Besides my workshop, there will be lots of other interesting presentations and workshops during the day. You should keep an eye on the website of the usergroup for updates about all sessions and speakers. So far the other confirmed speakers are:  Pascal Leroy, Dave August, Zender, Tobias Mannewitz, De Monsters, Rufus Deuchler, Champagne Valentine, Serge Jespers, Hanazuki, Jason Levine, Ralph Hauwert, Dirk Groten, Paul Burnett.

I think the day provided the visitors with a lot of essential information in order to get started with Unity. The feedback I received on my talk was very good, so hopefully I contributed to new Unity users getting started with Unity.

As promised in my presentation, I've posted my presentation online, which you'll find at the end of this post. In the next weeks when I've returned and recoverd from this conference, I'll start posting some of the examples as mentioned in my presentation. So you can expect the JSON, Google Analytics, XML loading and Parsing, image loading and posting variables examples on this page.

I already twittered this while being on vacation, however I thought it would be nice to give this some extra attention, since I think the conference is going to rock. After investing a lot of time since last years Unite conference in Copenhagen, it would be very interesting to see where other developers have been into and join the very promising sessions that are scheduled (http://unity3d.com/unite/agenda).

If you don't have a ticket yet, you should really rush, as the conference already starts in a little more than 2 weeks on the 27th of October.

In my point of view, Unity made a very wise decision this year by organizing a special day for Flash developers. This day will give the conference a kick-start for Flash developers who want to get into Unity, as they will be introduced to everything they need to know to get along with the rest of the conference (and start themselves with some Unity development afterwards). I would have been so grateful when such conference day was available at the time I got into Unity.

I feel very honored that 'm invited by the people of Unity to come over and do a session for Flash developers. My talk will be about using best of both worlds and how to interact between the two. Unity for 3D content and Flash elements for 2D content. I have some very interesting cases in mind, which I'll work out in the next two weeks and present at my session.

John Grden from the Papervision3D team will host another session, as well as Mauricio Longoni who created u3dobject.

So to conclude this and be honest; if this is within your field of interest you just need to be there! So get your tickets today and see you in San Fransisco!

With this book we had the goal to write a book for beginners. A book which we would like to read when we were starting with Papervision3D. Taking nothing for granted and gradually work to more advanced topics. Hopefully we have achieved that goal, which will become clear once the copies are sold and we will get feedback from our readers. Now the book is on sale we can finally get feedback from more people other than the very valuable reviewers Trevor Burton, Stuart Caunt and Patrick Rushton.

The book covers many topics in detail, which results to that the book could be used as a reference guide. More than once I've looked back to the chapters that we've written and see how things work. We have chapters dedicated to the following topics:

• Setting up
• Building your first application
• Primitives
• Materials
• Cameras
• Moving things around
• Shading
• External models
• Z-sorting
• Particles
• Filters and effects
• 3D Vector drawing and text
• Optimizing performance

Together with releasing this book, our publisher posted an example chapter on their website. Which is chapter 8 about modeling. I think this chapter gives a good impression on how thouroughly we tried to explain certain topics.

More information about the topics of our book can be found on the website of our publisher. Make sure you'll check out:

• Table of contents
• 3D Vector Drawing and Text with Papervision3D: Part 1
• 3D Vector Drawing and Text with Papervision3D: Part 2 

In the next couple of weeks you can expect some articles here on my blog about subjects that have not made it to the book. So keep an eye on this blog.

But for now, I'm going to enjoy my vacation first and I want to say a big THANK YOU!, to those who have supported us during the writing. Our reviewers Trevor, Patrick and Stuart. The Flash community for posting valuable articles and last but not least the Papervision3D team for their help and answers while writing the book.

I'm very delighted to finally announce that I have been working on the first Papervision3D book that will be released ever. The book is in cooperation with my good friend and co-author Jeff Winder and will be published by Packt Publishing. Since the beginning of this year we have been working extremely hard on the writing of this book. We are ready with the writing of all chapters and are preparing all final drafts right now. So you can expect this book to be published really soon.

The result of our hard work is that we have a book that will be useful for both experienced as non-experienced Papervision3D users. The first few chapters take no knowledge for granted and guides the reader through all steps for getting started with Papervision3D. It describes how to get Flash CS3, Flash CS4, Flex Builder and Flash Builder correctly configured for running Papervision3D code. This includes downloading Papervision3D (SWC, ZIP and a step-by-step guide for downloading from SVN). Once an example project has been compiled, a short introduction to OOP and classes is given for those who have no experience in this. From there the reader book gradually works through more advanced topics, such as loading external models, shading, z-sorting, viewport layers, particles, filters and effects, vector drawing and performance optimizations.

As the book contains much information on a variety of topics it is also interesting for those who already have experience in Papervision3D, but want to extend their knowledge and understanding. It was not aimed to be a reference guide, however it turns out that many topics are thoroughly described and can be used for this purpose as well. (I personally already did this while working on commercial projects that make use of Papervision3D)

Today the book has been announced on the website of our publisher, Packt Publishing and will soon be announced on other websites, like Amazon for example. For both Jeff and myself this is the first book we have ever written. Seeing our book and names listed is already very exciting.

We can't wait to have our book finished and hold the final copy in our hands. We did our best (and still do) to make this a very good book and we are looking forward to hear responses from our readers.  But for now we will continue writing on the last bits. Once there's more news about the exact release date I will post it here on my blog.

[Update 2009-07-29] Papervision3D Essentials - Now listed on Amazon

Last Thursday a new campaign for Volkswagen went live, which makes use of mobile streaming. I did some work for this in cooperation with Achtung!, before looking at what I developed for this campaign let me first give a nutshell introduction.

A new Volkswagen Polo is driving around in the Netherlands. When you see the car passing by, you can wave at the car, so the current driver has to stop and the new driver can continue the ride. Each day winner who drove the longest distance gets a ticket for the finale that takes place after the campaign. The one who wins the finale will win the car.

Visitors of the website www.pakdepolo.nl can see where the car is at this moment through several video streams and live GPS. You can leave your zip code on the website in to vote for your neighborhood, which could result in sending the car in that direction. The car is equipped with an custom written navigation system making use of Google maps and is in connection with the website. New routes can be pushed to the car. It is also possible to leave your mobile phone number or e-mail, in order to get a warning when the car is will cross your neighborhood.
I was asked to equip the car with all the technical stuff, as I have quite some experience with mobile streaming and equipping cars with it.

I had to:

• Recreate and assemble the camera system.
• Set up streaming to a Wowza server.
• Real-time push GPS positions from the car to all clients over a RTMP (Red5) connection
• Track distance per driver. (This was a real hassle, as the GPS devices which I’ve used gave unreliable positions once in a while)
• Create a LED display showing a driven distance per driver. (This was custom made. A Phidget has been used as the interface between a laptop and the LED display).
• Set up a local in-car network to set up a remote desktop between the laptop in front of the car, with laptops in the trunk.
• Custom build all hardware in the car.

The following images show some parts of my work: (more...)

I've receive quite some feedback, including some international feedback of people who are disappointed the presentation is in Dutch and they can't understand it. I'd love to get invited and do this presentation for an international audience, so ping me a message when you have an opportunity (hint: I'll probably travel to California in September ).

Regarding the presentation, also make sure you'll watch the following presentations:

• Senne de Jong - The Impossible Takes a Little Longer
• Tim Hudson and Sander Wichers - Serial K-Killers
• Wim van der Plas - It's All in the Game
• Daniël van Gils - Combine the real and virtual: a guide to augmented reality games and installations
• Jan-Willem Reuling - An Adventure with Adobe AIR
• Martin Janse - Game Publishing
• Quinten Beek - Security in Online Gaming, keeping the hackers out

Kudos to the Adobe Usergroup for making these videos available!

Couldn't make it to this meeting? Don't worry, all sessions will be available on the Adobe Usergroup website soon (I'll dedicate a new post on this once it is available).

I've been asked to do a presentation about what I'm doing with Unity, Flash and Red5. Hopefully it gave some new insights to at least a few of the 250 attendees. I really liked talking about my recent passions and want to thank the Adobe Usergroup for inviting!

I've just posted my presentation slides to SlideShare, while waiting for the session videos that will become available soon: