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| Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move! (Foundation) | 
 enlarge | Author: Keith Peters
Publisher: friends of ED
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $15.90
You Save: $24.09 (60%)
Buy New/Used from $12.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  (35 reviews)
Sales Rank: 138988
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 1590595181
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.78
EAN: 9781590595183
ASIN: 1590595181
Publication Date: October 17, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Sure you can animate using motion tweens, in fact we'll help you do that with our Flash Cartoon Animation book, but isn't there something extra special in making things move with just a few lines of code? In this book Keith Peters guides us through some basic animation theory and then demystifies the math and physics behind creating realistic animation, looking at trigonometry, velocity and acceleration, and bouncing & friction. This book will teach you how to use Flash ActionScript to move the objects in your movies, rather than letting Flashs tween engine do it for you. The benefit of this is smaller, more realistic, more dynamic interactive movies that seem to come alive on your screen. Almost all of the code featured in this book will work fine in either Flash MX 2004 or Flash 8, and with a few minor adjustments, most of it can even be applied to Flash MX. Although the text covers many advanced math and physics concepts, making for very realistic motion, theres no need to worry, even if youre a relative newcomer to programming and the last math class you took was in high school (and even if you barely remember that!). This book first covers everything you need to know to get started: the principles of animation, and the basics of ActionScript, trigonometry, and Flash rendering methods. Youll work your way slowly from using code to move a single object across the screen to creating complex systems that really push Flashs capabilities with topics covered including collision detection, particle attraction, and kinematics. The book concludes with looking at 3D animation techniques, including building a basic 3D engine, 3D lines, fills and solids, and matrix math. Once you come to grips with the ideas presented here, youll find yourself creating all manner of exciting animations and games! Summary of Contents - Part I ActionScripted Animation Basics
- Ch. 1 Basic Animation Concepts
- Ch. 2 ActionScript Basics for Animation
- Ch. 3 Trigonometry
- Ch. 4 Rendering Techniques
- Part II Basic Motion
- Ch. 5 Velocity and Acceleration
- Ch. 6 Bouncing and Friction
- Ch. 7 User Interaction: Dragging and Throwing
- Part III Advanced Motion
- Ch. 8 Easing and Springs
- Ch. 9 Collision Detection
- Ch. 10 Bouncing off Angles
- Ch. 11 Billiard Ball Physics
- Ch. 12 Particle Attraction
- Ch. 13 Forward Kinematics
- Ch. 14 Inverse Kinematics
- Part IV Three D
- Ch. 15 A Basic 3D Engine
- Ch. 16 3D Lines, Fills, Solids
- Ch. 17 Advanced 3D: Backface Culling and Lighting
- Ch. 18 Matrix Math
- Part V Tips and Tricks
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Essential read for every actionscripter September 9, 2008
I have read a lot of books, covering a lot of subjects. This must be one of the more complex subjects (trigonometry mainly), yet one of the easiest to understand. Keith Peters does an awesome job of explaining every little trig secret you never thought you needed to know.
I was lucky enough to glance inside this book, just when I was starting with actionscript. I own this book for about a year now, used it's contents extensively and I'm still only halfway through; Busy exploring the possibilities from previous chapters while the most exciting stuff is yet to come. Seriously, there isn't a single chapter I'm not interested in.
But the best thing about this book is how it breaks down all the fundamental concepts of movement into easy bits of math, so you're able to selectively use any one technique or a combinaton without having to untangle them from context or code.
One of the most usefull and best written books I have ever read, you can not go wrong with this one!
Everything you wanted to know June 9, 2008
I'm only on chapter 5, but this book really lays out all of the tools you need to prototype and/or develop video games in Flash. At first I was a little upset because the author seemed to skip over some elements for the beginner, or rather the rusty flash programmer, but he explains just enough so that if you want to dig into it you can. This book probably isn't for the very beginner. You need to have had some Flash experience and/or some Flash programming experience to really get everything, but a couple of tutorials should be enough. Highly recommended.
well done April 7, 2008
Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move! is a surprisingly well-written book. I started with Flash 3, moved to server-side languages with Flash MX, and now, years later getting back into Flash has been a journey to say the least. This book, more than the five or six others I have purchased, has made the transition fairly easy.
The author has done an excellent job in breaking down Flash math for those of us old school, tellTarget, gotoAndPlay, motion tween people. The best part of this book... the examples are error free. Which should go without saying, but in this day and age it is surprising how many tech books out there (their authors in a rush to publish) have irrelevant or incorrect example code. Highly recommended.
Easy to use and understand, even for the novice October 15, 2007
I was tasked with producing eight Flash simulations for an engineering dynamics course this past summer. I programmed the simulations using ActionScript with algebra and calculus introduced to control the behavior of a variety of objects -- no small task if you consider that I am an English teacher and not a programmer or engineer.
By doing and redoing the problems posed by Peters, I could eventually understand them well enough to be able to program similar modules for my project. No idea seems too difficult for him to explain in a manner a beginner can understand, particularly with the working models at the FriendsofED.
I purchased nine books on the subject at the beginning of the project. I ended up using this one more than all of the others combined.
I also recommend his ActionScript 3.0. Being the same book written for two different versions of ActionScript, the two books give us a really good opportunity to compare and contrast the two languages.
 Must Love Actionscript September 22, 2007
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I will atest that this is a great book IF you are an actionscript junkie, but if your not you will hate this book. I was looking for a book to help my students with thier Flash animations and this book was way beyond where I wanted to take my students.
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