Mike Chantler's 3D Modelling & Animation Module

Introduction

This module is presented by Sandy Louchart and Mike Chantler. These pages support only Mike Chantler's part of the course which introduces simple 2D animation using Adobe's Flex environment and tools.

Here are four examples of students' projects and the Adobe Edinburgh prize winners for 2009-2010

Video Tutorials

I've created some step-by-step video tutorials for the first two units on getting started with Flash Builder and creating simple flick book animations. They are HERE.

Getting started at home

Get the trial free version of FlashBuilder v4 from: http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/flashbuilder/ (choose the stand alone version if you don't already have Eclipse installed).
Then visit https://freeriatools.adobe.com/ to apply for educational use licence.

Course Code Examples

examples

Lectures

Notifications of lecture changes are on Vision.

Recommended Texts

Keith Peters, "Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!"

This is the main text for this part of the course. It has step-by-step ActionScript examples for bouncing, easing, springing, collisions, forward kinematics (making things walk etc.).

See http://www.friendsofed.com for e-copy and to download sources.

Adobe's Documentation

Documentation for Flex 4 is at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/documentation.html. This contains points to installation instructions, ActionScript and Flex 4 manuals,
The 'Full Documentation Set (ZIP)' probably the most useful reference. "Using_Flex_4.pdf" tells you about the MX and Spark components, while "Using_Flash_Builder_4.pdf" gives you an intro to the IDE.
I found "Programming ActionScript 3.0" available from http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/progAS_flex3.pdf a good introduction to ActionScript

David Gassner "Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 Bible" Wiley

Easy to read tutorial style book. Good section on starting with FlashBuilder 4 (especially if you don't know Eclipse). Good background if you want to build Flex applications in general.

Basic Physics and Motion

Classical mechanics - (Wikipedia)
Mass-spring-damper system (theory for 2nd order dynamics - Wikipedia)
Nice article about using motion in user interfaces: Designing for Flex – Part 6: Guiding with motion

Video Tutorials

Creating a helloWorld program: "Create a New Flex Project in Flash Builder 4"
Adobe has a Flex in a Week video training site. I found these a bit frustrating - in terms of finding out the bits that were useful and the speed at which they went.
Using Flash Builder (19:22) is perhaps a useful guide around Flash Builder.