ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Working in three dimensions (3D)
Performing complex 3D transformations
Flash Player 10 and later, Adobe AIR 1.5 and later
The Matrix3D class lets you transform 3D points within a coordinate space or map 3D points from one coordinate
space to another.
You don't need to understand matrix mathematics to use the Matrix3D class. Most of the common transformation
operations can be handled using the methods of the class. You don't have to worry about explicitly setting or
calculating the values of each element in the matrix.
After you set the z property of a display object to a numeric value, you can retrieve the object’s transformation matrix
using the Matrix3D property of the display object’s Transform object:
var leafMatrix:Matrix3D = this.transform.matrix3D;
You can use the methods of the Matrix3D object to perform translation, rotation, scaling, and perspective projection
on the display object.
Use the Vector3D class with its x, y, and z properties for managing 3D points. It can also represent a spatial vector in
physics, which has a direction and a magnitude. The methods of the Vector3D class let you perform common
calculations with spatial vectors, such as addition, dot product, and cross product calculations.
Note: The Vector3D class is not related to the ActionScript Vector class. The Vector3D class contains properties and
methods for defining and manipulating 3D points, while the Vector class supports arrays of typed objects.
Creating Matrix3D objects
Flash Player 10 and later, Adobe AIR 1.5 and later
There are three main ways of creating or retrieving Matrix3D objects:
1 Use the Matrix3D() constructor method to instantiate a new matrix. The Matrix3D() constructor takes a Vector
object containing 16 numeric values and places each value into a cell of the matrix. For example:
var rotateMatrix:Matrix3D = new Matrix3D(1,0,0,1, 0,1,0,1, 0,0,1,1, 0,0,0,1);
2 Set the value the z property of a display object. Then retrieve the transformation matrix from the
transform.matrix3D property of that object.
3 Retrieve the Matrix3D object that controls the display of 3D objects on the stage by getting the value of the
perspectiveProjection.matrix3D property of the root display object.
Applying multiple 3D transformations
Flash Player 10 and later, Adobe AIR 1.5 and later
You can apply many 3D transformations at once using a Matrix3D object. For example if you wanted to rotate, scale,
and then move a cube, you could apply three separate transformations to each point of the cube. However it is much
more efficient to precalculate multiple transformations in one Matrix3D object and then perform one matrix
transformation on each of the points.
Note: The order in which matrix transformations are applied is important. Matrix calculations are not commutative. For
example, applying a rotation followed by a translation gives a different result than applying the same translation followed
by the same rotation.
Last updated 6/6/2012
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