Book Review: Papervision3D Essentials

Packt Publishing sent me book for review. So here we go …

Authors: Paul Tondeur (www.paultondeur.com) and Jeff Winder (www.jeffwinder.nl)
Publisher: Packt publishing (www.packtpub.com)
Pages: 407

Finally there is a book about the most popular 3D engine for Flash, Papervision3D. With a lot of information scattered about on the internet there is a huge need for something coherent. This book will please a lot of people because it covers a lot of ground.

When I first opened the book, I was immediately disappointed by the layout of the table of contents. It looks a bit cheapish and very similar to something that Microsoft Word auto-generates. Unfortunately that applies more or less to the rest of the book. All the images are printed in black & white and sometimes it is hard to see what’s going on in the pictures. A few color pages would’ve been a great addition to this book. Especially because the topic at hand is 3D graphics and not something like database programming.

Fortunately, the book’s contents are great. If you have no experience with 3D programming then this book will tell you all you need to know to get started. It even covers basic topics like Object Oriented Programming, how to use Subversion and how to configure Flash. The Papervision3D part starts with an explanation about basic concepts like Scene, Camera, Viewport, etc and then moves on to primitives, the rendering pipeline and materials. The pace is good and the reader should be able to grasp the basics after reading these chapters.

Don’t get me wrong, this book is not only for beginners. After getting the basics out of the way the more advanced topics are presented. The chapters about cameras, culling, clipping and importing external models are essential and the chapter about z-sorting clarifies some interesting things (like the painter’s algorithm z sort, origin sort, index sort, quadtree rendering).

The last three chapters are about particles, filters, effects, 3D vector drawing, text and performance optimization, very useful if you want to take things a bit further. These topics are also described in detail with some good examples for further clarification. The pace in these chapters is also very good.

Conclusion: this book is definitely an essential resource if you’re a serious Papervision3D developer. Despite the annoying layout quirks I can highly recommend this book. The authors have succeeded in explaining complex matter in a simple way. The text is not too verbose, nor is it too compact. Like I said before, the pace is right throughout the book.

Apart from the paper version, there is also a PDF version available. Go to Packt’s site to get more info.