Book review: Papervision 3D Essentials (follow link to buy)
ISBN 1847195725
ISBN 13 978-1-847195-72-2
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Author: Paul Tondeur and Jeff Winder.
This review here is long overdue, but since work got a bit hectic, and I spent some time moving it got pushed back.

Papervision3D Essentials Cover

Short version: If you want to get started with Papervision 3D, get this book. It’s a well written, great introduction for people new to Papervision3D, as well as a good reference for more experienced developers. It covers everything from basics to filters, effects and performance topics.

Longer version: Before I started reading this book I had never used Pv3D except looking at some neat demos. I had some experience with OpenGL from way-back, so the basic 3d concepts were not new to me.  As I got started I found that most of what I knew from general 3d graphics development was covered pretty well in the first few chapters. From the basic building blocks, to coordinate systems and primitives. The book starts out with a chapter dedicated to setting up authoring tools for compiling the code created during the book. Both Flash CS3/CS4 and Flex/Flash Builder is covered. After that it deals briefly with some core AS3 concepts before moving on to fundamental 3D subjects. Everything is explained really well, and as the book progresses trough the rest of the chapters it details subjects as drawing primitives, adding materials, setting up cameras and loading external models, then going on with particle systems, external models, filters and effects. A chapter is also dedicated to performance optimization. The book offers a number of good examples, also available on-line.

The authors are clearly very comfortable with the subjects they are covering, and discussing pretty much every topic in a language that makes it easy to follow, also for less experienced developers. In my opinion this is a very well written book that I would not hesitate to recommend to beginning developers as well as experienced.