nicob's blog

Still alive, yes, yes…

nicoB — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:56:16 +0000

I know it’s been a really long time I haven’t done anything on this blog, but later is better than never, right?

In fact, I haven’t written anything because I’ve been really busy at work (I’m working for Megalo(s)) with huge and interesting projects and I’m teaching AS3 at a fabulous multimedia french school : Gobelins (recently renamed CCI Formation).

I led the flash development of fullflash websites, most revelants are :

De Dietrich HouseHold appliance(team of 3 developers)

PureDKNY fragrances Teaser (team of 2 developers) : water your plant and it grows, share your plant and it gets flowers.

Pure DKNY fragrances Reveal (team of 2 developers)

Let’s bring this blog back to life, so in the next post I’ll give my Gobelins slides, talk about FITC in Amsterdam, talk about ant Task…

Is Google Android a disappointment?

nicoB — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 10:35:34 +0000

Google has just released his new Mobile OS called Android, and we can already see websites, magazines and mobile phones holders comparing Android to the iPhone OS.
What I can see (on the web, or just by speaking with friends) is a lot of disappointment : Android OS isn’t the iPhone OS killer.

Actually, Apple did a tremendous work with iPhone OS. It’s quick, reactive, ergonomic, easy to use… It’s hard to a new system (even designed by Google) to beat Apple.

Ok, it’s not as good as iPhone OS but let’s discuss some points :

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Are you an AstroFlyer?

nicoB — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:07:56 +0000

A really nice game found on gamereclaim website : AstroFlyer

You drive a spaceship in a vector environment. There’s not more to say, just try it!

Voxel is not dead!

nicoB — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:40:17 +0000

Mr Doob and Román Cortés released an impressive as3 demo of a voxel head. It is a bit heavy (500Kbits), but rendering is sharp and smooth.

Voxel is a “volume element, representing a value on a regular grid in three dimensional space” (Wikipedia).
Voxel is usually used to display landscape or 3d medical data.

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Alternativa3D is out!

nicoB — Sat, 31 May 2008 21:50:35 +0000

The promising and impressive russian 3D engine is available to download at this adress http://alternativaplatform.com/en/alternativa3d/. Usage is free of charge for personal non profit and you must register to download the swc files.

Demos (flash player 10):

API Documentation:
http://help.alternativaplatform.com/en/client/package-summary.html

And tutorials:
http://docs.alternativaplatform.com/dashboard.action, but still written in russian for the moment. It doesn’t matter : AS3 language is international!

Let’s try this engine and compare it with Papervision and Sandy 3D (which are open-source).

ByteArray’s book under Creative Commons licence

nicoB — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:05:43 +0000

Thibault Imbert has just released a new book on actionscript 3.0 in french : “Pratique d’actionscript 3″.

At first, his book was written to be published by O’Reilly but is finally published on the web under creative common licence.

In the 1100 pages he develops events, garbage collector, sockets, bytes arrays, sounds and more and more and more. It’s a really huge work.

Thibault is famous for his blog bytearray, and his work on wiiflash, alive pdf, gif player…

You can get a pdf version here : http://pratiqueactionscript3.bytearray.org/. A paper version will be available soon.

AS3 : embedding bitmap font in the librairy

nicoB — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:13:15 +0000

In my last project I lost some time just to set a textformat to a simple textfield. The font was well linked in the librairy, but the textformat (particularly the font) didn’t apply to the textfield.

I found the reason : flash renames bitmap fonts and adds the suffix : _SIZEpt_st.

- Verdana becomes Verdana_12pt_st
- Arial becomes Arial_12pt_st
- etc.

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Fauchon’s website : the full flash online shop

nicoB — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:52:18 +0000

My company launched 2 weeks ago, the new Fauchon website : www.fauchon.com.
Still in french for the moment, it will be translated in other languages soon.

Fauchon is a famous Parisian delicatessen and one of the world’s leading gourmet food and specialty companies.

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Diesel, customize your fragrance in 3d

nicoB — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:45:01 +0000

My first Papervision project is online, yyyeeaaahhh!!!

With my company, I’ve developped the new Diesel Factory website. Now you can customize your own fragrance bottle and watch the result live in 3d.

Have a look at : http://www.diesel-factory.com.
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Papervision, reading zipped collada

nicoB — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:20:29 +0000

In Papervision, the 3D Objects are defined in Collada files. Collada files are just XML files with a specific DTD (or schema). In consequence, colladas inherit the same qualities and defects as XML. One of the main defect is the file size which can be a major problem if you’re doing an online application.

Here a little tutorial to display a zipped collada in a papervision application : demo (more…