I started to write a review on this months ago, but given the number of typo's, I couldn't give it a good rating and decided not to post it. It's a good read if you have some knowledge of Away3D. Anyway, here's part of the review I started writing:
Away3D is one of the “big” 3D engines for Flash, but it’s not the only one. A more fitting title for this book might be “Away 3D for 3D in Flash” -- the authors do gloss over how Away3D started as a Papervision3D fork in the one-page Introduction, but as it stands, the current title is as misleading as focusing purely on OpenOffice Writer in a book titled “Word Processing in Ubuntu.” By far, it is not an “Essential Guide”, but it’s a nice introduction to Away3D (assuming you’ve got enough patience and code-fu to gloss over the typos). Chapter 1 - Good to have setup directions for several different IDE’s (Flash Pro, Flex Builder, FDT, FlashDevelop, Flex SDK/Makefiles), but would have been nice to find out what the developers prefer, listing of pros/cons. Would also be helpful to know which IDE is being used for the snippets. (For example, FDT does not give code hints until the right import’s are listed, and also has instant highlighting for undefined variables -- source of myriad snippet typo’s.) Chapter 2’s source - some errors. Inconsistency with usage of “_view” vs “view” variable in first and final snippets, as well as “_Sphere” vs “Sphere” (page 14). Style of listing import libraries after snippets make it hard to follow along without reading the entire chapter in advance. Omission of listing the names of needed import libraries (had to look in the full source on the last page of chapter, for library names of the “Lighting the scene” section! On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 1:01 AM, Craig Murray <[email protected]> wrote: > So I just bought The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash (isbn > 978-1-4302-2541-6) and so far I am extremely disappointed. > > Here is a list of problems I've had in my first 30 minutes with the > book: > > 1. Publisher claims source code is available for download at www.apress.com > but ISBN is "not found" and book is not listed > > 2. The very first piece of source code listed in the book has a typo > which caused a compile error (var view:View3D then later > addChild(_view); > > 3. That same first piece of code has a runtime error during > construction of the View3D (using the latest trunk of fp10 code line) > > ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable _init is not defined. > at away3d.core.utils::Init/getBoolean()[C:\_projects\away3d > \fp10\Away3DLib\src\away3d\core\utils\Init.as:114] > > > > For a book that was written by a primary developer on the project, I > expected more.
