Director

During the course of reading this article and carrying out the various exercises, you and your 3D artist colleagues will get a practical, hands-on idea of the workflow required to create and export Shockwave 3D content using any of the major 3D applications. You will create a 3D environment, export it as Shockwave 3D, and drive around it in a virtual vehicle using the keyboard's arrow keys.

You are not required to use Macromedia Director. However, I do hope that after you get an idea of the power of the real-3D features of Director, you or your programming colleagues will be encouraged to download the trial version of Director and start working on some new and exciting Shockwave 3D content.

It will take approximately 30 minutes to finish the exercises presented in this article.

Applications for Shockwave 3D Export
Make sure you have one of these supported applications installed. These applications all support Shockwave 3D export. The CanDo 3D Modeling Training Tool (see Figure 1) linked to above contains a sample 3D scene for each of these packages:

• 3ds Max
• Maya
• LightWave 3D
• trueSpace (GameSpace)
• Cinema 4D
• form·Z
• Eovia Carrara
• SoftImage|XSI
• 3D Canvas Pro
• EIAS (Electric Image Animation System)

The downloaded training application directly supports the Shockwave 3D export of all of these applications.

Why Create Shockwave 3D Content?
Shockwave 3D is extremely powerful and flexible technology. While there are a number of different technologies that allow for interactive 3D content to be deployed over the Internet - and they all support the same basic functionality required for many applications, such as displaying interactive products - only a few allow for more advanced applications, such as an interactive game, to be implemented.

As with any rich online media, the popularity and installed base of the plug-in is a very important factor. Since 1999, the Shockwave plug-in has incorporated interactive 3D technology (developed by some of Intel's top software engineers) as part of its standard installation. This has ensured that approximately two out of three computers connected to the Internet already have Shockwave installed on them.

Shockwave 3D supports many features, such as reflection mapping, multitexturing, particle systems, subdivisional surfaces, toon rendering, and progressive level of detail. Skinning and bones can be exported from certain 3D applications.

A key feature of Shockwave technology is that it allows for the integration of all forms of media, including the use of 3D content and 2D content (images, video, Flash, and so on) within the same interface. Some 3D-only solutions can be quite restrictive in allowing developers to implement a user interface to their content.

Shockwave 3D currently does not support advanced features such as pixel and vertex shaders. These are available only on newer computer systems and are therefore not viewable on many computers. However, this is more than made up for by ensuring that content can be viewed on every single computer running Windows or Mac OS, regardless of whether or not an OpenGL or Direct 3D graphics card is even available (thanks to a built-in software renderer).

A recent update to the Shockwave plug-in has slimmed the size of the installater from over 4 MB to a very compact 2.5 MB. This makes it even more appealing to many computer users who want to view interactive content online and who still have dial-up modem connections.

Creating a Shockwave 3D Scene from Scratch
The application you downloaded with this article allows you to export your 3D scene into an interactive Shockwave 3D environment using a very simple export process. For many of the applications, this will be as straightforward as exporting a single file.

The process goes something like this:

• Create or load your 3D scene.
• Ensure that a model exists, called carStart (see Figure 2).
• Note: This is the only requirement of the application. The model is used to position and size the vehicle within the scene.
• Export the scene as Shockwave 3D (overwrite the gamelevel.w3d scene).
• Run the application.

That's it! In most cases, the export process takes a matter of seconds. This allows 3D artists to try out a number of different ideas in a very short period of time.

To create a basic scene, follow these steps:

• Open your 3D application, create a box in the middle of the ground object, and call it carStart. The size of the box determines the size of the resulting vehicle within the Shockwave 3D environment.
• Create a ground area for the vehicle to start on. This can be as simple as a plane object, or as a textured object - for example, with a tiled grass texture (see Figure 3).
• Export the scene as Shockwave 3D and save it over the gamelevel.w3d file.
• Note: If you read the Instructions.doc file contained in the sample files download, you'll see detailed instructions on how to export Shockwave 3D content from the various different 3D applications.
• Run the application. For Windows, run the file "Play Car Game Level.exe"; Mac users currently have to run index.htm (see Figure 4).

You will now be able to drive the vehicle around the ground object, using the keyboard's arrow keys. In the next section, you will add new models to the scene.

Adding Models to the Scene
You are now going to add some objects to the environment:

• Add a second ground area with a concrete type texture applied to it (see Figure 5).
• Add a jump ramp to allow access to the second ground area. In order to do this, first create a box.
• Drag two of the vertices of the box down to form a ramp.
• Apply different materials to the top and side of the ramp.
• Admire your new ramp (see Figure 6).

Feel free to create and place additional models in the scene. In the next section, you will add some interactive elements to the scene.

Adding Interactive Elements to the Scene
You are now going to add some interactive elements to the scene. Place special characters in the name of the object within the 3D modeling application to allow interactions to be built up (see Figure 7).

You can find more information on the various tags in the included Instructions.doc file included in the sample files download linked to at the beginning of the article.

I've added a water texture to a plane under the ground objects, and I've named this object gameLose. As soon as the vehicle touches this water model, the game ends. There is a gameWin box at the far side of the wall. As soon as the car connects with this object, the game is won (see Figure 8).

In order to get to the gameWin box, however, the player must trigger off the wall, called triggerOffExit, in the middle of the platform. This occurs when the player collects the two pickups, called pickupExit01 and pickupExit02.

I have replaced the wall with a box with a tiled brick texture, and replaced the pickupExit objects with coins (cylinders) (see Figure 9).

In the next section, I will review changing the non-3D elements of the scene.

There are a number of external texture files, used by the game, that you can edit to help change the look and feel of the game. This helps to incorporate your Photoshop or Fireworks skills easily into the project.

Here are some of the main files, along with how they are used:

• vanlogo.jpg: Alters the logo on the back of the vehicle. The color of the very first (top left) pixel is used as the color of the rest of the vehicle. You can change the images on the sides and front of the vehicle by creating the images vanlogoside.jpg, vanlogosideb.jpg, and vanlogofront.jpg.
• title.jpg: Appears right at the start of the game. You can create gamewin.jpg and gamelose.jpg, which will appear when those various events appear. These can also be replaced with Flash SWF files. See Instructions.doc for more information.
• logo.png: Appears over the top of the main 3D game window. By using transparency within the PNG, you can overlay logos and instructions.
• speedometer.png: Displays the speedometer (position it with gamelevel.xml).
• steering.png: Shows the graphic for the steering wheel (position it with gamelevel.xml).

You can also alter the music and sound effects (all of these are optional):

• music.mp3: Plays and loops at the title sequence, and in-game.
• voice.mp3: Plays once in-game before the music plays and can be used to give vocal instructions.
• titlemusic.mp3: Overrides the music played at the title screen.
• titlevoice.mp3: Plays once at the title screen before the title music plays.
• pickup.mp3: Overrides the sound effect for collecting a pickup item.
• pickupsfound.mp3: Plays when all of the pickups in the scene are collected.
• titlemusic.mp3: Overrides the music played at the title screen.
• gamewin.mp3, gamelose.mp3, gamewinvoice.mp3, gamelosevoice.mp3: Music and voice played at the game-win and game-lose screens.

Various elements of the game, such as the vehicle dynamics, can be altered using the gamelevel.xml file. See Instructions.doc for more information. In the next section, you will export and load the sample scene.

Exporting and Loading the Sample Scene
When you download the application, you'll see a folder called "Sample 3D Scene." This contains a sample scene in the native format for all supported 3D applications. You can load this scene into your application and get a feel for how some of the interactions can be set up. You'll see some examples of other game-related features, such as sky boxes and physical moving objects.