Plugin for Hash Animation:Master V9.0 and higher
Exports a Hash Action to a SWF File
The price will most likely be between 35 and 60 USD

The goal of this project is the development of a plugin for Hash Animation:Master. Until the project is finished, you will find a current feature list along with some samples and info here.

am2swf will only be available for A:M 9.0 and higher, since 8.5 does not support exporting of whole actions, which is vital for this plugin.

Currently i only have the possibility to compile for pc. Since its a whole lot of code by now i'm not sure if it will ever compile on a different platform, but it is planned to be compiled for mac.

generates a Flash(SWF) animation file out of an action
subdivision levels 1,4,16,Variable are supported
shading (facet)
patch attribute diffuse color is supported
patch attribute transparency is supported
patch attribute density is interpreted as "transparency falloff"
patch attribute ambiance is supported
patch attribute glow is interpreted as "show wireframe"
in-action camera support. render camera can be specified by name [no camera attributes are supported]
perspective or parallel rendering
in-action light support (multiple lights possible)
light attribute intensity is supported
parallel or omni light rendering
default lighting if no light in scene
default camera if no camera in scene
automatic export range or manual selection
negative stepping (reversed animation) supported

what happened before:
added SWF lowlevel manager classes
added triangle/triangle clipping
added export for models
added export for actions
added support for exporting detail [1|4|16|Variable].
added color picker [remark: is it possible to implement your own windows colour picker? i'd have some nice ideas for one, and it would be great for a:m. if you know how, please mail to bricman@kci-group.com]
added support for fill color and size.
added support for outline color and size.
added camera position (alpha + beta angle)
added camera perspective (value between 0 and 1)
added camera distance and near clipping range

Version 0.5

2001/11/25
started tracking my work here.
Developing math + theory for more flexible line/line and line/triangle clipping.

2001/11/26
Prototyping in Java for a line/line clipping.
Prototyping in Java for a line/triangle clipping.

2001/11/27
Porting the line/line clipping to c++. The algorithm is not as slow as I had expected. But it still takes about 1 second for 1000 clipping operations (PII 400). If you are good at optimizing c++ code, please send a mail to bricman@kci-group.com.

2001/11/30
Planning the implementation for edge detection. Every point of every polygon will have to be checked against every point of every other polygon. this promises to be really slow. (a model with 10 polygons, all 4-point and every point used by avg. 4 patches has 40 potential edges. Checking for one patch is: 4 points x 9 patches x 4 points (meaning 114 checks). This means 1440 checks for this model. Usually a model will have far more polys. My simple test model has about 100 patches that means 400 polys at a low exporting detail. This means 2.553.600 checks for the whole model .. yikes! thats a lot.
Probably i'll change the plugin to use patches instead of polys as internal format, that will at least produce contant times for variable exporting detail.

2001/12/05
With a denormalization in the model data i should be able to get the runtime of the algorithmus into a linear dependency to the number of points (including reuse) instead of a quadratic dependency as before. This denormalization will require more ram and a preprocessing step.

2001/12/05
Pseudo coding denormalization.

2001/12/10
Coding helper class IntArray.

2001/12/13
Coded the denormalization of the model data for faster processing.

0.6 Re-Write

0.7 Stable, adding Features

2002/08/11
i know it has been some time since the last update. this doesnt mean i was lazy, i was just lazy in updating this page :).
After facing quite some problems and sorting out some of them i have a stable version of am2swf (0.7). However there is still a lot to do (see todo below) but i think the results i'm getting look promising. The new features include depth sorting, shading and backface culling. The new version still lacks some features of the old version (flat outline output, flexible viewpoint, perspective rendering), but at the moment i'm giving priority on the first items on the ToDo list.

2002/08/12
Version 0.7.3 features model patch color export. (see example below)

2002/08/13
Version 0.7.5 features transparency support (see examples). A:M density values are interpreted as transparency falloff.

2002/08/14
Version 0.7.7: added in-scene camera support. actually "in-action" camera :)
camera animation works nicely, but no perspective distortion and clipping plane yet.
No example posted for this version since it would be hard to tell anyway if it was done with camera or bone animation.
If everything goes smoothly with the perspective i might have a beta out this week!

2002/08/15
Version 0.7.8: added perspective feature.
Version 0.7.9: added in-action light feature.
code cleanup.
Version 0.7.10: multiple in-action lights are processed now.
Version 0.7.11: the intensity value of the lights is being processed.

2002/08/16
Version 0.7.13: default lighting if there is no scene light
Version 0.7.13: parallel or omni light rendering can be selected.

0.8 Beta

Version 0.8: copy protection mechanism was added.
Beta testing phase has been started.
2002/08/17
Version 0.8.1: fixed bug with exporting action without animation
fixed "unsupported function call EndEditWithModelCache()" error message with A:M 9.5
taken out backface culling due to more problems than help.
Version 0.8.2: backface culling is back in, implemented differently. still some errors though.
Posted example "spaceman" (see below).

Beta testing

camera and light features do not work with 9.5+.
lights are too bright

selecting subdiv 4 gives subdiv 1, subdiv 16 gives subdiv 4.

This is an A:M bug that exists (at least) in version 9.0r. If it still persists in the A:M version you are using, please report it to mailto:support@hash.com

Version 0.5
This is kc, our mascot. This file was created as follows:
- modeled and posed in a:m
- rightclick on action > export>plugins>shockwave flash
- set alpha = 0, beta = 0, fill = blue, outline = white, outlineWidth = 40, detail = 4
- click OK
- open flash, import file . rightclick on action > export>plugins>shockwave flash
. set alpha = 15
. click OK
. import file into flash, drag to frame 2
- repeat with increasing alpha values til 360.
- cleaning up a bit (removing some small lines, took 2 minutes probably)
- adding text and background in flash.
- exporting from flash.
I know what you think, but this was no race, this was merely a test for the plugin. It did well, but actually this test did not make much use of the feature to export whole actions. I'll soon post an example for this as well.



Version 0.7
"rings".
This test is mainly showing that the animation export works fine, shading works consistently and depth sorting as well.
This file has 27 kb (the animation alone has 25 kb).
It was done by just creating a normal A:M action and then Plugins > Export > SWF, setting subdiv level and file path, then OK.
The yellow tint was given afterwards in flash.



Version 0.7
The spider from "vision".
This is mainly a test if am2swf works with complex models and it does!
however there seem to be some problems with my backface culling. (see the legs in detail, some got only backfaces showing). i'm currently using winding information for culling, will change that to normal information.
This is just a still image, an animation of a complex model like this would be far too big in shaded export mode.
The re-saved (with Flash 4.0) .swf file still has 120 kb.



Version 0.7.3
"nacha" by Junya Ogihara.
The color export works! currently am2swf only exports the model patch color. maybe i'll add support for color animation (if possible and/or someone enlightens me on how to do this ..). This export has about 25 kb.



Version 0.7.5
"rings2".
Transparency for the red ring is set to 33%, density is set to 0%.



Version 0.8.2
"spaceman".
a fairly complex model (5000 patches), certainly not the standard case for the plugin, but there were some backface culling issues with it. mostly fixed now.
the exported action contains a light and a camera.



for more examples see the gallery at http://www.kci-group.com/z/gallery.htm