How to get started with the Molehill API and Away3D 4.0
Yesterday at the Flash Gaming Summit the Pre-release of Flash Player 11 was made public, which is pretty big news. Developers kept an eye out since Adobe Max when the first Molehill 3D API demos were displayed.
Here's how you can start using the new API to create hardware accelerated 3D content.
Since this is the pre-release stage, setup is still a bit loose, but I am confident it will get easier and easier as the official release approaches.
You can read a detailed wiki article on how to get setup.
Here are a couple of examples I've managed to compile:
Note:You will need Flash Player 11 to view these examples. If you do not wish to install Flash Player 11, but wish to see these examples, you can see the previews on Youtube:
Even though the Molehill API is pretty low-level, more 3D APIs will support this feature, as Away3D is at the moment so developers will be able to leverage their previous knowledge on 3D APIs in Flash to create 3D accelerated content. Thibault Imbert from Adobe has a more detailed of the APIs on his blog
At the moment the AGALMiniAssembler is used, but the "PixelBender 3D beta release coming Friday 4th March on Adobe labs" the PixelBender team announces.
Also Unity announced they will be supporting the new 3D API with an extra web publishing option: Flash.
I won't go much into great details covering everything. You can find a good roundup of the Molehill new on Uza's blog
Interesting times are around the corner. Looking forward to see how this changes the type of content delivered.
Note: The Unity image is 'kindly borrowed' from the Unity blog
