games degree thing...). There will likely be pre-release alpha and beta builds before that. We will be releasing the full source of the DF3DI under an open-source license: you are free to incorporate the interface in your own work, both commercial and private. The only restriction is that credit is given in the comments of your source code to the authors and their institution. We would prefer that such credit also be given publicly in your title through the inclusion of the DF3DI logo on your credits page, but this is not required for use.
WHAT ABOUT ACTIONSCRIPT 3?
The DF3DI is being written in such a way that AS3 support will be easily added when necessary (in fact, we're working on it right now!). Not a problem.
HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU?
You can email the primary authors of the interface, Professor Andrew Phelps and Professor Christopher Egert at [ amp at it dot rit dot edu ] and [ cae at it dot rit dot edu ] respectively.
DISCLAIMER
The work described in these pages, and this website itself, are not affiliated with Adobe Inc. in any way. The DF3DI is the sole work of the authors above.