What is the best Actionscript3 3D Engine?

Question

I am looking for a somewhat detailed explanation of which 3D Engine for Actionscript3 is the most efficient, practical, scalable, documented, community supported, etc. When

Answer 1

Papervision3D is going through the process of a full re-write to take advantage of CS4's new 3D capabilities. It sounds like they're also looking into mixing Alchemy into the engine to get a really big boost. You can check it out in a bit more detail here.

I've found that the irc channel for PV3D is fairly active and they've been able to answer any questions that I had due to an outdated tutorial or awkwardly documented section of code.

I don't have the reputation comment yet, so in response to David Hanak's comment above about viewport layers, the best use for them (that I've found) is to help with depth sorting. You can assign objects to a viewport layer and give that layer an index. Then tell the render to sort the viewport layers by index. It really helps reduce visual display errors.

Answer 2

Personally, I much prefer Away; although it started off life as a Papervision fork, they've diverged a long way since then. Most times I start a new 3D project, I begin by evaluating both (the time elapsed between projects often gives both engines time to go through some pretty major changes), and I always end up coming back to Away - to my eye, the rendering quality is a bit better, and it seems to be easier to Just Get Stuff Done with Away. I've never used Sandy, so I can't speak for that.

I've never had a problem getting support from the Away community - while PV's may be bigger, Away's certainly isn't short of helpful people.

In my experience, PV tends to accumulate whizzy features more quickly - it's probably the more bleeding-edge and technically impressive engine - but Away tends to be more stable, has a nicer API and is easier to hack about with ;)

This is all very much my own opinion, YMMV. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. The best recommendation I can make is to evaluate both and see which works best for you.

Answer 3

The thing is, that papervision has a good community. In long term usage, you should take that into account.

I was the same in the beginning. It was not obvious where to find what. But you should stick with it. I just worked on a prototype: Papervision3d + Jiglib (3d physics for flash, ported from c++) and SmartFox Server = fun mulitplayer game :D

Anyway: this might help: http://papervision2.com/tutorial-list/

Answer 4

I've used Papervision, Away3D, Alternativa and Sandy 3D (you can find tutorials for each here). I personally like Away3D better - it is free and has more features, as well as a Lite version if you just want the basics. I'm especially looking forward to the Haxe version, which might just let you compile stand alone executables in C++ with hxcpp.

Answer 5

I'd go with Away3D, if only because we know they are working so closely with Adobe to make sure that people's existing knowledge of their product translates as easily as possible to the upcoming Molehill version. If you're not already aware of it, Flash Player 11 is going to have an API for using OpenGL and/or DirectX 3D from within Flash. For those wishing to do 3D games and UI in Flash, this is going to be HUGE.

Answer 6

Away3D is the current free champ.

It is in active development, and supports Flash Player 11, Stage3D, etc.

I would also start looking at Blender3D for a game engine in the near future. It's not Flash, but is free, and fairly easy to program. The langage behind it is Python.