flash 3d problem

["Paul Robson" <probson@powerup.com.au>]

Hi,

I'm trying to make a 3d animation in Flash4 using only my programming skills
:)  I have run into a problem though...  I have worked out the end points of
a line I'm trying to draw on the screen.  I can set the line object I've got
at a point in space easily enough, but the only way to set the other end of
the line to a certain point is to scale and rotate the line.  Seeing as
flash doesn't have any built in trig functions, my problem is that I can't
work out the angle to rotate the line by give that all I know are x and y...
and given that there is no sqrt function either.

So, I have (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) and I need to know then angle between these
(theta) as well as the length of the line.  is there anyway to do this given
the constraints that all that can be used are sin, cos, tan (with a lookup
table I'm going to put into the animation) and no square root?  I have
considered putting in a table for atan, but I don't think it would work
because of the way the indexing works in flash (with no real array support
etc).

of course, I guess I could just precalculate everything, but then I wouldn't
be able to rotate stuff freely, eg if I have a box or some other 3d object
and I let the user rotate it with the mouse.

Any suggestions about how to accomplish 3d animation in flash either using
what I've suggested or some other method would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul Robson

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