Starting up with PaperVision 3D

Lately I've been given a few interesting challenges, I had to learn ActionScript 3, Flex, Air, learned to hate a little bit Flash (hate it or misunderstand it ... whatever comes first) . Anyway, learning is always interesting but Learning while on a deadline is not what I call the Perfect Mental State, but we managed, and when a breather was necessary to put ideas down, we had to start all over again, still in the ActionScript world but this time PaperVision is being called to handle some graphical requirements.

Now, I had some general knowledge of Papervision, enough to put it on top of the list as soon as the requirements came up, so I jumped at it . I went with version 2.0, no need to start with "old" code :) , and became quickly overwhelmed by it :) , Cameras? Viewports? Scenes? And that's just to get a cold, grey screen going :) . Luckily, we live in G-World, and information is but a keystroke away, so I found a couple (hundred :) ) of nice Tutorials that offered a Model / Framework / Template approach to it all .

First is the Papervision 2 tutorials , it covers all basic aspects that you need to get started and gives you a Base Template that covers all your setup needs . I then found another series of tutorials that also ofered some template classes, but this one was a bit more modular and I'm now working over this .. plus, the very first thing they did was draw up a cool space ship, so it was a winner :)

Now, this got me going but I still have a long way to go, either way it's good exercise to share these initial steps (feel free to point me to other interesting starting points ;) ) , meanwhile, the Papervision Blog brings us an excelent Showcase of what people are doing with it and this blog entry throws a huge list of examples too, so plenty to look at if you want to take a look at Papervision :)

I leave you with a good example of a combination of tools, including Papervision that has brought Flash, at least to me, to a different level than it used to be :), more information here

Papervision - Augmented Reality (extended) from dpinteractive on Vimeo.