Minko released as open source

I’m glad to announce the very first public release of Minko, Aerys’ 3D framework targeting the Adobe Flash platform and the new Stage3D API. This release focuses on setting up the main concepts and APIs. You can download Minko on the Aerys Developer Hub. The code is realeased under the LGPL license so everyone is free to start building awesome 3D applications for the web. Here are the key features:

• Extensible Scene Graph API
• ActionScript 3.0 GPU programming
• Extensions system
• Support for 3DS and Collada file formats
• Dynamic lighting and dynamic shadows
• Hardware accelerated animations
• 3D physics

Yes… with Minko you can now create “shaders” and program the graphics hardware using ActionScript 3.0 code! Thanks to this awesome feature, any Flash developer can now program the GPU to create incredible hardware accelerated rendering effects. We have also released a bunch of tutorials, technical articles and open source demonstrations such as:

• Gravity
• Globe
• Astroboy

Those demos take advatange of the many extensions already available. Those extensions are separated projects providing extra features such as:

• dynamic lights and shadows (minko-lighting)
• 3D physics with jiglibflash (minko-jiglibflash)
• pixel-perfect mouse interactivity (minko-picking)
• Collada and 3DS files parsers (minko-collada and minko-3ds)

Anyone can create extensions and share them with the community. Thanks to the LGPL license, you can also create proprietary extensions and sell them. You can expect more extensions and a 1.5 version to be released before the end of the year. A lot of documentation will also be pushed every month.

Minko is a free and open source technology and Aerys will provide commercial partnerships, technical supports and custom developments. You can learn about all the services we provide and contact us today!