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CROPPING A MOVIE
In order to get
rid of the extra white space around your Bigshot Movie™, you will need
to make the size of the stage the same as the size of the Bigshot
Movie and then center your movie to the stage.
To do this, you will need to open up the Properties Inspector
(ctrl+F3) and your Align toolbox (ctrl+K).
Single-click on your Bigshot Movie™. Your Properties Inspector
should change. You should see something like this:
Copy the numbers beside the W and the H.
Now, click on an empty portion of your stage, In your Properties
Inspector beside the word "size" you'll notice a set of dimensions,
probably 550 x 400.
If you click on those dimensions you'll get a pop-up window where
you can change the height and width of your stage. Replace these dimensions
with the dimensions of your Bigshot Movie™ (Be sure to round these
numbers if need be. Flash cannot use decimals for its stage size).
Select OK.
Your stage has now been resized to match the size of your Bigshot
Movie.
Single click on your Bigshot Movie™. Using your Align Toolbox
click on the button below "To Stage" Then click on the 2nd and 5th
button in the top row of buttons on your Align Toolbox.
Your Bigshot Movie™ has now been aligned. When you export your Movie,
you will notice that all of the white space has been removed. If you
had other elements on the stage before you resized your movie, you
will need to manually move them back into their appropriate location.
If you are having problems, please feel free to contact me.
IMPORT SWF INTO FRONTPAGE
This is how you
import an SWF into Microsoft FrontPage. Try it out and lemme know
of any discrepancies.
From the main menu select:
Insert > Advanced > ActiveX Control
From the popup window select:
Customize
From the second popup window that appears scroll down the check list
and add Shockwave Flash Object then select: OK
From the first popup window that is left on screen, select:
Shockwave Flash Object
Then select:
OK
Double click on the box that appears on your document. It may not
be visible, but it resides to the left of the flashing cursor.
Your property inspector for the ActiveX Control will open up.
In the Movie URL field, type in the name of the movie:
e.g. ravi.swf
Click Apply then OK
make sure the SWF is in the same folder as the document file you save.
Violà....done.
IMPORT SWF INTO POWERPOINT
The best instructions for incorporating flash into a Powerpoint presentation can be found on the Macromedia website. To access it please click the link below:
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14235
LOOP
Ever
wanted a ball to bounce a number of times before it rolls out of the
stage? or maybe you have a clip of a frog and you want him to breathe
a number of times before he jumps?
Here's a quick tutorial for looping a portion of the timeline.
1) Double click on the sequence movieclip to open it's timeline.
2) make a new layer at the very top of the timeline. Name the new layer
"action".
3) with the action layer selected, go to the frame where you want the
movie to start looping and press F6. This will place a keyframe in that
selected frame.
4) Select the newly made Keyframe and then type in the code below:
//-- if statement starts: if counter is less than 5 (the number of times
it should loops) go back and play frame "beginningLoop"(the first frame
of the loop).
if ( counter < 5 ){
gotoAndPlay(beginningLoop);
//-- counter increments by one everytime the loops happens and counter
is still less than 5;
counter++;
}else{
//-- if counter is equal or greater than 5 reset counter to zero. The
movie will break out of the loop.
counter = 0;
}
5) When counter is greater than or equal to 5, the loop will end and
the timeline playhead will continue on to other frames of the movie.
ONION SKIN
Greetings
fellow Martians,
Onion skin is one those effects that will make your audiences' jaw
drop. Instead of dragging a few instances of your movieClip onto the
stage and then tweaking the properites of each instance, here's a
tutorial that will achieve the same effect by using actionscript.
1) give the movie that you want to apply the effect to an instance
name ("sequence" in this tutorial without the quotation marks).
2) create a new movieClip (press F8 for shortcut) name this new movieClip
"duplicator" ( without the quotation marks, of course).
3) After creating
this new movieClip Flash will automatically send you inside the empty
duplicator movieClip. Open the actionscript editor (press F2 for shortcut)
then click on the first frame of the duplicator timeline.
4) in the
First frame, type in:
i = 1;
num = 10;
here's the lowdown. i and num are variables that will hold temporary
data for the movie. "i" is a counter and "num" is the number of duplicates
that will be created. "num" can be changed to any number you like.
5) Still inside the duplicator
movieClip, press F6 (to create a new keyframe). Type in the code below
in the action editor:
_parent.sequence.duplicateMovieClip("sequence"+i,
i);
// create a refences to "_parent["sequence"+i];"
newSeq = _parent["sequence"+i];
//turn the opacity of each new instance to 10% plus i
newSeq._alpha
= i + 10;
//generate random _xscale for each new instance
newSeq._xscale
+= Math.random()* 40 ;
//make _yscale equal to _xscale
newSeq._yscale
= newSeq._xscale;
this is the code that will duplicate the "sequence"
movieClip in the main Timeline.
6) press F6 again (to create the final
keyframe). Now type in the code below:
if (i < num){
i++;
gotoAndPlay
(2);
} else {
stop ();
}
Here's how the code works. if the variable
"i" is less than the variable "num" increase "i" by 1 then goto and
play frame 2 ( this will create a duplicate of the "sequence" movieClip
and will have an instance name of "sequence1") this loop will continue
happening until "i" is equal to "num". When "i" is equal to "num",
the variable "i" will reset to 1.
7) When done, go back to the timeline where the sequence movieClip
is in ( let's say the main timeline). Open the library ( press ctrl
- L for the shortcut), then Drag an instance of the duplicator movieClip
onto the stage.
Test the movie
and enjoy!
RENAMING LIBRARY ITEMS
This tutorial will explain how to incorporate multiple Bigshot Movies into one Flash Presentation.
PLEASE NOTE:
All of the flash movie libraries are created with the same naming convention
Our Bitmaps use the following naming convention: 001.bmp, 002.bmp 003.bmp, 004.bmp etc.
In every library you will also find two movie clips: "Sequence" and “_Movie".
Some movies may contain other miscellaneous objects such as graphic symbols. The naming
of these
items varies depending on the contents of the symbol.
1) You will need to open each movie that you would like to use and rename all of the library items so that they all have unique names.
We advise that you add a different letter to each file name.
For example, add the letter "A" in front of all the library items of the first movie.
In the second movie you will add a letter "B" in front of all the library items and so on.(ie. A001.bmp, B001.bmp, C001.bmp, etc. then A002.bmp, B002.bmp, C002.bmp etc.)
You will also rename the Movie Clips to ‘ASequence’ and ‘A_Movie’, ‘BSequence’ and ‘B_Movie’ then ‘CSequence’ and ‘C_Movie’ accordingly, and so on.
Don’t forget to rename any miscellaneous objects as well.
All Library items must have their names changed in order for the integration to work.
Once this is completed, you should be able to drag any renamed “_Movie”
movie clips from each library into your own Flash Presentation.
BUBBLE
This
tutorial will show you how to create the bubble effect used in Bigshot
movie VEC929989.
Open a new movie and set the movie size to 550 x 400. Change the Background
colour to any shade of dark blue. You can change both of these in the
Properties Inspector (normally located on the bottom
section of your screen, if not press the Ctrl + F3 keys on your keyboard
to bring it up)
Next we need to create our bubble.
1. Create a vector circle using the circle tool. Make sure
it's about 12x12 pixels in size and white in colour.
2. Convert that vector circle into a Movie Clip. Select the vector
circle with your mouse and press the F8 key on your keyboard.
3. When the pop up window appears, select the Movie Clip
Radio Button. Name the movie bubbleAnime_mc and select the OK
button.
We are now going to centre our vector circle within the newly created
bubbleAnime_mc clip.
4. Right click on the bubbleAnime_mc clip. From the drop down menu,
select Edit in Place. You are now on the bubbleAnime_mc
timeline.
5. Select the vector circle and press the Ctrl+K keys on your keyboard.
The Align Toolbox will appear.
6. With the vector circle selected, select the Align Horizontal and
Align Vertical buttons (buttons 2 and 5 on the first row of buttons).
Now we are going to create our wiggly motion.
7. Using the F6 key on your keyboard, create keyframes at frames 15,
30 and 45 on the bubbleAnime_mc timeline.
8. Use the following parameters for each frame to change the height
and width of your circle:
Frame 15 width = 12 height = 4.7
Frame 30 width = 4.7 height = 12
Frame 45 width = 12 height = 12
9. Create a shape tween on frames 1, 15 and 30. To create a shape
tween select frame 1 on the bubbleAnime_mc timeline. In the Properties
Inspector, you will see a drop down menu entitled Tween.
Click on the drop down menu and select Shape.
Notice on the timeline an arrow has appeared and a portion of the timeline
has changed to green. This change indicates that these frames have a
shape tween placed on them. If you scroll the play head across the timeline,
you will see that your bubble now animates.
You now have motion for your bubble. Return to your main timeline.
We need to add Actionscript to our movie. But first we will need to
place the bubbleAnime_mc clip into another Movie Clip. Then within that
new movie clip we will add our Actionscript. This will allow our bubble
to be easily replicated.
10. Select the bubbleAnime_mc clip with your mouse and press
the F8 key on your keyboard. When the pop up window appears, select
the Movie Clip Radio Button. Name the movie bubbles_mc
and select the OK button.
11. Centre the bubbleAnime_mc clip inside of the bubbles_mc clip using
the same method as described in Step 4.
12. On the bubbles_mc timeline, insert frames up to and including
frame 3. Name this layer bubble.
13. Create a new layer above the bubble layer and
call it Actions. Create keyframes for each of the
3 frames on the Actions timeline. This is where all
of the actionscript will be placed.
Now we will add actionscript to the Actions frames
Frame 1: This is where we will set all of our variables
setProperty("", _x, Number(random(600))-280);
x = _x;
y = _y;
alpha = Number(random(30))+10;
scale = Number(random(30))+60;
rotacion = random(40)-20;
yvel = Number(random(5))+3;
setProperty("", _alpha, alpha);
setProperty("", _xscale, scale);
setProperty("", _yscale, scale);
Frame 2: This is where the movement for our bubbles comes from.
if (Number(_y)>Number(-150)) {
setProperty("", _y, _y-yvel);
setProperty("", _rotation, Number(_rotation)+Number(rotacion));
} else {
setProperty("", _y, y);
setProperty("", _x, x);
gotoAndPlay(1);
}
Frame 3: This loops us back to the previous frame in order for our bubble
motion to be continuous.
gotoAndPlay(2);
Once you have finished entering your code, press the Ctrl + Enter keys
on your keyboard to preview your bubbles animation.
Violà! Bubbles!
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