And I am probably not the best person to survey the field because it
covers a lot of sub-topics and the folks who are the primary
contributors to Away, and Sandy and PV have far more expertise in
those topics than I do. So let me just tell you why Bunko exists.
01. I wanted my Sudoku game to display interesting behavior whenever
the player:
a. completed a row;
b. completed a column;
c. completed a sub-square;
d. solved all 81 cells correctly.
It was all running beautifully by the summer of 2003 in a Rich
Internet Experience based on Java with SWT. Try as I might, cobbling
together the various 3D pieces of Java, at that time, I could not get
anything like decent performance when all that 'animation noise' took
place.
02. I made the investment in learning ActionScript since clearly all
kinds of animation seemed to work just fine for people working in that
environment.
03. So, I come from no where near the world of 3D toolkits like Max.
Instead, I found that I could create some very attractive models quite
simply, for free, with SketchUp. In a couple of days I had some
simple shapes engraved with the letters of the alphabet. That's when
I first visited the three 3D toolkit sites, asking how I could
accomplish that with their APIs. Yes, I probably would like to write
something like "Hello World" and have it dance around the stage, but I
really would have been happy just to get the letter 'B' properly
'painted', shown in proper perspective, nicely visible with
interesting lighting effects as either the Glyph rotated or the 3rd
Person Camera gimballed itself around the world.
04. At the end of the day, all that Bunko does is help non-graphics-
artists, turn the letter 'B' into a properly-behaving Mesh [or, on
Sandy, a properly-behaving Shape3D]. Can it do that magic for every
'B' that every person playing with FontStruct ever imagined -- no. Can
it do it for hundreds of professional and amateur fonts that you can
download for free -- yes.
05. The example you see if you visit the URL is pretty exceptional.
I call it Intaglio, even though a good Italian artist would tell me I
am wrong. It is as close as any of the toolkits can come to properly
handling Z-ordering when, as in that example, a Glyph is shown with 3D
extrusion of arbitrary depth, but the 'top is left off' --
simultaneously exposing both 'inside' and 'outside' faces of the
primitives upon which a Mesh object is based. Maybe the reason you
are on this forum is because Alex wrote the only algorithm that knows
how to make the correct decision even when, as shown, the Glyph is
competing with the CoordinatePlanes and you are supposed to see
different materials on different external and internal surfaces.
06. So, if you want to put ones and twos over a race track, or 'Q's
and 'P's and 'K's and 'B's over a chess board, I think Bunko can help
you in special ways. On the other and, if you want your error
message, "Check Mate" to have proper, layout, depth and lighting under
any camera view, you should use Mssrs. Wu and Li's classes and
methods. It would be simple to create "Check Mate" with Bunko, but
not as simply and not as nicely as TextField3D will do that job.
Since I am still interested in getting 81 discrete numerals between
one and nine, all rotating at the same time without requiring one of
NVidia's personal super-computers, and since "The Dancing Wu LI
Masters" [you can check that reference on Amazon.com] know more about
typography than I ever will, I am not currently working on extending
Bunko to 'phrases from characters'.
07. And, as a final caveat, to the extent I understand where you are
coming from, Bunko is an AIR application requiring more than
introductory skills with ActionScript. I suspect you would want to
have a programmer at your disposal for successful set up and use in
producing your final results. I would recommend that you send the
source code for the example on the web site to your best programming
partner and get his/her opinion. They would likely vote in favor of
the easier coding with TextField3D.
On Jun 17, 9:18 pm, MadMax <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks tcorbet.
>
> Why/when would/should I use bunko glyphs (no idea what they really
> are) method 4, as opposed to the textfields in method 3.
>
> What are the important factors in deciding? What questions should I
> ask myself in deciding which path to choose? (Note I am no 3d expert,
> nor font expert, so many of the 3D terms commonly used are often
> foreign to me. eg glyphs)
>
> Cheers,
> Max
