Panning the Camera
Trigonometry can no be applied in Flash 3D to
do some camera panning. This will involve trig
to rotate the camera view or to determine in what
direction the camera is pointing. Because the
camera is looking straight back in z, in panning
the camera, it would mean spinning the z axis
around until you'd be looking at x, and from there,
back to z again. The y axis remains up the whole
time, so this rotation is based in the x and z
axis space.
[
rotating
around y axis
]
Basically, what this entails in terms of the
camera is not really rotating the camera so much
as rotating everything else in the 3D scene around
the camera, just as with before when moving the
camera, it wasn't so much moving the camera as
it was moving everything in reference to it. The
same thing applies in rotation as with movement.
The application of that change, however, is a
little different. It requires the use of trig.
[
panning camera vs panning items around camera
]
Now, in an overhead view the x, z plane, where
the camera is being rotated within, the plane
looks much like the x, y plane would normally.
And technically, it pretty much is the
same thing in almost every respect aside from
the axis names. That means applying the sine and
cosine methods there should be no problem. It's
just a matter of replacing what was y with what
will now be z - form x, y to x, z. With the rotation
affecting that z axis you will get rotation around
the camera view in 3D space as if the camera is
panning left and right - exactly what we're after
here. Now it's just a matter of putting what we
know about trig to work for us in this way.
You may feel that you have learned everything
there is to know about 3D in Flash, but there
is still a bit more left.