Chapter 18. Shockwave 3D

One of Director's newer features is the ability to include 3D cast members in Director movies. At the time this feature was introduced (in Director 8.5, the version preceding Director MX), it was considered revolutionary, and it remains cutting-edge even now. It's rare to find 3D of any sort on the Web, and by making it a component of Shockwave, Macromedia has taken a big step toward bringing 3D into the mainstream. More important, Director's implementation of 3D is fully interactive, allowing users to move and control 3D objects in ways that were formerly found chiefly in sophisticated video games ( Figure 18.1 ).

Figure 18.1. You can include 3D cast members in your movies and give users the opportunity to click, drag, and rotate them on the Stage.

You can include 3D objects in your Director movies three different ways:

• You can create 3D text sprites , using simple tools built into Director.

• You can export files from 3D modeling programs ”such as Discreet's 3ds max, SoftImage's XSI, and Alias/Wavefront's Maya ”and import them into Director.

• You can create primitive 3D shapes ”such as boxes, spheres, and cylinders ”using Lingo. (These don't exist as cast members; Director creates them on the fly when it executes the Lingo script in which they're defined.) Because this technique requires advanced Lingo skills and is of limited usefulness , it won't be covered in this chapter.

The major drawback to using 3D in Director movies is that Director's implementation of 3D is not especially intuitive. Hardly any of the 3D features can be accessed through Director's usual interface; apart from a limited selection of prewritten behaviors, nearly all 3D manipulation requires you to write complex Lingo scripts. For this reason, this book covers only a limited number of Director's 3D capabilities.

Fortunately, Director still offers a few 3D features that are accessible to beginners without the use of sophisticated Lingo. We'll be looking at those features in this chapter.