Following on from my previous post in dealing with AS3 Signals, we’re going to look at how we would use Signals like custom Events and how data can be transmitted through them.

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I’m currently battling away with the mechanics for an iPhone/iPod game so I decided to take the afternoon off from Objective-C and after reading an post on Peter Elst’s blog regarding AS3 Signals I thought I’d show AS3 a little love as it’s had it’s nose pushed out recently.

For those who havent come across Signals yet, it’s a set of messaging tools created by robertpenner for wiring your application together, drastically cutting the amount of custom Events and the inherent boilerplate code. It’s one of those things I’ve heard about but never really looked in to it so it was good to finally have play around with it and after just 10 minutes of using it you know it’s instantly going to be really beneficial to your Flash projects, Peter said it’s the best thing since sliced bread…. you know what, he’s bloody right!

Over the next few post’s I’m going to put together a few examples of how you can use signals, this first post will show basic Signal usage and interaction with payloads.

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I’ve just completed some work with Augmented Reality and Flash and had the need to export a Collada 3D model from 3D Studio Max 2009 and import it to Papervision. What I found is that the default 3D Studio plugin that exports Collada files seems to export the files differently from what Papervision expects. So here’s a quick guide to hopefully help anyone having any problems with this and show you how o export Collada files from 3D Studio Max in to a format Papervision expects.

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Just been implementing TweenLite in to a current project here at Cube (more at a later date) and updated our source files to find TweenLite has been superseded by the fantastic Teening Platform v11 engine, the GreenSock stuff just gets better and better! if your in need of a small and extremely fast tweening engine you should deffinitely check out http://blog.greensock.com/ it’s packed full of features!

The particular part I like is the queueing system using TimelineLite, it’s so simple to get up and running but has a wealth of features to create incredibly complex queues of tweens (for more info check: http://blog.greensock.com/timelinelite):

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// create a tween queue
private var tweenQueue:TimelineLite = new TimelineLite({onComplete:queueComplete});
private function queueComplete():void
{
     trace("queue complete");
}
 
// populate it with tweens
for(var i:int = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
    tweenQueue.append(new TweenLite(desiredMC, 1, {x:i*50, y:100}));
}

It’s not everyday you get to feature in a magazine so I’m thrilled to have two features in one month! One for .NET magazine and the other for Computer Arts.

The Flash tutorial written for .NET magazine focuses on the Text Layout Framework Panel beta created by Adobe which offers vastly improved control of type in our Flash projects and some really interesting little features like columns and the ability to add images to text fields.

The Computer Arts tutorial teaches how to simply link Flash and Flickr by creating simple querys and displaying the results in Flash. It strives to teach the fundamentals of connectivity between the two but also gives the reader a 3D Stack Panel style image viewer they can use in their own projects.

Here are some photos if you haven’t seen them yet:

If you’ve read either of these and have any feedback or are having any problems then feel free to give me a shout either on my email address me@antonmills.com or on this thread and I’ll help out.

anton.

PureMVC

For quite a while now I’ve been looking at different AS3 frameworks that I could adhere my code to to make it easier to scale as the project grows, more reusable and easier to understand for others. I’ve always wanted to pick up Cliff’s PureMVC but I’ve found few tutorials on the net that really get granular enough to explain how and why to use it for total new comers like myself.

I’ve spent the last few days learning from various little tutorials and I’m hoping to start using the framework in all my work projects. If all goes well I’m going to start piecing together quite a large multipost tutorial on here that will help in picking up PureMVC if you’ve never used it before.

anton.

I’m really looking forward to the LFPUG tonight at the Cosmo Bar in Clerkenwell Road.

I’ve not really touched on much Papervision yet as it doesn’t really fit in with the needs our client categories but I’m really looking forward to seeing some great examples from Seb and Carlos and seeing what others are doing with the framework!

Update: It was a fantastic evening with great talks about the use of Papervision in some of Seb’s and Plug-in Media’s projects. As well as a great presentation from Carlos Ulloa showing some new work and a behind the scenes overview of how he achieved some of the fantastic effects seen in his HelloEnjoy.com website. Also a huge thanks goes out to Tink as I didn’t get a chance to say hello on the night, as he runs and organises these monthly meetings in his own spare time. I’d deffintely recommend coming along to these meetings, I thoroughly enjoyed my first and I’ll be attending the Away3D meeting on the 25th June!

anton.

Just booked my train tickets and hotel for the next London Flash Platform User Group on the 30th April.

I’m excited as not only do we get to meet Seb Le-Delisle and Calos Ulloa. We’ll get some hands on Papervision training, expert advice and of course the night wouldn’t be complete without some drinks.

I’ve done very little with Papervision to date so I’m looking forward to having a play with it.

very very excited!

anton.