"On Screen."

So I was experimenting with ways of showing 'video' or some sort of interface on a screen and I threw a quick model and some textures together.
Again, we're using Away3D in Flash here; and I'm using ColladaMax 3.05C to export my .DAE Animations.

Using the CustomAnimation Class from a previous post, I have my SkinAnimation divided up into 2 segments: 1) A static "up" position where the video monitor starts out. And then 2) a "drop" animation that brings the monitor down and 'activates' it.

In my 3DS Max file, I have a very simple object that is composed of 3 floating monitors and a keyboard connected by some dangling cables to nothingness. The object was unwrapped and I did a simple diffuse+occ render just to create a texture map that had shading. (First mat in the slots)

I then used a default, Standard material in max and took the diffuse up to a bright green color (third mat in the slots). The only other thing you need to make sure to do is NAME THE MATERIALS. The texture map has the name 'CompFrame' and the green material has the name 'GreenScreen'.

I then used another slot to create a Multi/Sub-Object Material. When you click on a material sphere, you should see a button that says 'Standard'. Click the button and the Material Library will pop open. Choose Multi/Sub-Object from the list.

Once you have the Multi/Sub-Object Material created, you will have a number of different slots, numbered 1-10 by default, available for materials. Drag and drop instances of your texture map and the green screen into the respective 1 and 2 slots.  You can delete the rest.  Then assign this material to your model.

NOTE:  For the screens to show the proper resolution of whatever you plan to map to them, they need to be unwrapped to the maximum extents of your texture map. Therefore, when you assign the texture map to them, the texturemap itself should be seen on the screen. See the pic for reference to what I mean.

Once you assign the Multi/Sub-Object material to your model, one of two things will happen. 1) it will either look exactly the same as before. or 2) It will be randomly ladened with green polygons. The safest thing to do before re-IDing your polygons, is to go into Edit Poly --> Element, select the entire element, and then Set ID to 1 (or your texture map ID).

Then, you can switch over to the Polygon sub-object selection mode, click on the polygon (or collection of polys) that will be the screen, and set ID to 2 (or your GreenScreen ID). Pic for Ref.  Once you set the ID to 2, the selected area should then switch from having the texturemap to having a green screen, like in the first pic at the top. Once you're set, export your DAE and then hop over into Flash.

So in Flash, we just have a couple of things to import. The .DAE and the texture map. We're not doing anything special here, so just use Collada.load() or Collada.parse() as you normally would. My setup looks like this:

[Embed(source="/models/CompTest.DAE", mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
private var EmbeddedModel :Class;
[Embed(source="/models/images/ComputerFrame.jpg")]
private var mat :Class; 
private var model :ObjectContainer3D;  // for the model itself 
private var materialArray :Array; // for all of the material assets that may be included.

Normal setup for the Away3D Stuffs. I like to keep things separated into 'init' calls, so my constructor does very little, then I have an init function that will fire initEngine, initMaterials, initEmbeddedObjects, initListeners, then do anything else I need it to do.
 
so, in what I will presume is like your initMaterials function, you will want to have something like:
 

private function initMaterials():void{ 
  var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); 
  mc.addChild(new ColorTest());  // ColorTest is the linkage from the Library.
  var mm:MovieMaterial = new MovieMaterial(mc);
  materialArray = [Cast.material(mat), Cast.material(mm)]; //Our embedded texture + library texture
} 

So, pretty much all of this is key. First, we're making an arbitrary MovieClip (which could probably also be a Sprite, but ey) and then we're adding a child to it: new ColorTest().  This ColorTest is the name of the linkage Class of a MovieClip in my Library.  It's nothing more than a movieclip that changes colors every 10 frames for 50 frames, then loops. It's just a quick example. ;) 
 
So, we're then creating a MovieMaterial using the mc MovieClip we created, then casting that to a material in our materialArray.
 
Now, setting up the object:
 

private function initEmbeddedObjects():void { 
  model = Collada.parse(EmbeddedModel, {scaling:1, material:materialArray[0]}) as ObjectContainer3D; 
  modelContainer.addChild(model);

  model.materialLibrary.getMaterial("GreenScreen").material = materialArray[1];
  var skinAnim:SkinAnimation = (model.animationLibrary["default"] as AnimationData).animation as SkinAnimation;

  ViewAnim = new CustomAnimation(skinAnim);
    ViewAnim.addAnimationSequence("up",0,1,false);
    ViewAnim.addAnimationSequence("drop",1,60,false);

  model.addOnMouseDown(onClickModel);
  ready = true;
}

 
So a key line in the last piece of code is this:

model.materialLibrary.getMaterial("GreenScreen").material = materialArray[1]; 

 
This tells Away3D to find the material that has the name 'GreenScreen' that we assigned in 3DS Max and replace it with the material that we cast in the materialArray's 1 index; which was the MovieMaterial that we created.
 
So I can use that line of code anywhere, now, in the rest of my code to change what material is set on the screen.  In the preview, you'll notice that if you click on the computer to turn it off, it sets to its "off" position and the screens are black.  Click it again, the computer will drop down and the screens will turn on.

Papervision3D

I've been using Papervision3D to do all of the augmented reality stuff lately, but when it comes to using 3DS Max (or models generated in any other software for that matter) the Collada / DAE formats are... extremely tricky. Or buggy. Hopefully things I've learned will save people headaches in the future:

1) Do I use Collada or DAE?
Depends, really. Most examples I've seen around the net have a tendency to use the Collada Class when importing static models. But if you have animation, then you'll definately want to use the DAE Class instead; as it has a lot more methods/properties for controlling animation.

I used to use one or the other, but lately I've switched to just using DAE all the time, whether there is animation or not. It's easier.

2) Texture Maps
There seem to be a few ways to handle mapping your textures onto your models. If your texture maps aren't too big, you can generally get away with using the BitmapFileMaterial Class to load your image file externally. If you start running into problems where your model loads before your texture and you get a flatshaded or wireframe model then a few seconds later your material shows up, you'll need to use the FileLoadEvent to create a "preloader" for your material and halt loading your model until the texture is ready.

When you start getting more and more models in the scene, though, trying to handle a bunch of preload events for textures and models is going to get annoying, though. For the purposes of what I've been doing, I've found it to be more efficient just to embed the materials in the Library, assign them a class name, then use the BitmapAssetMaterial to reference the material, load it into a MaterialList, then assign it to the DAE. Then, if you have a classic preloader for your swf, you can just include the library bitmaps in the stuff that gets preloaded.

3) Exporting DAE from 3DS Max
For the sake of ease, I've started using 3DS Max 9 to do all of my DAE exports. The Collada NextGen Exporter for it seems to be the better of the ones between it, 2009 and 2010. That said, it's not perfect. But generally, if you keep these things in mind, you shouldn't have any problems getting your DAEs exported:

• Name your material in the Material Editor. Nothing complicated, but something you can easily remember.
• Initial coordinate keyframes. I've consistently run into issues where, for instance, I will animate something, then get it into Flash, and the animation will be running at the 0,0 origin, when in Max, it was up in the air somewhere. Not sure why it happens, it might be an exporter issue. But I've found that if I turn on auto key and set keys for each axis, then it exports fine.
• DAE Export options.  You should only need 2 - 4. Normals and Triangulate Always. If you have animation, then also check 'Enable Export' and 'Sample Animation' for a set number of frames.
• Manually tweak the .DAE file.  Once you've exported the .dae, you'll need to open it in a Text Editor. Do a Ctrl+f and search for "_1".  This is appended to the end of all of your material files for some reason. Not sure why. So I go in and kill 'em.  If you have animations in your file, then also search for "animation" and you should see a node called "Library_Animation" and an "Animation" node under that.  You need to add an id attribute to the animation tag, so just add in id="whatever" and then save and close.

If I come across something else that annoys me, I'll post. :)