My first aw3d project (http://www.vicware.com/flash/Flyover/FlyOver03.html) was functionality-wise a total failure but a very good education as far as the potential and usage of aw3d.
I just did my next project - http://www.vicware.com/flash/Atom/atom02.html which I thought would be much easier than the first one. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, although it looks pretty simple. Just a few notes, if anyone is interested: If you look at the demo you'll see the atom - you can spin it, and add and remove, with toggles, the parts to the atom (electron shell, nucleus, etc). I even have the protons and neutrons in the nucleus randomly jiggling, as often depicted in film and video. The element is fictional (Vicwarium), but theoretically I could make any real or made-up atom I want now that I have this set up. (btw, note that at this scale, the nucleus would be more or less invisibly tiny, if this was supposed to be a completely realistic depiction of an atom. But it needed to be more interesting and I think it's more educational this way). As far as aw3d goes, I still had problems dealing with 3d containers within other containers, and children of children, and so forth. One thing I can pass on to other new users, is that you basically want to create the broadest or most-outer container for a series of other objects early in your assembly of objects, which terribly confused me until I got it. Even with all the posts and the aw3d tutorials I read. In this way, you can assign pivot points of separate elements to the previously declared main container, and in this way everything stays centrally pivoted. I was working it the other way around - it seemed logical to load a bunch of objects and then try to line them up within the main container last. That was wrong. It cost me a lot of time because nothing would ever pivot correctly. I'm sure it was in the docs or in all the posts I've read, but I didn't get it until I figured it out. Another subject is owncanvas. If you look at the electron orbits they appear behind and in front of the nucleus perfectly as everything rotates. But I also wanted to soften the orbits a little and maybe give them a slight glow. You can't assign any filters to an object without owncanvas'ing it. But when I owncanvas'ed the orbit rings, I then lost proper z-sorting of the rings and nucleus and it all fell apart. I tried all kinds of pushfronts and pushbacks too. But the only sure thing was to leave owncanvas false. Strangely enough, the moving electrons have a glow filter (owncanvas true) and they properly hide behind and pass in front of the nucleus. One other thing - I wanted to have the electrons leave a motion-blur smear or tail lagging behind the as the electrons orbited. The electrons do have a glow filter, and I tried a number of different things, but couldn't get it to work properly. I have some ideas on how to accomplish this, but I don't think I know what to do. Does anyone have any suggestions or tricks on how to get an object or container to do this? Thanks for your time. Vic -- Subscription settings: http://groups.google.com/group/away3d-dev/subscribe?hl=en
