Programmers... a group of people who know logic and process intimately. Designers... a group of people who worship order and asthetics. Very rarely do these two groups see eye to eye on "what's cool". To a designer, practical functionality that is user friendly is greatly appealing. Yet programmers, who see reason and numbers, often forget this aspect of creation.

But there are a few areas where both programmers and designers develop towards the same end. These few areas are nothing more than a collection of tools whose process promotes design, whose logic displays order, whose reasoning is both complex yet intuitive. This article is an introduction to one such tool that makes both designers and developers squeal with glee: Perlin Noise.

One of the most useful feature in any engine is the ability to create your own models in a 3D modeling program and import it into your code. Sandy has three forms of files it can parse: ASE (ASCII Scene Export), Collada (a common XML-based format), and 3DS (3D Studio Format). In this tutorial we're going to cover how to import your 3DS files into Sandy, event basics, and 3D camera manipulation.

Here's the source, and here's the swf.