FlashBrite3D – free 3d text writer

FlashBrite3d is a great tool to give your project that little extra something. You build a light display in XML and use simple code to generate amazing visuals. I, personally, like the Simple example better than a complex one, however this is meant to be very open.

This uses Papervision 3D greatwhite branch + effects branch, svn revision 405.

Simple example | XML (use view source)

Converted Image example | XML (use view source)

Download .zip

How to setup:

First, you need an image to use as a base. The image should only be 100% white or 100% black, and usually quite large. I suggest 800px wide for an average name. (Skip the image preperation steps if you wish to create the letters by hand)
Next, we need to convert the image into text! There are many great resources, however I simply like to use http://asciiconvert.com

The text you are provided will not be what we need. Copy and paste this text into a text editor (dreamweaver’s code view) and perform global find and replace functions until you have only 0’s (zero) and x’s (lowercase). 0’s mean off, and x means on. I actually ended up using ms word with Times new roman for a mono spaced font. This allowed to alt-click and drag to select blocks of text at once.

Now have a look at my included text_xml.xml file. You can now either copy / paste your text into a single <letter> node, or split your letters up into individual <letter> nodes to give control over each letter. Save this file, and upload to a server. It’s a hassle to load xml locally in as3, but not impossible.

This is a sample Flex Actionscript application:

[SWF(frameRate="31", width="750", height="300", backgroundColor="0x000000")]

include "fb3d/imports.as";

public class $3d_text extends Sprite {

	include "fb3d/vars.as";

	public function $3d_text() {
		stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
		stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
		include "fb3d/script.as";
		var url:String = "http://www.domain.com/text_xml.xml";
		init();
		o = false;
		if (o) {
			stage.addChild(new Output());
		}
	}
}

That’s all there is! From here on in it’s all just tweaking your customized .xml file. See the notes inside the text_xml.xml file for additional information on editing the xml.

FlashBrite3d is released under the GPL. If you use it, please leave a comment here with the URL of where it is you are using it. You may not sell or repackage this code. Thank you.