Stoopid Questions (??)

No, no ridicule required... well, okay maybe a little. j/k

1. Yes, Tex got his nickname from his brothers and sisters after making a Lone Star State-shaped hole in the ceiling when his trusty mount "Striper" got that extra jolt of energy.

2. Tex's real name has yet to be officially revealed. Aaron Conners has said that if and when the "Trilogy" (Chance, Trance, and Polarity) are made, that Tex's ever-elusive real name will be one of the many mysteries solved.

let's just hope that his name is not Gaylord as the guy from "Meet the parents"!

That's....my........real........name...........

Homer: Moe I need your advice... See I've got this friend named Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo.
Moe: That's the worst name I've ever heard.
Guy: *runs out of the bar, crying*
Barney: Aye! Joey Joe Joe!

Many thanks for that James.

There was something in the sub-conscious telling me that hole in the ceiling was sort-of Texas shaped. (Must've seen it on a number plate in a movie or something - not really up on my US demographics).

So, Jake it isn't then. I actually feel pleased about that - just keeps the mystery going. Maybe one day....

BTW, not been able to check out the new site yet - we're not FLASH-enabled at work just yet. I'll have a look at the weekend though. Can't wait.

Thanks again,
Tongo.

tongo wrote:BTW, not been able to check out the new site yet - we're not FLASH-enabled at work just yet. I'll have a look at the weekend though. Can't wait.

Can't you just install the free small player?
here
Or they don't allow you to install software at work?

I am pretty sure he has the same deal at his work as I do at mine. You need administrative privellages to install any software and/or plug-ins.

It's really annoys me... and now they are starting to block some of my more frequently visited sites... it's only a matter of time before this one goes as well.

-Cub. =o)

Yep, Cubase - that's about the size of it I'm afraid. I do have some admin privileges (like download which most people don't have) but some things just aren't availaible to anyone. Flash is one of them, and as you say, access to certain sites is blocked, even the non-Playbub ones Hotmail is a definite no-no.

The company I work for is very sensitive about IT security and misuse of IT. On the plus side though they do have really quick connection to the internet, much quicker than my dial-up connection at home.

My old job was like that too, but I was in really good with the IT manager so he gave me install privileges. Make friends?

That's a shame. You could always ask them to install Flash player on your computer for you, I mean it's invaluable for browsing some aspects of the web and it's not dangerous.
It's the same situation for me actually but I had to install a bunch of software for me to work with and whilst doing that I also plonked in Flash player and other essential plugins. After all as a Multimedia Designer, Flash player is very important...

It's a little late for me to be asking this now, but I have a couple questions about Flash.

Are there such things as stand-alone Flash applications or do they always run in a browser? Does Flash support 3D? By 3D, I mean being able to place virtual object in 3D space and be able to navigate through the 3D world?

I'm asking because I've been developing a Java/Java3D application (not an applet) that incorporates a 3D environment and several 3D objects. Sort of like a 1st person shooter, but it's not a game and not a shooter. I spent a lot of effort to learn Java3D in order to do this and I was wondering if Flash would have been a good alternative. Too late for me to change now, but I've been wondering about it.

Yes and yes...

Flash has its own stand alone flash player. I don't know where it is installed on your PC... but you can download it from the Macromedia Website ...it is the 'flash player'.

Also, flash does support 3D objects and environments in Vector mode.

-Cub. =o)

DrPaul wrote:It's a little late for me to be asking this now, but I have a couple questions about Flash.

Are there such things as stand-alone Flash applications or do they always run in a browser? Does Flash support 3D? By 3D, I mean being able to place virtual object in 3D space and be able to navigate through the 3D world?

Yes, the flash standalone player for PC is just an exe file, nothing needs to be downloaded or installed, and it does support 3d (to an extend) using swift 3d which is a plug in for 3ds max and flash. I useds both of them in the game I created last year in flash, when I get a new place to host it, I will put it back online. the 3d aspect is fairly slow if you start getting too intense because every version through 7 (mx2004) renders each vector for every frame and stores it in cache as that frame, so by the first 3 seconds you have about 45 frames of vectors in the cache that the flash player uses, the new version (flash does not re-render, it simply "evolves" the vectors and you get a much smoother animation. you also get the option to bitmap vectors during animatipon which gives you an even faster render while things are moving, then when the animation of that particular movie clip stops it goes back to being a vector again.

can you tell I went to the flash 8 training last week? lol

Sorry for getting so off-topic here, but this is the Stoopid Questions thread. So, more flash questions:

My 3D objects are constructed mostly of triangular or quad arrays (groups of 3 or 4 points to define planes) and I can give the material diffuse, specular and shininess properties. Also, I can cover or texture my objects with just about any image file (usually jpegs) and then place light sources to illuminate them. The result is photo-realistic-looking objects that can be animated or manipulated. I will have, perhaps, a thousand objects in the scene, most of them comprised of about 10-20 polygons and about three textures. They are not all visible at once because it depends on which direction the camera is looking, but there will usually be a few hundred object in any given direction.

Can I do this sort of thing in Flash? i.e. wrap or texture objects with, say, jpg images? Define reflective properties? Does it also support things like radio buttons, sliders, text boxes?

Since Java is designed to do almost anything, it is really huge. The Java API has thousands of classes and objects and I can't hope to learn them all. I'm thinking that Flash is probably not as complicated as Java. Do any of you Flash guys have enough Java or Java3D experience to comment on its relative complexity compared to Java?

I'm probably too far into this project with Java to start over again with Flash, unless Flash is really easy to do. But I want to know more about Flash so that maybe I'll use that next time if not this time.