This has got to be the dumbest question...

[autumn_whispers2me]

... but I am SO frustrated with even the most simple Flash movies.

Okay, so I 'thought' I could figure it out, and working in 5.5 I 'sort of' had it figured out (some of it anyway), but I can't seem to get the hang of the most simple Flash movies and need some help as to where to start (tutorials, brain transplant, whatever)...

I don't think what I want to do is that complicated, but maybe it is: I want to do the following and wonder if it's beyond my capabilities??

Preloader...

image fading in and STAYING at an alpha of 100% (not looping and fading in and out and in and out)...

Music to play in the background with out sounding as if 100 of the sound files are trying to load at once (sound looping repeatedly shortly after the movie loads)...

Maybe some text that moves, fades in/out, etc. like I've seen on a million sites out there using Flash...

and for the whole shebang to end with the end of the song being used (song is for a reason) with the image 'there' and used as a link to the band's site... This is going to me my lame 'dedication page' for the band who's allowing me to use their music on my site(s)... though I don't want it to be lame... make sense?

That and if I don't figure out how to do this I'll never be able to build the Flash "haunted house" I want to build.

Yep. I'm whining a little. Been struggling with the movie for about an hour and am ready for a good old fashioned tantrum. hehe

*sigh* help! Oh yeah, I'm using Flash MX now.

[Webforumz Staff]

Ok, some of this is a little complicated so I'll try to explain it as best I can, but if that doesn't work, I'll simply provide you with a demo FLA file.

I assume that you're having problems with your preloader image looping through a fade because you're using a loop to keep checking if the movie is loaded? Simply fade in the movie using a tween and then have a few seperate frames for your loop. Don't loop back to before the tween! Obviously, don't have a tween in progress during the loop frames either!

Your music issue sounds like a particular issue you've developed somewhere as I've never come across multiple sounds being played at once, unless Flash has been told to do so.

Text is reaaaly simple to play with. Like everything else you can convert text to a movieclip (F8) and then use motion tweens to get that text to do anything you want. Move from one place to another, fade in, out, change colour, etc.

You can also 'ease' the tweens (using the properties panel) which means that the tween can either speed up as time goes on, or slow down. You can also combine different easing tweens to get some very fluid and organic movement from the objects on your screen. In real life objects don't just suddenly start moving, they speed up, slow down and stop, etc.

Also ensure that your movie is not on 12fps by default. If you raise that setting to 25 or 30 then you'll get more frames per second and more fluid movement. Bear in mind though that any movie you've already created at a lower FPS will now run much, much faster! It's therefore best to change the FPS before you start creating the content for a FLA file.

As for ensuring that the whole thing is synchronised to the music and ends at the same time, use the Stream option when you have a sound selected on a frame. This forces the animation to keep pace with the sound no-matter what. On slow machines that can't handle your animation, frames will simply be skipped but unless your animation is very, very heavy, I wouldn't worry too much about that!

Let me know how you get on!

[autumn_whispers2me]

Always my hero, Sirkent. Okay, here's where I stand with the movie: right slap dead at the beginning. lol I have to actually start over because I don't even understand the preloader thing yet.

Remember awhile back you posted a link for a sample preloader---but I couldn' use it because I was using Flash 5? You also had a link for one I could use, but my hard drive died before I could really get anything working.

So, if I start over.... from scratch.... I'm assuming I should begin with the preloader, AND set the FPS to..... what would you suggest?

Also, you said I should set the music to stream... is that something that requires me doing anything with the music file other than importing it into Flash? What happens when it sounds like several of the same music files are playing is that the movie gets to the end and starts looping again before the sound file finishes playing... which makes the file start again, while the file is still playing from the first loop. make sense? there's only one sound file, so I'm assuming that's what's happening anyway.

Now I dug around in the lessons and tutorials in Flash but still can't really find anything that tells me point-blank the difference between a movie clip, a graphic, and a button, and in which circumstance those should be used. I guess this may be the biggest problem right now (maybe?) is understanding when I'm supposed to use what (button, graphic, movie clip).

[Webforumz Staff]

Ok, where to start... :P

Sure, start with a preloader, although to be honest it doesn't make much difference. I find that a good FPS to use is 30. It's not too fast in that it stresses systems out and it's fast enough in that animation is very smooth.

In terms of setting music to stream...
Import a sound into Flash. It ends up in the library. You can drag it from the library to a frame of your choice. The sound will start from that frame. If you select that frame and bring up the properties window then you can set it to start, stop, event or stream. Stream will ensure that the sound is synched to the frames and (I believe) that even if your movie loops the sound will start again but the previous one will stop - as that is true syncrhonisation.

And regarding getting to the end of the movie and starting from the beginning again - always put a stop() actionscript command at the end of the movie!

As for the difference between graphics, buttons and movieclips, it's actually pretty much what it says on the tin.

Graphics, buttons and movieclips are all symbols. You can perform particular actions on all symbols such as motion tweens and set particular parameters on them such as their alpha (transparency).

Graphics are the most basic and are simply there to look pretty. They serve no other purpose. A graphic could be text, a picture, a combination of the two, etc. A graphic can't 'do' anything. Graphics are (usually) only one frame and unless you tell Flash otherwise, additional frames will be ignored.

Buttons are the next step up. They consist of 4 frames 'Up', 'Over', 'Down' and 'Hit'. 'Up' is the frame that the button shows when it's left alone. 'Over' is shown when you mouseover the button. 'Down' is shown when you click on the button. 'Hit' is slightly more complicated. If you place a shape in 'hit' then it can't be seen but if the user mouses over that shape then it's treated as an extension of the button. So let's say that the button is a small square and there is nothing in the 'hit' frame. When you mouseover the square the 'over' frame is shown and when you click the 'Down' frame is shown. If you were to put a much larger square into the 'hit' frame then if you mouseover the larger area the button would go through the same frames. So essentially you would be mousing over nothing visible (the larger square, but you can't see it), but the smaller square, being visible, would still react. You might need to try that out yourself to get the idea of what I'm saying.

You can also place basic actionscript on buttons such as the 'on' even which allows you to track mouseclicks, etc. More advanced actionscript does nothing.

Lastly, movieclips are even more advanced. They allow you to create an entirely new movie inside of them, just like the one you're already creating. You can put any actionscript you want either on or inside a movieclip and a movieclip can contain any number of layers, graphics, buttons or even other movieclips. Essentially a movieclip is another movie entirely, but usually, for practicality, you should try to keep movieclips simple as the whole idea can get very complicated very quickly.

[autumn_whispers2me]

Okay, that clears up several things. lol Thanks.

As for the 'stream' selection for music: When I select that and try to play/test the movie.. the music doesn't play. If I choose "start," for example, it plays. ??

Dumb question: I open Flash, create a new fla file, and the very first thing I import is a jpg file. Say, it goes on the bottom layer: do I have to convert it to a graphic symbol since it wont be doing anything, or does it matter?

Also, If I want to start with a blank page, nothing there, then have animated (best case scenario--broke apart text that's animated) to introduce what's going on, then eventually fade in the image... is the image I'm fading in eventually going to be converted to a graphic symbol, or a movie clip symbol? And, I'm assuming the animated text is a movie clip, or just a graphic (or graphics if it's broke apart) that will be animated??

What if i don't want my movie to loop, but end with the last note of the music, and what if the movie has a lot of stuff going on? Here's the 'real' question: when creating a movie where things are happening one after the other, say starting at different points, do I work as I go, or am I supposed to decide on what frame the movie stops before I have everything in place? I'm having trouble thinking horizontally, if that makes any sense, meaning time-line wise.

Am I a mess or what? lol :P

[Webforumz Staff]

Ok, bear in mind that when you use stream, you have to have frames there for the sound to play. If you're at 30 FPS then you need 30 frames to be there just for 1 second of audio...

JPG - you can convert it to a graphic or leave it as it is. If you don't intend to re-use it then leave it as it is.

As for your animation question... it depends what the components are doing. You can do 'shape tweens' with broken apart text and in that scenario the text cannot be a symbol. But if you want the broken apart text to animate AND fade in, then you need the text animation inside a movieclip and then you need to fade in the movieclip as it plays the broken apart text doing it's animation.

It would probably help you to decide on which frame the music stops. If you insert a load of blank frames then you should be able to play from the beginning and see how the music progresses over your timeline.

[autumn_whispers2me]

Okay... the text animation: how to people get the individual letters to 'enter' the stage, or rotate simultaneously? Is it done literally letter by letter, or is there s trick to this?

[Webforumz Staff]

There are tricks that you can pull off - Flash MX 2004 for example has some fairly basic text animations you can apply. There are also programs out there such as swish which create text animations for you, although in my opinion it doesn't take long to do them yourself and your own effort usually looks better than something created automatically.

If you text some text, break it up and then use 'distribute to layers' (somewhere under the modify menu) then you'll have each letter on it's own layer. You'll find that, once you've turned each into a symbol, you can select columns of frames and turn them all into keyframes, add motion tweens, etc. You don't need to do each layer individually.

What I usually do is distribute them to layers and animate them all at the same time. Then, say you want the animationt to happen to one letter, then another, etc, move the frames on the timeline AFTER you've setup what the letters do. You can easily select the frames on a layer, shift them a few frames, etc. Once you've done this a few times you can create fairly complicated animations in a matter of minutes.

[master_phat]

holy crap you guys typed a lot since ive been asleep lol. are you people european? cuz the time difference would make since.


edit: o duh just saw the UK

[autumn_whispers2me]

LOL I'm in the USA :P