Resource tip: Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!

Last Update: 27.02.2009. By azarai in python | resource tip

I was recently browsing in a local bookstore and, not sure why i looked at flash books in the first place, i stumpled upon “Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!”(Amazon: COM, DE ). The book is about coding animations and covers things like basic movement, collision detections, bouncing, forward and inverse kinematics, and more. Or said in their own words:

In this book, you’ll learn

• All the ActionScript 3.0 (including math and trigonometry functions) and Flash rendering techniques you’ll need to start animating with code
• Basic motion principles such as velocity, acceleration, friction, easing, and bouncing
• How to handle user interaction via the keyboard and mouse
• Advanced motion techniques such as springs, coordinate rotation, conservation of momentum, and forward and inverse kinematics
• All the basic 3D concepts you need to do 3D in Flash, from simple perspective to full 3D solids complete with backface culling and dynamic lighting

I flipped through the examples and some text and was surprised that both where pretty much understandable. The examples use Actionscript 3 as the title already suggested and mainly focus on the moving parts/math and not some fancy flash ide stuff. With a bit of coding experience they can be easily translated to other languages or if one likes Actionscript, one can use the free flex sdks too. I was sold and bought the book. Currently i am translating some examples into python using pygame and also running the Actionscript version with the flex sdk to check if i understood the topic right. And it does work quite well, but on the other hand i am not that far yet :-)

For those learning from sourcecode alone, the Actionscript 3 examples are available online on the publishes website and the table of contents too.