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I've promissed a while ago that I would release Prefab3D for Flash 11/Away3D 4.0 once a minimum set of features would be up&running.
This morning, I was about to break it to add an extra functionality but then realized:
The day I can release Prefab3D version 2 has finally arrived!

Just before hit the link (top right button on the page) and try it, let me explain a bit why it took so long since the last Prefab3D 1 update and what kind of beast you will actually discover...

Process
It's been a lot of work. simply because building a 3D app is, well, lots and lots of work!
At first, when the great Molehill project was still a secret prerelease program,
I thought: we have gpu now, we'll have soon a new API, then I'll port the v1 code and voila.

Yeah, right.

At that time, it was not possible to work on the app, as we first needed to rewrite from the ground up the early draft of what is now Away3D 4.0. Each new player drop releases were breaking or asking for new stuffs. I couldn't get started properly on the AIR side either, because there was no AIR with Stage3D. The first beta SDK+runtime came 6 months later...

To be honest, it's not about the player or the runtime: I had no idea of what having gpu access really means. Everything you do, needs to be able to handle loads of data. Prefab's v1 internals were simply not built with this in mind. Oh sure, I tried hard to save the most code I could. Eventually, I got tired never see anything else but errors, (lots of ) code commented out or white screens. Short story: I decided to rewrite the entire app from scratch.
As the team focus was to get a robust Away3D up&running. I've restarted the work on Prefab 2 seriously only 4 or 5 months ago.

The Baby
So what do you get exactly for this kind of effort? Not that much actually. At least on the exposed side. Most work done was on the AIR side, app logic, exporters api and a few exporters, an extended selection api, material edits, lights edits, animation managers etc... If the app is relatively limited feature wise atm, It can already do lots and learning to work with it should keep you of the streets for a while!

Many features are "almost" done on my disk, waiting for small problems to be solved before I can implement them. Such as awd 2 (the format 2.0 was locked just 2 weeks ago) with materials and animation exports or Prefab's own project files. You will notice for instance an md2 export option. This doesn't make much sense without a vertex animator/generator...

There are probably issues here and there. (some are even known). Also with new things such as export to ThreeJS or the new behaviors "guys" api that is in very early stage. So please use the report panel so I can fix/improve or simply to give me feedback. If you are one of the 30k+ user of the first version. You know you can expect a lot of automatic updates in the upcoming months.
You do not have to uninstall the previous one, as both can work together. I would keep both, at least until older features such as path edits and uv edits are restored. V2 will no longer export to AS3 for Flash 9 and 10.

I hope you will enjoy this new version even in its "LE" state and that It will find a little place into your workflow.

Last but not least: I would like to thank a LOT the Adobe player & AIR teams for the work they did in the past 2 years.

Fabrice

With Prefab3D 1.5 it is now possible to extend the app capabilities via plugins. So in order to test all the distribution mechanics under the hood and possibly interrest someone to extend Prefab, I've written a little geometry editor: MeshEdit and added it to the loop.

In its first version, this little utility is far from being user friendly, it misses history, mouse rect selection, vertex features...
but even as is, it should ease up some common tasks and prevent the need to go back to your original 3d editor. You know, the few faces with inverted normals, that extra hole you miss, the face that you forgot to delete, the door hole you forgot to make...
Using it is pretty straight forward: select a mesh in Prefab, under the newly added "plugins" menu, select MeshEdit. Your model will now be displayed and you are now able to affect its geometry. If you cancel or close the window, nothing happends. If you apply, then your changes will be applied to the selected mesh.
Let's hope I can find some spare time to polish this baby a bit more. In meanwhile, if you have remarks or wishes for this tool, please let me know.

Probably this week, another plugin will be added to Prefab, this time made by someone else... To install these extensions you have nothing to do: just say "yes" to the install dialog if one pops up.

Have fun with MeshEdit!

This week, I've uploaded what is probably the last major update for the Flash 10 version of Prefab3D. With 1.5, I've tried to close the 1.x chapter with improved code, ui enhancements and like in most of my .dot releases, I've added a few new features as well.

Here's a little list of what has been done since 1.4.

and probably few more code changes here and there...

I hope you will enjoy this new release!

It's been a few weeks since version 1.3 was released, even published a few maintance updates for this version (latest being 1.375) but due to other activities such as 2 FPS environments, a brand new Editor and few other 3D things (will post on these later on), I never got the time to even write a few lines about Prefab in here. Sorry for that!

Today, almost a year after I've typed the first lines of Prefab code, the counter of unique installs in my DB stands at near 11000. This makes me very happy and shows Away3D is very alive!

Chances are high you are already aware of the 1.3 changes
but here's a short list of the new features and some of the fixes made for this version (the one's I can recall). Internally next to fixes, lots has been done as well, but will be probably visible only in 1.4. Such as plugin's and SDK, projects, hierarchy tool, multiple selections etc...

primitive generator

Highlites for this update 1.3 were:

Obvious fixes:

and more...

The BSP/PVS generator feature in action

The new UV cropper: here the original mapping+map. Most of the map is unused, as a result lots of data needs to be loaded for nothing.

Once the cropping is done, map is 1/1 respected, but holds only the region you need. Try this on your project, you'll be amazed at the data you can spare if you have a large project. You can apply to the selected object only or the whole project.

The glow map feature was also enhanced. Here in action on a project I've been working on.

The same example from another angle showing the before and after Prefab did its little magic.

Some rendering improvements were made as well. Note that since its prebakking, the way your model is mapped affects greatly the results, especially when using "own shadow".
Notice here the added 32 bits support: the light goes through the "glas" of the window.

Some performance issues where unsane CPU usage were recorded, due to a massive bug in the AIR runtime 2.2 should be resolved by now with the latest AIR update 2.3 that Adobe just released.
If you still experience some problems, please notice me with a way to reproduce, and I'll pass on to the Adobe AIR dev team.

Next update I'll try improve among other things the rendering speed and enable larger project handling. My latest project was holding 230 maps, mostly 512x512, and honestly, I think it was really the limit for the app as it is builded now

Again, sorry for being so silent lately, I'll try change that.
Happy Away3D with Prefab3D!

I have been doing Flash 3D for more than 3 years now, and since day one, I've remarked that the workflow is one of the bottlenecks that Flash devs and designers encounter each day. How do you explain to a designer that his designs will not be respected? As a designer with little or no programming skills, how do you deliver to a Flash dev the stuff he needs?

Prefab
With the first release of preFab, I've tried to bring some solutions to these problems.
If you are a Flash designer or an experienced Flash developer working on Flash 3D projects, this application might become your best friend!

Release 1
Today I turn 42, apart from me getting an extra candle, this day was also the deadline I've set myself for this first release. So many features still under development haven't made the 1.0 but as you will notice, there is a little button in the main menu that says: "check update"...

Quick start
I do not want write a long story here, but since I haven't found the time to add anything yet that looks like a doc or a guide, let me give you just a few hints to get started:

To do very soon

In meanwhile, go get it and I hope you'll enjoy PreFab and find it as usefull as I do!