Archive for the ‘VECTOR’ Category
ByteArray has been developing the Raster class which has an impressive demo of a raster engine to draw rather than the Adobe Graphics library included with Flash and it is much faster albeit pixelated (the nature of raster).
Here’s his latest listing of what it supports:
V1.3 API :
line()
triangle()
filledTri()
aaLine()
circle()
aaCircle()
quadBezier()
cubicBezier()
This class use
rastering : Bresenham algorithm
anti-alias rendering : Xiaolin Wu algorithm
Authors (contribution) :
Didier Brun (original class)
Drew Cummins (bezier curves)
Also check out a demo on the generalrelativity blog with some added beziers.
ByteArray has been developing the Raster class which has an impressive demo of a raster engine to draw rather than the Adobe Graphics library included with Flash and it is much faster albeit pixelated (the nature of raster).
Here’s his latest listing of what it supports:
V1.3 API :
line()
triangle()
filledTri()
aaLine()
circle()
aaCircle()
quadBezier()
cubicBezier()
This class use
rastering : Bresenham algorithm
anti-alias rendering : Xiaolin Wu algorithm
Authors (contribution) :
Didier Brun (original class)
Drew Cummins (bezier curves)
Also check out a demo on the generalrelativity blog with some added beziers.
Adobe vs. Microsoft Vector Wars/Development platform heats up
Silverlight, formerly WPF/E, is a cross platform competitor to flash that launched today. The new name leaves something to be desired but this is a new technology battle over vector application for RIAs, interactives, 3d, games, etc.
The great thing about Silverlight is the use ot .NET and C# to code the interaction rather than Actionscript 3 in Apollo/Flex/Flash9. I like both languages but with a .NET language to code in flash this opens up the development of interactive to a whole batch of developers not into Flash.
Tools to Develop with Expression Studio and Silverlight here
One major glaring problem is that Flash won the internet video battle with FLV video but Silverlight only runs windows video.
All in all this is great news in that two of the biggest companies are going to be pushing Flash and Flash-like Silverlight, meaning mush more possible interactive work. Some are buying into the Microsoft vs. Adobe game but it just means better tools for smart developers that know how to leverage multiple platforms for their solutions. This usually leads to the best understanding of solution development when technology has your allegiance rather than a specific platform or company.
My friend Thomas Goddard over at Illuminated Pixel created the first Maya to XAML converter. Its pretty robust and works great exporting from my favorite 3d program Maya to XAML and into WPF.
Thomas being the cool guy that he is was nice enough to OpenSource this badboy to share the love.
Here’s a nice XAML exporter for Illustrator that is pretty clean. Exporting from Illustrator to Flash or WPF can be tricky with the extra garbage that can be left or thrown out on export.
http://www.mikeswanson.com/xamlexport/
From the author Michael Swanson
For working with XAML files, Notepad is great; I use it almost every day. XAMLPad (from the Windows SDK) is even better. But neither of them are built for serious graphic design work. Most professional designers are very familiar with Adobe’s venerable suite of tools, and a large percentage of them use Illustrator. So, I decided to spend some time investigating what it would take to build a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator that exports to XAML. Well, like a lot of software prototypes, it just kept growing. And growing. And growing. Now, after spending more than a few evenings trying to re-learn the C++ I’d forgotten some five years ago (I love C# and managed code even more now!), I’ve ended up with a very useful tool.
The tool may be a little rough around the edges. This is my first attempt at an Adobe plug-in, and although I don’t expect it to crash Illustrator, who knows what can happen?
For a quick walk-through of the plug-in, you may want to watch this 25-minute Channel 9 interview.
