My last post reminded me of the dark days of Macromedia Director. In 1999 (yes, they had the internet then), a new version of Director introduced ‘quads’, which were like deformed squares. I figured I could use them to make polygons… and therefore a basic 3D engine. Here’s what I made…

Note: It requires Shockwave, which you probably don’t have. And even if you do, there will probably be a yellow bar at the top of your browser you didn’t notice. Good luck

[LAUNCH IT]

Try clicking the little circles and moving the sliders to change the basic lens and scale. You can even grad it! Wow!

Annoyingly, the next version of Director had 3D built in, so my smile was short lived. Not exactly the latest webGL masterpiece but hey, it doffs a cap to the pioneering spirit we’re seeing once again.

Just trawling through a few old Flash folders on my mac and found this little fella’ sitting there all unloved. Came up with the 3D engine in 1998 using Director and made a quick hack to get it into Flash. It’s not particularly neat, hence why there’s no source posted, but suffice to say the heart of he 3D bit is that old ‘fake-doodle-dandy’ equation…

var x = (worldLens*pointX)/(pointZ+worldScale)+xOffset;
var y = (worldLens*pointY)/(pointZ+worldScale)+yOffset;

Like so…

Launch it to fill the browser

If you really want the code, let me know, but I’m secretly ashamed of it… :)