Foundation ActionScript Animation

Not only has Foundation ActionScript Animation - Making Things Move been a long time coming, but just in a matter of a few weeks, it sold out of its first run. And after going through it, I can see why.

Title:Foundation ActionScript Animation - Making Things Move
Author: Keith Peters
Publisher: Friends of ED
Pages: 470
Price: $39.99 retail
CD: no

 

I've been working in Flash since version 4 and haven't had to use a tween in about 3 years because all the animation I do is done with ActionScript. When I heard this book was coming out, I had to grab a copy and check out how much can be done with ActionScripted animation.

 

The book is broken into 5 basic sections starting with the first four chapters covering the basics of animation with ActionScript including trigonometry and rendering techniques. The next section is where the book begins to delve into more detail of each topic with Basic Motion covering things like velocity, friction and basic user interaction. The third section builds on the previous one covering collision detection and bouncing off of angles. The forth section goes a different direction going over 3D techniques starting with lines and fills and moving onto things such as lighting. And the final section has just two chapters, the first covering how to do matrix math, and the final chapter of the book, which is worth the price of the book by itself, is the tips and tricks section that not only show some great algorithms to use, but it also goes back over each of the major formulas from every chapter of the book.

 

This book is very code heavy (but in a good way) especially in the later chapters, but each section of code is gone over line by line and you never feel lost from example to example. But before you even get to a section of code, the fundamentals behind the example are thoroughly explained. And the best part is that at the end of each chapter, not only is there a summary, but also each important formula is shown again.

 

Although Foundation ActionScript Animation does go over some of the basics, it is definitely geared towards Flash users with some ActionScripting abilities, and some math skills will come in handy as well (especially in the 3D chapters). But if you are interested in seeing how far you can take animation with ActionScript, or your tired of doing all your animations the hard way with keyframes or tweens this book is for you.

 

It doesn't come with a cd of files, but you can grab them all here.

 

 

 

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