Product Description

In this book, you'll learn

• All the ActionScript 3.0 (including math and trigonometry functions) and Flash rendering techniques you'll need to start animating with code
• Basic motion principles such as velocity, acceleration, friction, easing, and bouncing
• How to handle user interaction via the keyboard and mouse
• Advanced motion techniques such as springs, coordinate rotation, conservation of momentum, and forward and inverse kinematics
• All the basic 3D concepts you need to do 3D in Flash, from simple perspective to full 3D solids complete with backface culling and dynamic lighting

Flash has long been one of the most approachable, user-friendly tools for creating web-based animations, games, and applications. This has contributed to making it one of the most widely used programs for creating interactive web content. With each new version of Flash, ActionScript, its built-in scripting language, has become more powerful and a little more complex, too. ActionScript, now at version 3.0, has significantly matured as a programming language, bringing power and speed only previously dreamed about to Flash-based animation, going far beyond traditionally used keyframes and tweens. The material inside this book covers everything you need to know to harness the power of ActionScript 3.0. First, all the basics of script-based animation and setting up an ActionScript 3.0 project are covered. An introduction to object-oriented programming follows, with the new syntax, events, and rendering techniques of ActionScript 3.0 explained, giving you the confidence to use the language, whether starting from scratch or moving up from ActionScript 2.0. The book goes on to provide information on all the relevant trigonometry you will need, before moving on to physics concepts such as acceleration, velocity, easing, springs, collision detection, conservation of momentum, 3D, and forward and inverse kinematics. In no time at all you'll both understand the concepts of scripted animation and have the ability to create all manner of exciting animations and games.

Summary of Contents

• PART ONE - ACTIONSCRIPTED ANIMATION BASICS
  • Chapter 1 Basic Animation Concepts
  • Chapter 2 Basics of ActionScript 3.0 for Animation
  • Chapter 3 Trigonometry for Animation
  • Chapter 4 Rendering Techniques
• PART TWO - BASIC MOTION
  • Chapter 5 Velocity and Acceleration
  • Chapter 6 Boundaries and Friction
  • Chapter 7 User Interaction: Moving Objects Around
• PART THREE - ADVANCED MOTION
  • Chapter 8 Easing and Springing
  • Chapter 9 Collision Detection
  • Chapter 10 Coordinate Rotation and Bouncing Off Angles
  • Chapter 11 Billiard Ball Physics
  • Chapter 12 Particle Attraction and Gravity
  • Chapter 13 Forward Kinematics: Making Things Walk
  • Chapter 14 Inverse Kinematics: Dragging and Reaching
• PART FOUR - 3D ANIMATION
  • Chapter 15 3D Basics
  • Chapter 16 3D Lines and Fills
  • Chapter 17 Backface Culling and 3D Lighting
• PART FIVE - ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES
  • Chapter 18 Matrix Math
  • Chapter 19 Tips and Tricks

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5751 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 568 pages

About the Author
Keith lives in the vicinity of Boston, MA, in the USA with his wife Kazumi and their new daughter Kristine. He has been working with Flash since 1999, and has co-authored many books for friends of ED, including Flash MX Studio, Flash MX Most Wanted, and the ground-breaking Flash Math Creativity.

In 2001 he started the experimental Flash site, BIT-101 (www.bit-101.com), which strives for a new, cutting edge, open source experiment each day. The site recently won an award at the Flashforward 2003 Flash Film Festival in the Experimental category. In addition to the experiments on the site, there are several highly regarded Flash tutorials which have been translated into many languages and are now posted on web sites throughout the world. Keith is currently working full time doing freelance and contract Flash development and various writing projects.

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Customer Reviews

Excellent book
This book teaches motion physics programming on flash! And amazingly it's an incredible resource for OOP beginners as well. The first 2 chapters will talk about the philosophies of motion and flash and set you up to learn AS3 programming and OOP! I already had knowledge a solid knowledge of OOP from C# and C++, and let me just say that this book is very concise! It cuts to the chase and gives tons and tons of examples (downloadable), very accurate and useful information! I recommended this book to my girlfriend whose a graphics designer because it was so coherent and very well written. This is a very good book. I've read over other books like AS3 Design Pattern and one other book that tried to OOP, none of them are as concise as this book is. This book IS THE BOOK you're looking for!!!

Get this book if you want to learn OOP, get this book if you want to learn motion physics programming in Flash, get this book if you want to learn AS3! Clear, coherent, and cheap. This book is your one stop.

A Great ActionScript 3 Book!
If you're new to AS 3 and have some kind of OOP (Object Oriented Programming) experience in your past or none at all then this book is right up your alley...an experienced programmer may find this book a little simplistic. Anyway, I've always had a problem understanding programming concepts because I could never apply them to real world applications. All through college while taking JAVA, VB, PL/SQL...etc I always felt like I never truly grasped some of the basic concepts that made up OOP. The way Keith Peters explains his examples and some of the more basic concepts that make up AS 3 is awesome. I've been able to couple his explanations with the stuff I've learned in the past to really help clarify some of these more basic OOP concepts that I could never quite grasp. Since AS 3 is a lot like JAVA, I have a really good jumping off point for doing some really cool things with this language. This book has really lit a new fire of excitement in me for OOP that was long lost back in school. I really enjoy this book and the way the author uses real world terms and normal "speaking language" to write the book. It's as if he's speaking to you in person and explaining things to you face to face.

I have one CON to all of the PROS. The book needs a resource CD with the code chapter by chapter. I know, I'm lazy. But sometimes it really helps to compare my code that I may have problems finding the errors in with the correct code just to see if it's my code with the problem, the class path I have setup, an author error or maybe even something else. Regardless the book is well worth the money I spent and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I wish I'd written this book!
Years ago, I got an interview for a new startup company called FriendsOfEd (and for those wondering, Ed is 'Every Designer'). I assumed it was flash designer role, but I ended up writing books as the resident in-house author.

The initial book was Foundation flash 5 (released 2000), the first book for the Foundation series. Approximately 20 other books followed in the period 2000-2005.

The thing is, I haven't written a book since then, but had an idea to write a new book that went through the stuff that Adobe dont cover in the standard Flash docs; scripted animation.

Looks like I don't have to write that book now, because its already been done, and done well!

Perhaps the only thing I would do differently is to add a book project, where the animation techniques were used in a high end Flash user interface design (thus putting the techniques in a typical design context), but thats just a difference in style... all the content I would wish to cover is in this book.

Well worth buying, and not just for beginner Flash users; many of the tchniques in this book go well beyond 'Foundation' level, and are recommended for intermediate/advanced users. good coverage of 3D techniques in Flash means that this book also comes recommended for advanced users looking at Papervision et al, and advanced Flex users looking to add a bit of motion-graphics into the mix.

Back to lurk mode :)

Sham Bhangal.