Director's Third Dimension

This is an excellent book - in fact I cannot think of a book I have been more impressed by offhand; therefor it goes first on the list. It helped me understand how to create a 3d game using Macromedia Director (now in the hands of Adobe - please give this cool package lots of loving attention, Adobe).

Paul Catanese writes clearly and concisely, and breaks his book up into sections on (my words following) 3d Castmembers, Creating Models from Scratch With Lingo (the script programming language built-in to Director), Transformations, Lighting, Cameras, Hierarchies, Importing Objects from Modeling Software, Creating Graphs and Charts in 3d, Texturing, Using a Mouse on 3d Objects, Surfaces, Special Effects like Particles and Animated Textures, 3d Interface Design, 3d Collision Detection.

Paul's examples are short and sweet. You can use them to get your sea-legs, until you are able to modify them and eventually write your own.

While I am now more focused on the Torque Game Engine (Director simply cannot compete with the superior immersive qualities of Torque, or the in-general much more powerful game-making features and scripting possibilities), Director is still a very useful tool for interface design and game development, particularly over the web (via Shockwave). If Adobe gives this amazing, real-time 3D development tool half a chance, it will help to change the Internet as we know it. Unfortunately for now, Director has not seen any notable 3d feature additions or improvements for nearly five years.

If you aren't familiar with what Director can do, you can see some of my learning games at www.3dcognition.com, or go to the biggest shockwave site I know of, www.shockwave.com.

Director's Third Dimension gave me a handle on Director and Lingo more than any other language or class, and the CD that comes with the book is invaluable. Hats off to Paul Catanese for one of the absolutely best software how-to manuals of all time.