Papervision3D

Last updated
Papervision3D
Original author(s) Carlos Ulloa
Initial releaseDecember 2005;13 years ago (2005-12)
Final release
2.1.932 / December 2009;9 years ago (2009-12)
Operating system OS independent
Type Flash 3D engine
License MIT License
Website code.google.com/p/papervision3d/

Papervision3D is an open-source, 3D graphics engine for rendering 3D content within Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR. [1]

Open-source software software licensed to ensure source code usage rights

Open-source software (OSS) is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration.

Game engine Software-development environment designed for building video games

A game engine is a software-development environment designed for people to build video games. Developers use game engines to construct games for consoles, mobile devices, and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine ("renderer") for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection, sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may include video support for cinematics. Implementers often economize on the process of game development by reusing/adapting, in large part, the same game engine to produce different games or to aid in porting games to multiple platforms.

Adobe Flash Player Software for viewing multimedia, rich Internet applications, and streaming video and audio

Adobe Flash Player is computer software for using content created on the Adobe Flash platform, including viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video. Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player was created by Macromedia and has been developed and distributed by Adobe Systems since Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. Flash Player is distributed as freeware.

Contents

Unlike modern Flash 3D engines such as Away3D and Flare3D, Papervision3D is not built for Stage3D and renders 3D content fully on the CPU without GPU-accelerated rendering.

Away3D

Away3D is an open-source platform for developing interactive 3D graphics for video games and applications, in Adobe Flash or HTML5. The platform consists of a 3D world editor, a 3D graphics engine, a 3D physics engine and a compressed 3D model file format (AWD).

Flare3D

Flare3D is a framework for developing interactive three-dimensional (3D) graphics within Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR, written in ActionScript 3. Flare3D includes a 3D object editor and a 3D graphics engine for rendering 3D graphics. Flare3D runs on current web browsers utilizing the Adobe Flash Player, and uses Stage3D for GPU-accelerated rendering. Flare3D has not been under active development since late 2014.

In computing, Stage3D is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications. Flash Player or AIR applications written in ActionScript 3 may use Stage3D to render 3D graphics, and such applications run natively on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple iOS and Google Android. Stage3D is similar in purpose and design to WebGL.

History

Papervision3D was launched by Carlos Ulloa around December 2005; it was made open source by the end of 2006. Papervision3D was of the first 3D rendering engines built for Adobe Flash Player, and at the time of its launch in 2005, was the most complete and best known 3D engine for Flash. It used drawTriangles() to render 3D content fully on the CPU, within Flash Player.

According to a 2009 book Papervision3D was "without a doubt the best known" 3D engine for Flash. [2] A 2012 book called it the "granddaddy of 3D libraries for Flash" and argued that "There is a simple reason for PaperVision3D's popularity: it is very complete in its execution." [3]

Away3D was forked from Papervision3D, for the purpose of improving performance. [4] Another 2011 book noted in the section on "3D with Flash" that "Away3D and Alternativa3D are currently the preferred solution for performance and features because they have a more active development community". [4]

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch, but also a split in the developer community, a form of schism.

Although popular between its introduction in 2006 and 2009, development has stopped since 2009 and it has been superseded by Away3D which has been adopted by Adobe as the sole 3D rendering engine included within the official Adobe Gaming SDK. [5]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Doug McCune; Deepa Subramaniam (2009). Adobe Flex 3.0 For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 388–389. ISBN   978-0-470-40789-9.
  2. ↑ Cheridan Kerr; Jonathan Keats (2009). The Essential Guide to Flash CS4. Apress. p. 286. ISBN   978-1-4302-2353-5.
  3. ↑ Matthew David (2012). Flash Mobile: Developing Android and IOS Applications. CRC Press. p. 199. ISBN   978-1-136-02250-0.
  4. 1 2 Remi Arnaud (2011). "3D in a Web Browser". In Eric Lengyel (ed.). Game Engine Gems 2. CRC Press. pp. 207–212. ISBN   978-1-56881-437-7.
  5. ↑ Adobe Gaming SDK, Adobe

Further reading

International Standard Book Number Unique numeric book identifier

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.


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