So you've decided to get started with 3D in Flash for the first time and don't know how to get started? This tutorial will help you set up Away3D for either Flash, Flex or Flashdevelop.

Away3D is a very capable 3D engine that is in active development, has good community support and well structured documentation that improves every day. It's a great way to get started with 3D in Flash using your favorite development tool. The process described here does not only apply to Away3D, but to any kind of source code so if you want to use MinimalComps by Keith Peters or other Open Source code, just follow the description in this tutorial.

Tutorial by Jens C Brynildsen (August 08th 2008)

This article is for those new to 3D computer graphics. It will introduce you to the lingo used and will explain what is required to make 3D in Flash. If you don't know what a mesh, texture or shader is, this tutorial will prepare you for working with Flash 3D engines such as Papervision3D, Away3D and Sandy. This tutorial does not require programming knowledge as it only covers the basics of 3D on computers in general.

The tutorial is for the very beginners, but it also hold something for others. All the examples are done in Away3D and the source code for each example is available for download. Exploring source code is often the best way to learn, so if you wonder how any of the examples are created, download the code and have a look at it. Read more about using the example files at the end of this article. One more thing - all the examples require that you move your mouse over them. If all the Flash files on this page started playing at once, your browser would just crash. You'll soon learn why.

Let's get started. 3D is simple. It's something you're very used to as you see it all the time with your own eyes. Because of that, your brain know a lot about how 3D works. 3D in computers are very much like 3D in real life. The difference is that on the computer, everything you see is created by someone and that it is displayed in only 2 dimensions.