The new breed of run-time 3D engines for Flash, from Papervison to Away3D to new contender Alternativa, have radically transformed the face of Flash design in a very short period of time. But what excites us here at GT is not just the ability to model 3D objects in Flash, but the scope for 3D animation.

Our recent work for Audi has really pushed the envelope in terms of what’s possible. By choreographing all our animations in standard 3D modelling packages like Maya and 3DS Max, and then using the resulting data to manage what’s going on in Flash, we have been able to create animations of unprecedented sophistication.

We really think we’re onto something. And seeing our Rhythm of Lines microsite for the new Audi A5 get nominated for Best Use of Motion Graphics at this year’s Webby Awards would seem to confirm that.

But we know that we couldn’t have done it without open source projects like Papervision. So we’re very pleased to announce that we’re releasing some of the source code for Rhythm of Lines.

We’re releasing source that shows the process of getting animation data into Flash from end to end

• demo Maya file
• Python script that exports the relevant vertex data
• the resulting XML file
• enough Flash source to make it run (trust us; you don’t want the whole thing)

n.b. to get it to compile, you will need old versions of some libraries, which are provided here for your convenience.

Download it. Get your head around it. Refine it. Better still, just do something crazy with it.

Any questions? Fire us an email.