Flint does Papervision3D and Away3D

17th September 2008

Today I released a new alpha of version 2 of the Flint particle system. This version adds renderers for Papervision3D and Away3D to the library, so that particle effects can be integrated with a 3D scene in these libraries.

For Away3D Flint has one renderer, the Away3D renderer, that uses any Away3D Object3D type for displaying each particle inside an ObjectContainer3D. This lets you use 2D sprites or 3D objects for the particles.

For Papervision3D, Flint has three renderers -

• A pixel renderer that displays each particle as a pixel in a Papervision Pixels object.
• A particle renderer that displays each particle in a Papervision Particles object using a Papervision particle.
• A basic renderer that displays each particle in a DisplayObject3DContainer using a Papervision DisplayObject3D object.

In all cases, the renderer sets the appropriate properties of the particle’s display object based on the state of the particle system and leaves the 3D engine to do the drawing.

Flint can be downloaded from the Google Code repository. Along with the source download, you’ll find documentation and examples using the new features.

Have fun with this, and if you find any bugs or spot a better way to do something please let me know via the Flint forum.

Tags: 3D, Away3D, Flint, Papervision3D, Particles