Li : Dev Actionscript Development Blog

My Dream Device

A few days ago, our latest Away Media work  was made public. This time it's www.mydreamdevice.com, a website where you can arrange existing 3D models into all kinds of creations. The site is a simple but fun way to promote Qualcomm's Smartbook computer: you can create your dream device with components that all exist miniaturized in the Smartbook. Right after the site became live, people started to effectively use the tools we provided, but not precisely in the way we had in mind. But hey, I have to admit that I couldn't stop laughing after seeing some of the obscenities that were created! Too bad there has to be a moderator :-/

Our main focus was to make the manipulation of 3D elements as simple as possible and as least "techy" as possible. It's pretty amazing how hard this is to do once you get involved with the task: you need to manipulate things in 3D with a 2D interface BUT you can't introduce abstract concepts, a complex interface, just 3 or 4 buttons! It was quite a challenge, but I think we did a reasonable job. While doing this I studied a lot of 3D interfaces in different softwares. They vary a lot and are usually very effective but they all require you to "learn" how to use the rather complex controls. None seem to have what we tried to accomplish here: A set of controls that you don't need time to adapt to, just a few clicks and tests and you're ready to go after a few seconds. In real life, you don't need to know about X, Y, Z in order to manipulate objects, so why would you need to be familiar with 3D tools in order to effectively drag things around in virtual 3D. I must admit though that the only way I see to do this perfectly is to actually have a 3D interface, but I guess that won't happen for a while. Anyway, there is a lot behind the apparent simplicity of the results and the topic of natural, simple interfaces for 3D editing is very interesting.

Another nice thing that we dealt with in the project is OBB collisions and collision response. I wrote about how to detect OBB collisions before, but not about how to resolve them. The challenge here was to make the colliding objects respond physically, without having the user loose control of what's in his grasp, which is the typical response a real physics engine would cause. In the end, the physics are so simple that its nice not to have to use a full 3D physics engine.

It has been very nice to work with such level of designers from Cocomino (www.cocomino.com). I really hope we create more cool stuff with them!