Development tidbits, struggles, revelations, and still some Flash

Up until today, I haven’t had much time to play with Flash CS4′s new 3d capabilities except some basic code examples. Today, I played around in the IDE and was trying to work with the 3d tools.

I have to admit I’m a bit puzzled about the Z axis in Flash CS4 and how Flash chooses to rotate an object. I was toying around with some animations just visually and then tried to set up some objects there were pointing in a particular direction and was running into issues.  The Z coordinates were changing while I was rotating the object. It took a few minutes for me to figure out what was going on (I wasn’t my normal sharp self – haa haa). The 3d rotation tool was always picking the center of my object to rotate around, instead of the registration point.  I guess I never noticed that its that same way for 2d transforms as well.  Of course, my limited experiments using just code of course using rotationY, rotationX, and rotationZ only rotate around the registration point.  I spent all these years forcing myself to work with 0,0 as a registation point because it was easier when working when working with dynamicaly sized objects and loading of assets, and it seeems if you want to play with 3d, at least in the IDE, you’re better off only using a center registration point.    It would be nice in a CS4.0.1 update if there was a way to set this as default in the system prefs.  Maybe a nice little toggle in 3d Center Point? (Hint Hint Adobe)

The other part that is just sort of an annoyance is that the 3d position and view information only shows X,Y and Z coordinates but you have to get X,Y,Z rotation from the transform panel. I know the Transform panel is where rotation has always been, but if you are going through the hassle of redoing the interface, it seems fairly logical to maybe cluster these pieces together finally.

I don’t want this to sound like I’m only complaining. I really love Flash CS4. Years ago, I dreamed of an After Effects timeline in Flash. Seems like only yesterday that I was dreaming of what Flash CS4 was to become (Dec 2005: Return of LiveMotion). Just need that motion vector Blur and I’ll be 3 for 3.

Not sure how I’ve never noticed this, but when existing fullscreen flash video, focus isn’t returned to the original HTML page. If you notice in the screenshots (probably way too large for this purpose), prior to clicking on the fullscreen button, everything is peachy.  After exiting fullscreen (2nd screenshot), the original window has lost focus.  This isn’t “end of the world” but it leaves the user having to click twice –and gives the appearance that the app is broken.  This appears to be a Mac-only issue and I tested it on two different Mac’s and on both Firefox 3 and Safari. It worked under WinXP under both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer.

Is this a bug in the Flash player? or just how it is on Mac?  I can’t believe I never noticed it before.  I haven’t looked for a workaround yet. I imagine I’ll need some javascript, but odd that I couldnt’ find much online about it either.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

[Update 11PM 12/22/08 - I didn't find it in the Adobe Flash Player bugbase, so I logged it --> LINK ]

Seems that if the FLVPlayback component in Flash CS3 (AS3)Â is currently playing a FLV and the timeline changes to a frame without a FLV component, without stopping the movie first, that the stream continues.

To reproduce: Set up a Flash CS3/AS3 file. Create a FLVPlayback component on one frame (only one frame), set up a source (via AS3 or via component parameters) and create a few blank frames. Add navigation buttons that exist on all frames and add event listeners for the buttons so you can jump between the frames. Run the movie and navigate to the frame with the FLVPlayback on it, and then navigate away. The audio continues but the component instance is gone.

What I found very interesting is that I could trace the instane name of the removed component afterwards, but if I tried to gain a reference to it via getChildByName, it came back null.   I also found that after adding stop (within a try catch), that it would work when going backwards on the timeline, but not forwards. And then if I jumped ahead and came back, that I could create overlapping audio. Very very weird.

Download Sample file. Run the sample file and navigate around — you’ll see some very odd behavior.

Now, the easy answer is “just don’t build it that way” or numerous other workarounds & fixes, but reality is that a number of beginning users are used to using frames/frame labels and it is would make sense to only have the component on the frame you needed it. My question is –> Whats really going on behind the scenes? (I have a few ideas).

Kudos to my Flash Level 2 students. They are great at finding bugs in documentation and components.

John Grden is heading to Vegas for one of his famous two-day Papervision 3D workshops.  Check out the details here [LINK]. It’s going to be held at Alexis Park. Its walking distance from the Hard Rock. You can walk to the strip or take one of the free shuttles from the Hard Rock to the strip.  It’s going to be a blast. Maybe John will have us building a 3d casino or something?Â

If you are new to ActionScript 3.0 in Flash CS3, check out Lee’s new Flash CS3 extension for writing the event code.  Very handy if you are starting out. Based on initial response and Lee providing the source code, I’m sure we’ll see some great enchancements to this extension.

http://theflashblog.com/?p=331