So I just got my grubby little paws on Keith Peters’ latest book, “Advanced Actionscript 3.0 Animation”. I couldn’t even get past chapter 2 before I had to try out some stuff on my own. Chapter 2 is all about steering behaviours for AI animated movement. If you’re not familiar with the concept of steering behaviours, you’ve most likely seen it illustrated in a flocking example at some time or other. That is several little “characters” are moving about doing their own thing, but when they come close to each other they start to tend to group up until they’re all moving around together. Boids they call these things. I’ve seen several examples of this done in Flash in my time and was impressed every time. This is the first I’ve taken the time to examine the script behind the concept though, and my first thought was “why not do that in 3d?” So I did. Mostly. There are still many glitches that can be hammered out. The wander() method is shaky at best. And avoid() doesn’t much work at all, yet. Basically, it’s calculating random 3d angles that’s giving me fits. The flocking, fleeing, and pursuing behaviours are working all […]
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