Floorplanner Tech Blog

As all 3D modelers probably know: exporting models from 3D applications and use them in Flash (Papervision3D etc.) can be frustrating. Stuff like animations, matrices, etc. sometimes don’t work as expected. So I thought: why not read the native file format of a 3D app instead? That way we get access to the native data as used by a 3D app. Not some ‘twisted’ data as presented by exporters.

Don’t get me wrong: most exporters of course do their job very well, but… exporters ‘interpret’. In other words: exporters think in my place. Often exporter are ‘right’, but sometimes they go wrong (or present data in some awkward form). Then it would be cool to have control over the data yourself.

The workflow becomes very simple. We don’t have to export anymore, Flash could simply read the 3D app’s latest saved file. We can interpret the 3D app’s data as we wish. I like that . On the bad side: native files contains lots of data we probably don’t need, like the 3D app’s viewport size etc. Then again: how cool is that?

Enter ASBlender, a library I slapped together in a few days to read Blender’s .blend file format and parse it to AS3. Blender is a very cool (open source, free!) 3D application which can compete with MAX, Maya, Cinema4D etc. The Blender UI is kind of weird when you first see it, but after a – admittedly – steep learning curve, it rocks.

More info, code and a wiki is available at github.

The code is very basic and can be improved for sure, so comments, criticism and suggestions are more then welcome.

Have fun!