BLOG topic Week FOURTEEN: Flash Movie Clips are extremely powerful and flexible objects that have their own Timelines. I've shown you how to make them and by now, you probably have done one of the exercises too.
So, tell me what a Movie Clip is and how to see if it is working properly, and why you should possibly make all Flash graphics into Flash Movie Clip Symbols?
Bet you didn't see that one coming!
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So far so good, I love my working digital camera!
I put a movie clip into my project, on the GraphicStudy page, I put it into the first frame of a Flash movie and my AVI was launched.
In the first frame!
Yay!
It worked!
In this case, it was a movie clip, and it had a soundtrack of its own. Great microphone on the camera.
I can comment more after I have done the exercises.
Has anybody tried to do the morphing required in Ultimate Tours Chapter 5? Where are the sailboat and lighthouse graphics? I tried taking several GIFs off the internet, but none of them morph properly because they are too "broken up" according to Adobe documentation. Help!
Judith, it's in your CD that came with the textbook. Once you unzip the CD you'll see the Project Builder 1 folder and inside there is the file called ultimatetours5.fla. in the Library of that file you'll see several graphic images what you are looking for should be: g_ship and g_ship3. At least this what I have in my CD at the back of the textbook. Did your textbook come without a CD?
Thank you! I expected it was SOMEWHERE but couldn't find it. Never used any of those files before, wonder how I got this far!
Since I seen other students utilized this blog to post questions I also have one that hopefully someone else can answer.
I'm morphing (shape tweening) a small triangle into a larger one for the Cruise's Lighthouse light beam. I created both gifs in Fireworks.
The problem I encounter is that instead of the small triangle becoming bigger as I expected it to, it multiples repetitively until it final migrates into the large triangle.
I spent several hours working on this one problem, but still cannot get the results I want.
I used different numbers and arrangements of shape hints without success.
If anyone has any clues about how to successfully do this I would appreciate any advise.
Robert correct me if I'm mistaken with your comment about the triangle of light. If you are only trying to get the image to grow into a larger triangle, have you thought about using a motion tween instead of a shape tween? If you set the amount of frames needed for the growth, you should be able to use the transform tool to enlarge the triangle at the end of the tween, Flash would then create the necessary frames inbetween for the smoothe transition.
Robert - I had the same problem with shape morphing before I found the correct "ship" gifs (thank you Prof Al). I'm still not sure why the shape morph doesn't work right, but it seems it must be a very simple graphic (which yours was). Curious! Are you on CS4?
Now I have a separate problem: are the zodiac signs supplied somewhere? Again, I've opened every supplied fla program, found naught. I've spent hours on these two little projects....I've tried to find a lion on the internet that I can morph into something else, with no luck. So please understand, Prof Al, why my Project builder 2 lion doesn't morph.....
Hi All, Good efforts with the demos. I am catching up there, have made it through 2, 3, and 5 successfully. Will work more on the others today and tomorrow.
Glad to use the book cd, and with all of these files, I can say I have everything I need to work for at least 48 hours straight!!!!!
For those asking for help on Shape Tweening I have placed links in Moodle to professionally produced videos online at no cost to you. Here is a short video on Shape Tweens that is excellent and easy to understand.
Shape Tweens
I seemed to have the wrong URL for the Shape Tween, the video is still good for learning about shapes though. Try this one Shape Tweening
I am trying to do Exercise 18 and am doing great until I get to part 4. Do I have to duplicate all the layers in each link and is there a easy way to do this? Lost as usual.
Help! I have all of my movie clips made in Exercise 18 but now my main screen is missing. Anyone have any ideas?
Hi Kalli -
I'm getting there. What do you mean "missing"?
Ok. I have followed all the steps and when I get to the test the movie part, the links do not work. Has anyone else had this problem?
I'm right on your tail here. Same problem. Main disappeared, too. ah well...
Kalli - your scene names have to match the "link1", etc, in the actions panel. Turn on script assist and you'll see...
A Movie Clip is basically a whole movie in and of itself, but within the main movie. I would hope that just viewing the finished product would make it evident as to whether or not it is working. You can test it by pressing CTRL+Enter.
I figure that having the graphics as Movie Clip Symbols (MCS) keeps objects separate. If objects are in the same layer without any alterations, then they remove one object from another when laid on top of eahc other. Another advantage is that a person can create more complex movies by using MCS.
Movie Clips because they are discrete objects that can be placed wherever needed, reused, tested separately. The reusability also improves performance. Coming from a programming background, I appreciate them because they are similar to paragraphs or subroutines in programming languages. Storing them in the library makes them accessible to other pages, too...
Thank you Judith. That seemed to make the difference. It only took me three more times of creating the actionscript links and redoing the scenes. Somehow my main scene came back, but I don't know what I clicked on. I still had to redo the buttons 3 times. Six hours for one exercise - boy will I be glad when this class is done! Ha!
I have a general question, which player should I target to make my movie play in demo 4? I think it is a CS3 version file, saved from an 8, so the original player settings which were for 7, need to be updated to match CS3 Flash, in the present form,which setting, I wonder? I had this work 4 times, and when I uploaded to school, it wouldn't show there. Just two buttons were on the stage.
On Sunday,
A
There are some unique features of a Movie Clip that the other two symbol types in Flash don't have. You can send commands to to Movie Clips and then make them do something. Movie Clips can be scaled, rotated, duplicated, dragged, be made transparent, repositioned, or given sounds. All these things can be changed based on the user's input. To apply any of these things to a Button or a Graphic, you have to put them inside a Movie Clip and then apply the changes to it. We saw in Exercise 18 that Movie Clips can be nested inside each other and will then share values from each other. Movie Clips are just much more powerful than Buttons and Graphics.
still having a problem with the ultimate tours assignment
i haven't got much to work but i think that i am going to go back and start at square one on that.
i have to be missing something
i seem to still be having some problems understanding a lot of the directions.
maybe i am just thick headed
but i am going nuts right now
hopefully when i go back to do the ultimate tours maybe that will shed some light on what i am not getting and hopefully i wont bomb on the final.
Prof Fichera,
Thank you for your suggestions. I didnot try using a motion tween. I assume that motion tweens were just for moving objects.
First thing Monday - 8:00 am I will try your suggestions.
Judith,
I'm using CS3 on the PCs at Sierra College's Computer lab.
Movie Clips are reusable pieces of flash animation. Movie Clips have independent timelines.
The only way I know of determining if something is working properly, is to create it, and then test it under actual run-time conditions.
I would guess that converting all graphics to Flash Movie Clip Symbols would reduce the overall size of the movie [if the graphics were repeatively used] since a Symbol will only take up the required memory for one instance reguardless on how many times it is used in the movie
Well true to form, each semester, Flash will get you if you miss anything in the instructions, this is programming, as as you programmers know, there are no real shortcuts that are allowed, well at least in Flash ActionScripting.
Judith, your question about the zodiac has the same answer as the ship morph. They are in the Library of your flash file fl5_11.fla, I'm checking the newest version of the textbook and this time they provided step by step instructions instead of the sketchy instructions in your textbook. I will type them up and publish them in Moodle this morning for anyone who wants them.
I will look through the rest of these postings and see what I can offer, but I have offered help in the past in this way: DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME DEBUGGING! For how little you have to do in these exercises, it's not worth your time, start over and mark off your steps. Now, if you have ignored your CD at the back of the book, you'll have created a lot of work that was already created for you. I most of the exercises the authors are trying to drive home a single point or two, and therefore have created the bulk of the work already. If you have been using the files already created, check my earlier comments. In this class, textbook or course packet, you don't have to guess what to do, the instructions are in the chapter or in the steps. Now on to reading the rest.
This time for Kalli and Judith for helping. Exercise 18 is a Flash Web site and is supposed to give you a peek at how my main Web site was created at profal.com.
I'm going to ask a question of both of you, did you download my newest version of the exercise found in Moodle? I rewrote this to be very clear for both CS3 and CS4 and have included a link to what it is to look like right next to it.
I believe what you are exeriencing when you say the main scene is gone, is that you are still in the Movie Clip symbol, you haven't returned to the main scene with the link at the top. On the right side for CS3 and the left side for CS4.
It is highly important and stated so in my PDF, that all the links be created properly because you'll be duplicating each scene and then using those scenes as pages in the Web site. Double-check to see if you have the most recent copy of the exercise.
Anastasia, always choose the newest Flash Player that you have, CS3 had vers. 9 and CS4 has vers. 10. In the case of the Players they are all backwards compatible, in other words, they all can play any Flash movie ever made. If the users doesn't have that version Flash will prompt them to download a small file update which only takes a few seconds to do and doesn't require a restarting of the browser or system.
All Flash programmers should be using the Publish settings each time so that they can place a check in the box for detecting which Flash player is in use.
Sorry for the problems Zaq, but I have done just about all that I can do for an online class. Learning new software is not easy for anyone, but learning how to play the piano is not easy for anyone too. You'd be surprised at how much better the music sounds with tons of practice; I think you can make the connection here on your own.
Back to what I have done, I'm either made or linked to important video step-by-step files for students to use, these are to represent what you would see me do in a classroom if there was one for an online class.
I wrote a thick course packet trying to give you a broad range of tools to learn to use in the future, but just reading or doing an exercise here and there won't give you expert status, practice does that.
I provided this BLOG for students to communicate with each other as if they were in class or a coffee house, and with me hanging around too.
And, now I'm rewriting all of the course packet again for the umpteenth time so the Fall class will have more appropriate information to use, however, as I'm saying this Adobe already talking about CS5.
BTW, this class is finally going to be offered as a hybrid in the Fall with lecture sections offered on several Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. I've been asking for this opportunity since the class went online.
So students, if you think you're tired of all this doing and learning, color me exhausted!
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