Simple Flip Book in Flash Builder

Question

I built this simple Flip Book in Flash Builder starting with Flash Catalyst...I guess the big issue is that when I make these components...they work well at z=0, but when I change z things don't work...why? Definitely needs a fix...everything is below (source, demo, book blog, video):
Source: http://lv3d.googlecode.com/files/FlipBook.zip
Demo: http://www.professionalpapervision.com/demos/flipbook/
Book Blog
Video

Answer 1

Hi,
After thinking about your solution and doing some testing I have two comments...
(1) I'm concerned that your change may not be congruent with Flash Catalyst and its logical flow, and
(2) The solution did not solve the problem. I fear I have not explained myself well. So here is a video on the problem...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-pUX6lpuM
And if anyone wants to know how to install a new SDK in Flash Builder. Here is a video on that too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhHxPK_p2jQ
Best Regards,
Mike
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Simple Flip Book in Flash Builder
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 15:51:36 +0000
Thanks so much I really appreciate the comment...I'm digesting and testing it!!!
From a PV3D and Away3D perspective...one of the difficulties I've run into is that in Flash Builder there are three ways to do 3D...MXML (from Flash Catalyst), Matrix Manipulation using update display, and dot syntax methods (hey which one do I use?). It's really difficult to get the same visual effects in Flash Builder that you get in PV3D and Away3D, but in doing so you don't have to run your processor so hard and can do more. And you can't beat how easy it is to work with Flash Catalyst...you can develop 3D 10 times faster...
That means I'm taking my lumps while things are being repaired and developed. But that's the business...thanks again for your comments.
Just one more comment...I've built the data-driven case of the book for 3 pages using FB data wizard:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzKba9qyrp0
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz9htZXYZyU
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nyeg4_zuXo
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG_uUIHSyqU
...in the multi-page case I will actually turn the pages into a particle system and treat the 3D a little differently...I'll take a real good look at your suggestions below then.
Best Regards,
Mike
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 14:18:03 -0700
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Simple Flip Book in Flash Builder
Mike,
Steven Shongrunden played around with your original FlipBook example and noticed that it doesn't work the same in the current builds as it did in Beta2. The problem is that we changed the behavior of the 3D effects recently, to fix this bug:
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/sdk-24993
Basically, 3D effects used to side-effect the 3D properties of objects and persist their changes on the objects after transitions were over. This is different from the way that the rest of the effects work, where we install the proper end-state values in the objects when transitions end.
This means that if you do a Rotate3D with angleYTo="180", that we'll do that rotation during the effect ... and then wipe out that change when the transition ends.
There are two workarounds for this situation. The first, which is the way to go in general and definitely for Catalyst users, is to have 2-sided objects. So instead of simply seeing the back of the front cover, the user would see the front of a completely different object (the inside cover page, if you like). Then the transition should rotate both objects (the cover to 180 and the inside object to 0), then make the old object disappear and the new object appear at the right times (like at 90 degrees). So when the values are restored to the front cover upon transition end they will not be visible because the object is not visible.
The workaround for coders is to actually tell the states the values that the object should have. So if you actually want to rotate the object around y, then set that information in the states so that we won't blow it away when the transition ends. In fact, you could even set it in the states and not in the effect and we'll run the transition automatically. This is really the best approach for state transitions in general: tell the states what values the objects should have, and tell the transitions what effects to run, then the effects will automatically figure out the values to animate from/to.
The trick with this workaround is that the 3D effects affect the post-layout properties by default, and setting those values is not as obvious as setting pre-layout properties on the object.
Here's an example of how to do this for the cover component:
     <components:frontCoverCustomComponent x="0" y="0" id="frontcovercustomcomponent1"   click="frontCoverCustomComponent_clickHandler()">
        <components:postLayoutTransformOffsets.State2>
            <s:TransformOffsets rotationY="180"/>
        </components:postLayoutTransformOffsets.State2>
    </components:frontCoverCustomComponent>
I added this code to your custom component (and left the transition code as-is) and it now works as expect. It's still a bit weird to see the back of a two-dimensional object, so using two objects for anything that you'll see flipped is still a good thing to do in any case (as someone else suggested on this thread).
Chet.
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