Sunday, March 1, 2009

Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move

Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move
Format: Kindle Edition
Print Length: 400 pages
Publisher: friends of ED (October 17, 2005)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
ASIN: B001C4PHJC





Book Review:
Sure you can animate using motion tweens, in fact we'll help you do that with our Flash Cartoon Animation book, but isn't there something extra special in making things move with just a few lines of code? In this book Keith Peters guides us through some basic animation theory and then demystifies the math and physics behind creating realistic animation, looking at trigonometry, velocity and acceleration, and bouncing & friction. As you'd expect, the book intersperses theory with practical demonstrations of the techniques covered. A basic knowledge of ActionScript concepts is all that is required to get up and running with the tutorials. Keith goes on to cover more advanced animation topics such as collision detection, particle attraction, and kinematics. The book concludes with looking at 3D animation techniques, including building a basic 3D engine, 3D lines, fills and solids, and matrix math.

User Review:
I found this book to be an excellent collection of scripts and theory for the interaction designer, game programmer, experience and user interface developer. The book covers ActionScript basics, OOP and best coding practices, classes, new Flash 8 features, lots of trig, and physics formulas for velocity, acceleration, friction and gravity. I would actually highly recommend this book to any designer who is thinking about picking up ActionScript. The coding practices and sample code will immediately spark your imagination, while setting you on the right track as to how to think about programming and structuring your code. You'll get instant gratification from learning how to build very interactive widgets quickly, while also enhancing your code libraries.

If you are a seasoned ActionScripter but never experimented with particles, collision detection, IK or 3D there are plenty of advanced scripts and theory for you as well. I was happy to see coverage of matrix math and the matrix class, considering their usage in Flash 8

Overall a great compilation of code and theory. It's complete, well written and for Flash 8!

Free Download: Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move



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