Export PV3D Collada from 3DS Max

Download the OpenCollada plug-in from: OpenCollada

In 3DS Max:
1. Go to Customize -> Plug-in Manager…
2. Check that the Open Collada plug-in has been loaded
3. Click on File -> Export
4. Select OpenCOLLADA
5. Under Standard Options check Relative Paths
6. Under Geometry check Normals and Triangulate
*Everything else should be unchecked
7. Press Okay

Collada Scale Issue in PV3D

I had a problem recently in Papervision 3D and 3DS Max using the Open Collada plug-in to export a model.

Everything worked perfectly with the first attempt but after seeing the model in my PV3D environment I wanted to scale some parts of the model in 3ds Max and re-export it. The changes I made in 3ds added a tag in the DAE export file:


1.125775 1.125775 1.125775

I could still load and view the new model in PV3D no problem – but whenever I tried to rotate any part of the collada the object suddenly resized to the scale of my first model. (As if it overrides the tags in the DAE)

To fix this problem I had to Freeze all Object Transformations within 3DS Max before exporting.

Steps:
1. Select the objects you want to freeze transformations fo in 3DS Max
2. Navigate to the utilities tab (Right most tab)
3. Click Reset XForm -> Reset Selected

Recieve URL parameters in AS3

There are a number of ways to get access to the parameters in the URL and use them in your AS3 code. A quick and dirty way of doing this is to use:

//Imports the External Interface Library
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
//Makes a call to the browser HTML - grabs the URL and casts it to a string
ExternalInterface.call("window.location.href.toString");

From there you can parse the string to get the parameter you need.

Example:

package yourPackage{
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
   public class yourClass{
      private var url:String;
      private function yourClass():void{
         url = ExternalInterface.call("window.location.href.toString");
      }
   }
}