Developer(s) Away Foundation | Development status Active | |
Original author(s) Initial release 2007; 10 years ago (2007) Stable release 4.1.6 / January 24, 2014; 3 years ago (2014-01-24) Written in ActionScript 3, TypeScript | ||
Away3D is an open source platform for developing interactive 3D graphics for video games and applications, in Adobe Flash or HTML5. The platform consists of a 3D world editor (Away Builder), a 3D graphics engine (Away3D or AwayJS), a 3D physics engine (Away Physics) and a compressed 3D model file format (AWD).
Contents
Development is managed by the Away Foundation, a UK-based non-profit focussed on building and maintaining free and open source software resources for high-performance mobile games and applications. The foundation is supported by corporate sponsorship (Adobe, JetBrains among others) and individual donors.
Away Builder
Away Builder is an open source integrated development environment for importing, refining, preparing and exporting 3D models and animations. It can import 3D models from various 3D applications such as Autodesk 3ds Max, and can bake lighting into texture maps. The primary purpose of Away Builder is exporting 3D model packages for the Away3D engine. It supports the compressed AWD binary format, enabling smaller sizes for 3D models than ASCII-based formats such as OBJ.
The Away Extensions plugin enables exporting 2D and 3D content from Adobe Animate into Away3D or AwayJS.
Away3D
Away3D is an open source ActionScript 3 engine for developing interactive 3D graphics within Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR. Away3D runs on current web browsers utilizing the Adobe Flash Player, and uses Stage3D for GPU-accelerated rendering.
The engine can render 3D models and perform various other 3D computations. It supports hierarchical object transformation with features such as position, rotation and scaling, rendering of bitmap textures. Real-time lighting and illumination is supported using Phong shading, Gouraud shading, point and directional lighting, cascading shadows, normal and specular mapping, global illumination and fog effects. It also supports stereoscopic rendering, 3D sound, extrusion tools, particle animation and skeletal animation. Post-processing effects may be used to enhance the quality of the graphics, and Away3D supports bloom, blur, depth of field and motion blur.
Away3D 4 and onwards fully supports GPU-accelerated graphics using the Stage3D API introduced in Flash Player 11, freeing up the CPU for other computational tasks. Since GPUs are capable of rendering many more textured triangles per second, it allows for much more detail and quality, and up to 100,000 triangles per frame instead of the typical 1,000 ceiling with CPU-based Flash rendering.
Away Physics is a physics engine based on the Bullet physics library, for collision detection, soft and rigid body dynamics. The engine is built jointly by the Away3D team and the JiglibFlash team, and is tightly integrated with the Away3D render pipeline.
AwayJS
AwayJS is an open source JavaScript 3D graphics rendering engine for HTML5 web browsers, and is a port of the Adobe Flash-based Away3D. The Away3D codebase was ported to Microsoft TypeScript, a strongly-typed version of JavaScript that compiles to JavaScript files for compatibility with modern web standards. AwayJS runs on current web browsers and uses WebGL for GPU-accelerated rendering.
The engine can render 3D models and perform various other 3D computations. It supports hierarchical object transformation with features such as position, rotation and scaling, rendering of bitmap textures, and real-time lighting using Phong shading or Gouraud shading. It also supports shadow mapping, particle animation and skeletal animation.
AwayJS can render 2D and 3D graphical content using WebGL for GPU-accelerated rendering. It enables developers to use the existing Away Builder toolkit for editing, refining, compressing and texture baking 3D models and animations. AwayJS also supports the compressed AWD binary format, enabling smaller sizes for 3D models than ASCII-based formats such as OBJ.
The AwayJS API is consistent with the Flash version of Away3D, enabling existing developers to migrate from Flash to HTML5 seamlessly. To preserve backward-compatibility with Away3D, AwayJS enables developers to write GPU shaders in the Adobe AGAL language, or the standard OpenGL Shading Language language.
History
Away3D was started in 2007 by Alexander Zadorozhny and Rob Bateman as a fork of Papervision3D.
Away3D saw active community involvement since its introduction in 2007, and superseded Papervision3D after it was updated to support GPU-accelerated rendering using Stage3D. Three guide books have been published on 3D content development with Away3D.
The author states that the engine began as a spare-time project, and was created for fun. After large ad agencies and game publishers started it, they had to "evolve to keep pace". In an interview he further states:
In 2009, the Away3D community released Away3D Lite, a lighter version of the engine for Flash advertisements and other size-constrained content. Away3D Lite was the fastest and smallest full-featured 3D engine built for Flash. It weighed in at 25KB and performed 4 times faster than the full Away3D engine. No future versions were released.
In 2011, a Flash book noted in the section on "3D with Flash" that "Away3D and Alternativa3D are currently the preferred solution for performance and features because they have a more active development community".
In 2013, Adobe chose Away3D as the sole 3D engine included within the Adobe Gaming SDK. Since then, Adobe has funded further development in Away3D and Away Builder, and has updated the Adobe Gaming SDK with new releases of Away3D.
In 2016, Away3D 1.2 was ported to the Haxe multiplatform language, enabling it to be cross-compiled to JavaScript and other languages that support 3D graphics. This also enables Away3D to run on OpenFL, a runtime similar to Adobe Flash Player.