Metaballs, everyone’s favorite computer-generated globby blobs , have been around for a while. They’re the product of a rush of innovation in computer graphics during the 1980′s by the likes of Ken Perlin, Bui Tuong Phong, and Jim Blinn, when computer graphics began recognizing the need for organic shapes and shaders. The algorithm has been implemented countless times and can be astoundingly efficient and simple; the hardest part is finding something useful for them. Here is our take on it.

A cover flow is a great way to display and browse through discrete content. It feels like flipping through a magazine: easy and fast, but informative. Its a natural addition to many user interfaces, but many existing implementations are like black boxes with strict display rules. You add in your elements, and you end up with iTunes 7. We needed something more generic and reusable; those were the priorities. We take a look at the built in transform property of a DisplayObject, and how that can be used to build an flexible flow

This episode is a bit of a catch all for some other random things that we wanted to cover in this series, like multiple file libraries, async functions, and Flash access from C. The hope is, by the time you are done reading this post (along with the last 4) you will be able to start build swcs of other libraries, or even creating your own directly in C. If this ends up being the case, please let us know, we would love to see what you guys make! Anywho, on with the show…

In part 3 of our Adobe Alchemy series we finally dive into some C code, and get an example up and running from scratch. You will be exposed to words like “thunk” and “bash” and not be referring to a bad cave man joke. Oh, and you will also make calls to C functions from Flash

Part 2 of our Alchemy Series will get you all set up to start building and porting your own C libraries to Adobe Flash. The initial setup seems to scare a lot of people off, so we tried to do a very easy to follow step by step guide to getting the Alchemy Development Environment up and running. Check it out, and get started having fun with Alchemy! You know you want to

So we finally have both halves of the equation in one convenient library for all of your Ogg Vorbis needs! Our new swc brings the ability to Encode and Decode Ogg Vorbis formatted audio files. The Ogg Vorbis format is superior to MP3 in just about all categories. High audio fidelity can be maintained at low bit rates, which makes for great sound quality at a very low file size. Check out the post and give our examples a whirl!

An Ogg Vorbis encoder for flash is something we have wanted for quite a while, but there didn’t seem to be any readily available. After much searching, we decided it was time to make one. So we downloaded Xiph.org’s example code and had at it. Feel free to download the example and give it a go!