This is a video of my presentation from WordCamp Montreal 2009. Since this presentation I have inundated with questions about FlashPress, When will it be available? Where can I download it? How can I contribute?  We are still working out a lot of issues and are hoping to Open Source FlashPress soon, we apologize for all the delays!!!

Also make sure to check out the other presentations from WordCamp Montreal 2009 on blip.tv

There are many examples of red5 chat tools and apps all over the web. The downside is, we have yet to see any examples used in commercial projects or any real world examples, which makes it difficult for most developers, who are not involved in open source collaboration’s, to see the benefit of using Red5.

However, that being said, I am very excited and proud to say that I, including many other talented developers, was involved in the conceptualization and development of an outstanding, groundbreaking, and innovative use of Red5 for a major web project…

ZOS – Last Tango in Jadac – http://zostv.com/interactive

Last Tango in Jadac, follows an interactive cinematic following the characters of the series featured on The Movie Network.

The experience is a mix of Papervision3D, Red5, and interactive video that take you on a journey while allowing you to explore and discover your own paths and unfold the dense storyline. This project was produced by Whizbang films in association with the Bellfund and LifeCapture Interactive.

The chat tool is quite an accomplishment, it is very unique, and definitely adds to the over all user experience.  It allows for users to communicate with each other while they are exploring the the PV3 world of Jadac. Considering there are no avatars the chat tool becomes an essential part of the experience and game play by aiding users follow the storyline and successfully complete the 3 missions, and discover hidden secrets and easter eggs.

The chat tool is a multi-layered application that can be minimized and maximize, sort users, find friends, and choose from to different display options. It also allows users users to log in anonymously, randomly puts users in different rooms, displays current population, handles special characters and html tags, stores and tracks user sessions, disconnects during idle time, and more.

ZOS Chat Organized View

ZOS Chat Random View

We had many obstacles and challenges to over come while working on this project. Initially the chat tool was written in AS2 and eventually we decided to port it over to AS3, as well we had to learn how to uses eclipse, compile java, and build server Red5 modules to handle all our functions. Working on this projec was a labour of love and well worth it it.I hope that in the near future we will be able to extend the chat tool and more features as well as open source it.

At some point I will embark on a step by step tutorial of both the java and as, as well I hope to open source it. In the mean time we hope you enjoy it.

Original concepts for the chat are the brain child of Geoff Whitlock ( CEO, Lifecapture Inc. ), creative concept developed by  Dan Riley ( Creative Director, Lifecapture Inc. ), Lead developers Brendan Sera-Shriar and Ryan Andal ( Contracted by Lifecapture Inc. for this project ), Red5 Java developers Brendan Sera-Shriar and Andy Shaules ( Contracted by Lifecapture Inc. for this project ).

The entire project took over 10 months to develop with team of 20 plus developers, designers, writers, directors, producers, motion graphic artists, animators, and other specialty staff, please visit http://zostv.com/interactive for a full list of credits.

Visit http://zostv.com/interactive for the full experince.

Google Code is hosting the Data Visualization application for you to explore the data through a 3D viewer and use your mouse to further manipulate the data and create your own visualizations.

This interactive piece was made by Aaron Meyers and Aaron Koblin using a modified version of PV3D. For more info check it out over at google code.

I’ve been so busy lately experimenting with red5, that I’ve falling a bit out of the Flash 3D loop, so when Geoff passed a long a few files from NULLDESIGN I was amazed to see the work that Lars has been doing building his own 3D engine!

Ok, enough of the banter on to the examples…

Here are 6, of the many, cool examples that Lars has been working on using his 3D engine. Enjoy!

I’m happy to report that our booth, Seneca and PHUG, was the most popular booth on the floor…probably ’cause we where giving away FREE chocolate ;0

Attendees where very excited to see the student papervision3D work on display, it’s no swimming dolphin, but the students did a great job considering they had only 7 days to produce a full pv3 interface with collision and interactivity, GOOD JOB!!!

- kapachka interface developed by Students in the Digital Media Arts program at Seneca College, Alex Nasser, Miaomiao Kuang, Dan Coltri, Robbie Luziuz Vanin, Ricardo Jazmines, Amanda Labatia.

Another popular student project at FITC was pv3world.com, developed by Geoff Palin, Digital Media Arts student at Seneca College, this project drew attendees daily. Geoff Palin has also accepted a position at BackSpaceStudios as a lead developer, we are very happy to have him on board!

Geoff Palin was also responsible for designing/developing the official Seneca@FITC blog http://www.phug.ca/fitc

Other highlights at the festival…

I had the opportunity to meet and geek out with the guy’s from papervision3D, paperworld3D, red5, Ribbit, and the one and only AS guru R Blank. I especially enjoyed discussing both PHUG and DMA student experimental pv3 work with Ralph Hauwert. I attended his Flash 2D and 3D effects presentation…all I can say is WOW! I also had the opportunity to sit down with Trevor Burton, the man behind paperworld3D. What an amazing individual, the man is an absolute genius! I’m hoping to contribute to the development of paperworld3D and eventually build some commercial apps with it…One of my favorite presentations was Ribbit. These guy’s have some of the coolest components I have seen in a long time. I am hoping to continue working with them on some PHUG and Seneca events as well as nominating some of my students for internships…I did not forget about R Blank…He gave an excellent presentation on AS3. BackSpaceStudios is happy to announce that we will be helping out with the re-build for the RMI site.

I will back post my blogs from the event under papervision, red5, and AS3.

He demoed a new project he is working on called “Earthmine” – imagine Google Earth with the ability to tag locations, draw 3d objects and lines, capture photos, measure points, and more…I know…It made my mouth water…and if that wasn’t enough the data is accessed via a NASA database!

Ralph also talked a bit about his experiences with papervision3D and understanding code in terms of design. He compared both 2D and 3D effects and environments by giving examples of work done on systems as old as the Amiga and Atari. Many of you may be familiar with his work on shaders, which can be found in the Great White library in pv3.

One of the highlights of the presentation is his current work on Raytracing in pv3. He has an excellent example running in Flash 10, that’s right I said F10…he gave us a sneak peak! It runs at an impressive FPS of 99!!! These new features will be available in a new library he is working called rePhlex…I’m very excited

make sure you check out Ralph’s blog – http://www.unitzeroone.com/blog/

This year at FITC Toronto 2008 members of PHUG will be presenting at the Seneca College table. Alongside with other Seneca projects, programs, and students, we will be exploring experiments in open source Flash. Our presentation will showcase the use of tools like Flash Develop, Papervision3D, and wiiFlash as both educational and professional.

We hope to follow this showcase up with a presentation at FlashInTO next month!

If you decide to go to the conference make sure to check out the official workshop on Papervision3D hosted by one of the core development team members, Ralph Hauwert.

Also make sure you attend the “3D in Flash: Now and in the future” session, which promises to become an interesting discussion between developers and Adobe!

Hope to see you all there…

Getting a basic particle field to work in pv3 is dead simple. I did a bit of digging through the class structure and came across ParticleField.as. We start with the following two imports:

import org.papervision3d.materials.special.ParticleMaterial;

import org.papervision3d.objects.special.ParticleField;

We will then create a basic function to build our particle field:

private function createParticles():void

{

//Create a new particle material;var pm:ParticleMaterial = new ParticleMaterial(0xFFFFFF,1);

//Create a new particlefield.

var particleField:ParticleField = new ParticleField(pm, 2000, 5000, 5000, 5000);

scene.addChild(particleField);

}

Pretty easy eh!

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