In this Tut, you will learn how to create a complete 3D Interface framework that you can easily modify and re-use. I promise, by the time you finish, you’ll have a better understanding of Papervision3D, learn a handful of effects and apply them to PV3D.
You’ll also have a good understanding of OOP and how classes work together in a medium scale project like this one. We’ll start with the simplest class and progress to more complex ones. The project has a total of 17 classes working together. Also, the interface is set up so that you can easily plug-in any game that you’ve developed.
Step 1: Create a New Project
Open FlashDevelop and click Project > New Project
Step 2: Set Up
Choose Actionscript 3 > AS3 Project.
For the name of the Project put in http://active.tutsplus.com/about/write-a-tutorial/.
For the location, click and navigate to the folder you would like to save it into.
Leave the Create Directory For Project checkbox selected and click OK.
If you want to use Flash CS3+, create a new Flash file and set the width and height to 1000×700, set the background color to black, and set the frame rate to 40. Name it interface3D.fla and save it anywhere you like.
Step 3: Preparing Assets for Use
For FlashDevelop, open the project directory and copy or drag soundAssets from the source download (linked at the top of the page) into the \bin\ folder. Inside the source download folder is another folder named actionscript. This folder contains all the Actionscript classes for the project. Except for the Millenia.as and the CustomLoader.as, the rest of the classes in this folder are the completed versions of what you will be writing.You can compare your work with them every time you finish a class you made from scratch following the tutorial. Drag the Millenia.as and the CustomLoader.as files into the \src\ folder where the Main.as class resides. Those 2 classes come as freebie. I’ll discuss more about them later.
For Flash, copy or drag soundAssets folder from the source download into the same folder where you have interface3D.fla. Then drag the 2 classes mentioned above into the same folder.
Let’s review the contents of the soundAssets folder. We have 10 sound files in MP3 format which will be used for sound effects.
Step 4: Install TweenLite & Papervision3D
We’re going to use TweenLite for the tweening and Papervision for 3D. Both packages are included with the source download. For more info, you can visit their websites at Papervision and TweenLite.
For FlashDevelop, go ahead and copy or drag greensock.swc and the Papervision3D_2.1.932.swc from the Source download into the \lib\ folder for this project.
From FlashDevelop, click View > Project Manager
Step 5: External Libraries
Still in FlashDevelop, click the ‘+’ sign to the left of the lib folder to expand it.
Select both swc files and right-click, choose Add to Library.
For Flash, copy or drag the \com\, \org\, and \nochump\ folders from the Source download into the same folder as your interface3D.fla file.