Timeline effects
I thought I’d kick off the blog with a rant/request for help, I’m having problems with Flash (for a change).
When you apply a timeline effect in Flash you get a nice dialogue box with lots of options you can tweak. For example I can open the “transform” dialogue and I can have an object grow by 50% over 30 frames. Get it? One of these options is “final alpha”. This lets you change the transparency of an object over time. Here is the problem: there is no way to set it not to change the alpha at all. You have to choose a value between 0% and 100%. So if I want to apply a “grow” transform to a complex object which contains various degrees of transparency, this transparency is altered during the tranform such that it becomes the same for the whole object and equal to the value of “final alpha”. Get it?
This seems like a crazy bug to me. Perhaps I am missing something obvious, so please comment if you can shed some light on it.
Just so it’s clear, here is a quick note to replicate the problem:
1) create a new flash movie
2) draw a black square on the screen
3) draw a white square over it, set the white alpha to 10%
4) your square should be slightly lighter than black
5) select both squares and click select->timeline effects->transform->transform
6) change ’scale’ to 150% and click OK.
You would expect to see the square grow but it will also turn white! GRR : )
Kev
July 13th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
w00t, this blog r0xx0rzz
July 18th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
When you apply the time line effect, all it is doing is making a symbol out of your drawings and then making a fancy motion tween.
Well, you will notice the same problem just from making a symbol out of two alpha’d shapes on different layers. The problem is that when you make a symbol, flash compresses everything down to one layer, which means your 10% white square overwrites your 100% black one, as shapes have no sense of depth. In otherwords, there can only be one color per layer at any point, where the word color includes transparency information.
If you turned your squares into something which have a sense of depth, e.g. grouping them individually, then they will not merge, even if placed on the same level, so it becomes safe to apply your transformation.
You can be even lazier: just by hitting J before drawing the shapes turns on “object drawing” which automatically groups stuff like this.
Normally I steer clear of the timeline effects. You can achieve the same yourself, with a good deal more control. Specifically, I would be free to create two layers inside the symbol after creating it, and put the squares on seperate ones, without any grouping malarkay.
E-mail me if you want more of a response, I am unlikely to check back on this “blog”.
Your friendly neighbour flash guru,
Boris