Damn you Adobe…

The thing I do for money is program, in Adobe Flex. And one of the little niches I’ve carved for myself is doing 3D interfaces.

I’ve hacked Papervision3D pretty extensively to make this niche- Papervision is a pretty revolutionary 3D engine for Flash/Flex, although it *is* a little obscure to use.

For simpler things Away3D is probably easier, Papervision is quicker however.

But enough of those comparisons. Most (actually all) of the 3D stuff is based around navigational interfaces- menus and so on. It’s sort of a ‘wow factor’ kind of thing.

So, after studying and hacking at this 3D stuff for about 6 months, I reckon I’m pretty good at it. I can quickly and effectively whip up a nice 3D animated menu, secure in the knowledge that it would take someone else AGES to reproduce, giving me an edge so that my increasingly insane boss can’t actually fire me, regardless of how many reality checks I throw his way (which never end up well- the promises of riches and stock options are wearing thin, given that these guys, in an effort to save money, simply stopped paying tax one day, about a year ago. This can not end well, and I said as much once, and got screamed at for about half an hour).

Then yesterday, I decide to check out the new Adobe Flash Player- the thing that plays those funky little animations in web pages, and noticed it can do this.

Simple Flash Player 3D demo

It does, natively and in about 3 lines, what it took me a full week to code and do in Papervision. What you’re looking at there is Flash having 3D capability, built in.

I should be happy that my life became so much easier. And I will be.

After I get that time back I spent learning something I don’t need anymore…

Nah, it’s all good. I’ll have to start putting some demos together playing with this new Flash and posting them here. It will make a nice change from bitching about the boss and old girlfriends

~ by mildlyannoyedaussie on November 2, 2008.