Ever since Doug McCune first showed what could be accomplished when you combine Flex with physics and 3D in his TileUI project, I’ve been curious in learning how he did it. He hasn’t posted the source yet and rather than wait for him to give up the goods, I figured I’d try to break down what he showed in his demo and replicate it.

I fought my way through the ActionScript Physics Engine (APE) and PaperVision3D projects that he said he used.  I went with the code in the PaperVision3d trunk repository which I think is the 1.5 version.  (I would love to know the details of the differences between 1.5, 2.0/great white, and the effects branch – all I really found were lots of demos of each but no real summary of where each of these versions is going). After messing with the code in my spare time last week, I’ve come up with a demo. Make no mistake: McCune is Flex bad ass and my TileUI clone has fewer features than his. However, you can select, lasso, group, stack, spiral, drag, resize, unstack, remove and change the perscpective on the tiles below. And best of all, you can view the source. :)

This movie requires Flash Player 9

Keep in mind that I’ve only been using APE and PaperVision for a week and I’m no expert at physics or 3D (yet). So the source (right-click on the demo to view it) has not been refactored or refined at all. It is a truly a quick and dirty version of DMc‘s slick project.  Maybe he’ll release his source and show me how to do this right someday.   ;)