Flash Article

Mapping Flash video to 3D objects

Building the 3D model

You'll be mapping your video to a custom mesh that I've modeled for you in Blender (see Figure 7). Blender is a free, open-source, 3D modeling, animation, and rendering package licensed under the GNU General Public License. While a simple plane or cube would suffice for your mesh, using a custom model adds visual interest.

Figure 7. Mesh in Blender

Modeling in Blender isn't terribly difficult, but the process is outside the scope of this tutorial. If you are interested in using Blender for your Papervision 3D adventures, refer to the Blender site. They have plenty of tutorials to get you started.

I do want to note one thing before moving on. Before exporting your model from Blender, convert your mesh's quads to triangles. This is done, in edit mode, by selected the vertices and choosing Mesh > Faces > Convert Quads to Triangles. Papervision 3D doesn't seem to know how to handle the UV coordinates in the exported mesh if this step is not done.

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