rohanlatimer

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2010-04-10T21:43:00.001+10:00

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blender texturing for collada/away3d

2010-01-20T14:56:00.003+11:00

so i have a little project where i want to make a simple 3d model of a chair and bring it into flash. one of the textures will be able to be swapped in and out.

in order to do this, i will export from blender into the collada format. in away3d, i will then import it with the Collada Loader class.

here's how the blender bit can be done:

1. unwrap your model. simply press U and select unwrap

2. swap to the image window (shift f10)

3. with the faces selected that you wish to texture, go to image > open

4. load your image in and move it around until happy.

5. export to collada, file > export > COLLADA 1.4

6. you may need to edit the collada file image paths to be relative to the swf

strange php/doctype bug

2010-01-06T00:02:00.002+11:00

i was just spending the last few hours making a simple php template to use for websites when i came across a real strange bug. my template basically echos out the code for the document head, body and footer and inserts custom html in the middle somewhere.

now whenever i echoed out the head section with any doctype in it and any linebreaks, it put a space as the first character in the document, even though the source code was perfect.

i tried all kinds of str_replace on various hidden characters, \n, \r\n, \t etc. but to no avail. in the end i resorted to fixing it with css. i could have just had the entire head section on one line, but it bugged me and i wanted my template to spit out nice neat code.

anyways, will have the template up soon for all to download and use...

WAMP password reminder

2009-10-30T11:17:00.004+11:00

when phpmyadmin displays this error:

Your configuration file contains settings (root with no password) that correspond to the default MySQL privileged account. Your MySQL server is running with this default, is open to intrusion, and you really should fix this security hole by setting a password

to change user password in wamp:

1. open phpmyadmin

2. click on privileges

3. click 'edit previelges' (little icon at the end) for user 'root'

4. scroll down to 'change password'. chuck in your password and hit 'Go'

5. repeat steps 3 and 4 for user 'localhost'

6. open your config.inc.php file from your wamp install directory. mine is c:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.2.0.1/

7. find this line $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] and chuck your password here.

8. restart wamp and browsers ;]

Away3D basic demo

2009-10-29T11:11:00.002+11:00

i was playing around with away3d for flash. I just wanted to create a simple 3D plane with a different MovieClip mapped to each side which both retained their interactivity.

demo here

i've bundled the source here in all platform friendly zip format (dunno about you but i'm getting tired i've getting source made by OSX archive that adds all the extra mac crap and makes me unzip every file on its own...)

anyways, source is in CS3 and uses Away3d 2.4

download here

more facebook flash fun

2009-10-09T17:20:00.002+11:00

ok so found out today that you are not allowed to give the user insentive to add an app to their profile in order to access a differnt part of your app. i was trying to detect if they had installed the app, however the FBML else tag is not available for the tag meaning you can detect if they haven't added it, you just can't do anything about it...

my way around it was to have a link in the profile app which passed a variable for which page to go to via GET. more soon...

facebook app + flash = hmmmm

2009-10-08T10:07:00.006+11:00

well i've started building a facebook app that's flash based and jumped head on into the Facebook AS3 API. there's likely going to be a lot of posts about this as i found out new things.

so far i've been able to embed a flash movie into the canvas page with the FBML tag. i've then got that to add a smaller flash app onto the user's profile page.

it's been tough finding out how to do all this stuff as the facebook docs are huge but not very well organised, at the end i might even write a tutorial about it.

here's somethings which i discovered that should have been very clearly mentioned in the getting started docs:

- you cannot get a vistor's user id (and therfore info) from a profile app. i was wanting to create an app that has a different state for the owner and a different one for a visitor, unfortunately it's not easy, if even possible at all.

- the 'add to profile' button as far as i have discovered cannot be edited or incorporated into a flash app so it just has to sit on the outside of the flash app on the canvas page

will list more issues as i find em. if you have any questions, email me and i'll give ya a hand.

stange swfobject ie6 error stops flash vars loading

2009-06-17T12:04:00.006+10:00

well just spent 2 hours fixing this bug so hopefully this helps someone out there. I'm building a flash site as usual using the latest swfobject ( 2.2 ). the site was great in every browser except ie6 where for some reason my preloader was getting called twice and on the second load, the flashvars were ignored making the whole site break.

solution : normally i have my swfobject code called in the head section. i found that if i wrapped the embed code in a function, and then called that function on the body onload event it fixed the bug. once the site is launched. i'll post the code. send me an email if you need it sooner.

EDIT: here's the website that I used this trick on :
http://www.malvernstar.com.au/legend

hotham 10th june

2009-06-10T19:05:00.002+10:00

some shots i took of hotham today. great fun!

on the way up

closer...

20km from the top

tower

top of the summit chair

summit trail sign

orchard

road runner lift

village

village chair snowgun

new site work

2009-05-22T16:19:00.006+10:00

i'm working on my new site at the moment and thought i'd document the process cause it may help someone out there. the site is going to play like a platform game, but will also feature a traditional menu that will 'teleport' the player to that part of the site. the character and setting are based on an old game design i had from the uni days. anyways, here's some initial sketches:

Summary:
Hallway:

Lab:

Gallery:

Throne room:

Prison Keep:

Outside:

SWFConsole released!

2009-05-08T12:27:00.003+10:00

finally finished the work on my little as3 tool called SWFConsole! Download it here. It's basically the trace panel for browsers with a few extra features like a resource monitor and basic runtime code execution. let me know if you find it useful.

first post

2009-02-17T21:55:00.003+11:00

hey hey!
welcome to my first post. most of the stuff on this blog is likely to be flash/actionscript related. if you're already confused, you might just want to check my work out here. i'm currently working on a useful tool for all you as3 devs. it's at about 0.3 status so once it's got to version 1, i'll post the link here.