Some more details about my side project

Posted on:March 16 2009

Time to reveal more details about my recently announced side project: In short, it is a 3D engine for flash, as surprisingly many people already suspected in the comments of this blog. Here is a screenshot of it in action:

(Click on the image to start this as demo)

I named it 'Coppercube 3D' and put together a small website on ambiera.com about it.
Basically, it is a 3D engine with a content creation system: You edit your 3D scenes in the editor (place imported 3d files, edit materials, particles, positions etc), select a deployment target (flash .swf or windows .exe) and see the result immediately.

Coppercube is still in very early alpha phase and not public yet. It's about 80% finished, but the last 20% of work is always the hardest part. :) That's why there is now the website: Let's see if some people are interested at all in this project, and if so, I'm going to invest more time into this and release it earlier.

Coppercube is basically the result of merging a handfull of my major projects together into one: irrEdit (base of the editor framework for Coppercube), Irrlicht (3D rendering in the editor and for windows targets), irrKlang (sound for windows targets) and irrFuscator (swf writing, to create the flash 3D playback code). Therefore, it is also an ideal project to test out and find things to improve in these other projects.

For more info, see the CopperCube 3D website.
And of course, I'm going to blog updates and development news about CopperCube from now on at this blog.

Comments:

Amazing! :)

Alexander

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2009-03-16 17:55:00

This could be the greatest thing ever. I really, really want to see this work.

cowsarenotevil

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2009-03-16 18:53:00

Does Flash use OpenGL, or a custom 3D API?

Jedive

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2009-03-16 19:13:00

Would be great to see more competition in the Flash 3D world, especially knowing your background.

Jorrit

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2009-03-16 19:14:00

Nice work niko! Looks really cool..

@Jedive: I think it uses software rendering..

Rapchik

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2009-03-16 19:48:00

How does your engine differ from papervision/away 3d/sandy? I guess you have looked at haxe? It seems like you might be able to gain a lot of performance by compiling directly to swf instead of compiling AS3.

The concept with hardware acceleration for downloadable clients i great i think. It makes it easy to create online demos of downloadable games etc.

David Sjöla

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2009-03-16 19:51:00

As far as I saw, flash uses a software rasterizer, altough adobe claims it uses hardware acceleration. But I'm not sure. Currently it's running on Flash9, but tried some special 3d features of Flash10 already and it didn't make a difference in performance.

niko

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2009-03-16 21:09:00

It sounds awesome :D but it's not actually Irrlicht in flash then? Not involving Alchemy..

xDan

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2009-03-16 21:09:00

Irrlicht in flash, yay! :)
Not irrPhysics, boo! :(

Oh well ;)

Tazo

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2009-03-16 23:18:00

"Coppercube is basically the result of merging a handfull of my major projects together into one: irrEdit (base of the editor framework for Coppercube), Irrlicht (3D rendering in the editor and for windows targets), irrKlang (sound for windows targets) and irrFuscator (swf writing, to create the flash 3D playback code)."

I don't understand. What do irrlicht and irrklang have to do with it? You cant use those in flash, can you? O_o

"I guess you have looked at haxe? It seems like you might be able to gain a lot of performance by compiling directly to swf instead of compiling AS3."

I recently became interested in haXe. Does anyone have any experience with it? How common is it? Are lots of flash games/whatever made with haXe? How do you like the language itself?

Matthias

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2009-03-17 00:36:00

Really nice job! A interesting approach will be C#/Silverlight and I think the market for this kind of thing is big. Good luck with the project and waiting to see more cool tools and usage of this new toy.

Bogdan

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2009-03-17 08:36:00

Also I saw how you frame rate is optimizing in real time the scene, very very nice! Good luck!

Bogdan

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2009-03-17 08:39:00

What will be the advantages of your engine in comparison to Papervision3D, Sandy, Away3D?

rip

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2009-03-17 19:00:00

Cool man! plan for flex 3 component ? good job!

Daniel

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2009-03-17 19:35:00

Does this mean you'll port your online RPG to 3D?? *crosses fingers*

trunks14_

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2009-03-18 02:37:00

This is nice. Maybe I'll have to take a closer look at it when it's stable ;)

Brainsaw

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2009-03-18 07:11:00

Hey this is great.
Maybe we can port iZigoo also to Coppercube.

Markus

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2009-03-18 08:40:00

no alchemy yet, but I'll have a look into it. Irrklang and irrlicht: for the editor.
Advantages over other engines: Let's see :)
Darkness Springs into 3D: hey, good idea :)

niko

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2009-03-18 16:49:00

May be you could port it for Silverlight 3, as well. I heard it supports pixel shaders and some 3D features.

Martins1

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2009-03-18 17:00:00

Oh YES PLEASE! Let's do some Unity3D hunting with this nice integrated 3D world editor. I'd love to get my hands on this as soon as possible! Great work!

toomb

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2009-03-20 18:57:00

As a side note, if you're thinking about using alchemy, here's some interesting stuff, just in case you missed it: http://www.unitzeroone.com/blog/2009/03/18/flash-10-massive-amounts-of-3d-particles-with-alchemy-source-included/

toomb

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2009-03-20 19:00:00

This sounds like really some cool stuff :). Irrlicht has really grown from its old days. I like the editor part of CopperCube. Life is simple with an editor at hand lOl :-p. Cant wait to see the end product.

leo

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2009-03-20 20:49:00

Amazing! This would allow for a demo of 3D models or stages without ever the need to touch programming! It would be the perfect portfolio for 3D modelers!

Cardin

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2009-03-21 10:05:00

Absolutely amazing the amount of quality work you do! Yet another great project. Keep it up Niko!

Lenx

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2009-03-21 19:58:00