Pixel shader demo using Flash 10, Pixel Bender and Minko
I'm really excited to announce Minko (which is, by the way, the final name for my 3D library) has reached a new level: pixel shader integration! Pixel shaders are little programs that run on each pixel and can modify their final color. They are often written in C-like languages and in this precise case we use Pixel Bender, the shader language introduced with Flash 10.
In this post I will:
- Explain how any 3D scene is built when using Minko
- Explain how pixel shaders are integrated in the 3D scene
- Explain how pixel shaders are built using Pixel Bender
- Show you a very simple demo of the kind of effects pixel shaders will provide
- Explain how the demo was built
Here are a two screenshots to show the results:
Phong shading + spheric environment mapping on a 2700+ polygons Lamborghini
Phong shading + spheric environment mapping demo
Speaking at the french Flash user group
... or at least that's the plan! The next meeting of the Tonton Flexers - the closest thing to a "french Flash user group" - is taking place the 23rd of this March and I'll be there to present my 3D library.
I would be more than happy to talk about the software, the way I built it and the technical choices that drove its development. I will also try to emphasize what makes this library different through a few demonstrations.
Depending on the agenda of one of my co-worker, we might also present a very cool piece of software I never spoke about!
You can read more about the event here (in french).
Voice Recognition in Flash 10
The following video demonstrates a new "voice gesture" library targeting the Flash Platform. As you might have guessed, those "voice gestures" are pretty much like "mouse gestures" but they are activated by voice only. I guess it uses some kind of voice learning/recognition algorithm. I can't stress enough how trhilled I am to see this kind of new and powerful software coming to Flash. This enables a whole new kind of usages and applications...
Voice Gesture from didier.brun on Vimeo.
Frustum Culling in Flash 10
Update: corrected a few glitches in the bounding sphere creation routine.
Optimization is always important. But when it comes to 3D for the Flash Platform, it's an everyday battle. The first ideas that come to mind are to avoid:
- redrawing the same regions : each pixel value must be set once and only once
- rendering invisible objects : objects that are out of sight still take a lot of CPU horsepower
While Flash takes care of the first one in its very renderer, the second one is not handled. But that is something we can easily address!
The Technic
The method is called "frustum culling". The big picture is that every mesh is approximated using a bounding volume (typically a sphere or a box). If the bounding volume is visible, the corresponding mesh is rendered. The two following pictures show the frustum culling caught in action:
The mesh is visible: TPS counter indicates 18900 triangles per seconds
The mesh is out of sight: frustum culling is acting and TPS counter indicates 0!
Augmented Reality in Flash 10
For those who have never heard of "augmented reality" (AR), here is Wikipedia's definition:
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality.
Sounds a bit blury? Well... I'll try to make it clearer with a demo...
Demo
First, you will have to print a little black and white "marker". The AR software scans the webcam picture and look for this very marker. When it is found, its 3D position, rotation and scale are computed and used to embed a 3D object. You can found the marker here and it looks like this:
FLARToolkit Marker
Quake 2′s 3D models in Flash 10
Loading and rendering Quake 2's maps is a challenge because Flash 10 doesn't handle complex 3D geometry very well. But what about a smaller count of polygons ? Say a 3D model for example... already done! What about an animated 3D model then?
Details, pictures and a demo application right after the jump...
Load and display Quake 2′s Maps in Flash 10
The Quake-series is really awesome. Not only in terms of gameplay but also technically. Quake 1, 2 and 3 are especially impressive. No wonder why Quake's graphics engine, maps or models file formats have been reused in many many games such as Half Life, Call of Duty or Medal of Honnor! So why not in your own Flash 10 game?
There are so many reasons why loading Quake 2 files inside the Flash player would be considered as just "impossible". Performance would be the first and main one. One would just consider that Flash is not fast enough to display complex 3D graphics, not even those of a game as old as Quake 2 (published in 1996!). But using Flash 10 latests features such as the Vector and GraphicsTrianglePath classes, it is actually quite doable!
Details, pictures and a demo application right after the jump!
AIR 2.0 Sneak Peek
Tonight I attended the "TonTon Flexeurs" (TTFX) meeting with Lee Brimelow and Mike Chambers. While Lee explained all the things that can be done to extend the Flash Platform using the ByteArray class, Mike presented a few of the latest as3corelib library features and a sneak peek of AIR 2.0. AIR 2.0 - codename "Athena" - will feature a lot of new system related updates. Discover a few of them (including a worldwide exclusive!) right after the jump...
You can also look at Michael Chaize's event photo album on Flickr!
Read more...
New DirectFlex experiments: ‘FPS’ and ‘Earth’
I just posted and blogged about a few new experiments built using DirectFlex on Direct Flex Labs:
- FPS: is it possible to display Half Life 1 graphics in Flash ? I don't know yet... but this experiment is an improvement of the one I posted a while back
- Earth: I always wanted to implement the famous Google Earth in Flash. This might be a good first step! I made this experiment in approximately 1 hour to test out a few new features
Please let me know what you think about those new experiments. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated!