MAX 2005: Mastering the 3D Experience

The first session of the conference is Andrew Phelps’ “Mastering the 3D Experience.” Andy is a regular contributor to Director Online and teaches as RIT.

His session was an overview of the capabilities of Director 3D. About 75-100 people attended.

Much of the session was geared toward those with little or no experience with Shockwave 3D. Andy showed lots of still images of 3D work done by his students. He pointed out that primitives and Lingo-built meshes can be used with very creative results. He mentions ease-of-use thanks to 3D behaviors, and the Chrome Behaviors.

Some of the examples Andy showed can be found, in part, in some online articles like Methodologies for Quick Approximation of 2D Collision Detection Using Polygon Armatures, He also has a lot of articles and items at the RIT site.

Andy spent a lot of time talking about 3D special effects like shadows and lightmapping, fire, water effects, and atmospherics.

Andy points out that while Shockwavw 3D is old, it is still pretty current with similar 3D. Also, Shockwave 3D works with a lot of standard modern 3D techniques found in programming books and Web sites, so experimenting can yield very interesting results.