The Very First Start ...
You just downloaded your trial copy of flash5 or got the full licensed version and you are ready to make a full flash site ... like no one has ever seen ...
but what than ... Well you open Flash5 and ... you're a little bit lost ...
We all were when we first opened our first version of Flash, so no worries here, but now comes the hard part, and trust me you are
not gonna like it ...
The best thing to do is open the examples and tutorials that came along with your copy of Flash5 ...
Why .. ?
These instructions give you a very good introductions to what Flash5 (or Flash in general) is capable off ...
There are 9 instruction sets and 14 examples delivered with your copy ... and you can find them under
HELP > SAMPLES and
HELP > LESSONS ...
(if you don't find them there ... you have a great chance you installed an illegal copy of Flash and that's a bad idea ...)So go back to the fridge (or coffee machine) grab yourself a drink ... and start with lesson 01 ... (skip what's new, lesson 00 ... we'll look at that later ...)
01. Introduction
Here you get the common words we will use later on so it's important you familiarize them a little ... STAGE, TIMELINE, LIBRARY, SYMBOL, ... all this names are common names that will be used in all tutorials you'll find on the net or in print ... to become a great Flash Guru one day ... you'll need to know these basic words and concepts to understand the rest ...
it's really out of scope for me to explain it ... that's why we have the tutes and I strongly suggest you run through them ...
02. DRAWNING ...
This lesson might sound silly ... but remember that's what Flash is all about ... Flash is a vector based program that will create great animations for you and your visitors but it's core business is VECTORS and MATHEMATICS ...
What's a vector ... well you probably know it but think about it again ... a lot of people complain about Flash Sites being to big and have to download for ages ... well the basic thruth about it is that the creator of the site probably never did lesson 2 (if he/she did a lesson at all) ... let me explain ...
If you draw a circle you can define it in two ways ... or as a bitmap or as a vector ... let's say you make an animated gif of a bouncing ball ... you will need 5 different bitmapped images after eachother each being a few kilobytes and all together you will end up with a 5K bouncing ball ...
If you would do it in Flash you would draw a circle (it's coded as vector so a mathematical formula) and the movement (even much more complex) would be defined by the x/y coordinates ... all resulting in a bouncing ball of less than 1K ... don't get scared ... you won't need the mathematics ... but that's the thing behind the scenes ... that's why you need to do the lessons ... (okie ... i'm getting repetetive here) ...
So look again at the drawing and keep this vector thingie in mind ... we will need it in the advanced section ... later ...
03. SYMBOLS ...
You did lesson one and you know about the stage and the timeline ... but since we will actually need things to happen on stage during a certain time we will need actors (uhhh ... sounds familiar for those who used director ... )
So since the origin of Flash is to deliver fast and quick a cool animation we will use the symbols a lot ... because we will reuse them a lot ...
that's the power of Flash ... the reuse of your vector based actors ... if you decide to create a full flash website you will need to tweak it to the max ... the less bytes the better ...
04. LAYERS ...
Just like our actors layers will help us work easily and good ... (just like scenes)
Since you are new to Flash (otherwise you gave up on this already a long time ... ) ... this is a handy little trick ...
Whenever you start a new flash movie ... it starts up with one layer called Layer1 ... before you create MY BEST FRIEND (see further) ... fire up a few more layers and give it some CLEAR names ...
I always start with my top one called CODE (all my actionscripting will go into it)
A second one for MY BEST FRIEND (see further) is called BUTTONS ... really handy to hide and lock if all buttons are on the same layer ...
// REMEMBER: LAYERS are always seen from top to bottom .... so if you place two buttons on two different layers and they overlap ... only the top button will work ... !
I will explain more about layers in the next tute i'm gonna make on preloaders ...
05. TYPE
Well there is a lot to say about it, especially in combination with UBB's but i will make another on that one later ...
if you like this one ...06. BUTTONS ...
Really worth looking into it ... because we will use buttons in a lot of different shapes and forms ...
// advanced trick: The EMPTY button ... your best friend !!!
click CTRL+F8 (that's a handy one, you'll use it a lot) and give it a name like MY BEST FRIEND ...
select BUTTON and click OK
you see a button in the timeline and go to the last (4) frame and HIT F6 (that's a keyframe)
draw a rectangular on stage in the middle of the centerpoint ...
go back to Edit (it's the clapboard before the button icon all above on top)
open op your Library ( CTRL+L) and drag the empty button on stage ...
you see a transparant green thingie ... well that will be your best friend ... a button you will use and reuse time after time in all your movies and it's less as 1K in size ... but more about it later
// end advanced trick
07. SOUND ...
It's used a lot ... and it's used wrongly even more ... although Flash has great sound capabilities I should wait a little with it untill you master the basics more ... but keep this in mind if you start with sound ... look at the size of your SWF and think twice when you place a 256 K swf online with just one sound file in it of 30 seconds ...
08. ANIMATION ...
Jeeezzz you got this far ??? Indeed that's what we all wanted to do from the beginning ... animate, but you indeed need to know the basics ...
Read it carefully ... because it's used a lot in the examples and it can make wonderful things for you ... although a lot of animation is done through actionscripting, these basic animations are really great if you want to give your actors some life ...
// little example
My Best Friends Bouncing Ball:
Since you did all the lessons ... this should be easy ...
Open a new movie ...
Create the layers we mentioned.
CODE
BUTTONS
MAIN
Create MY BEST FRIEND (it's a button)
Create CIRCLE (it's a MOVIECLIP)
CTRL+F8 > Circle > MOVIE CLIP
Two layers CODE and MAIN (within the movieclip)
Draw a circle on MAIN,
Select the Circle by doubleclicking it ... hit F8 (convert into symbol) and give it a name like ccc
hit F5 in FRAME 20 of layer MAIN (you see what happenend)
hit F6 on FRAME 10 and FRAME20
Go to frame 10 and drag the CIRCLE Upwards (or sidewards or downwards ... whatever)
Go to the timeline and click with your mouse somewhere around frame 6 frame 1 to 9 will be selected.
Use your right mouse button and select CREATE MOTION TWEEN
Do the same for 10 till 20
You see you get a Blue arrow now ...
Go the layer Code and HIT F6 in Frame 1
Double Click the Frame ... your actionscripting will POP UP ...
Click Basic Actions and select STOP
// This will tell our movieclip to stop on the first frame
You see the little
a showing up ... this means that there is an action in that frame ...
Go Back to SCENE1 ...
click before the circle ... Your Stage is empty ...
Create a stop action in frame1 of layer CODE
select layer main and drag the circle on stage ... (CTRL+L to open up the layer)
place MY BEST FRIEND on layer button and reshape it to fit the circle ...
// now you have a square ... on a circle ... DUMB !!!
so double click my best friend
you will go into the edit mode of MY BEST FRIEND
go to the last keyframe (it's called HIT)
delete the square and place a circle there ...
go back to scene 1 ... et voila it's adapted ... (this is a handy lesson, but be carefull ... if you do this it changes all the squares into circles if you used MY BEST FRIEND ...)
better is to create MY BEST FRIEND2 as a circle
//
Hide MY BEST FRIEND by clicking on the eye in the timeline // layer of button ...
Select the circle on stage and give it a name ...
A Name ? Yes we will give it a name.
WINDOWS >> PANELS >> Instance (CTRL + I)
Name: jump
don't use numbers because this will give problems ...
Make your button visible again and select it (don't doubleclick ... just select it ...)
Open your actionscripting and now we will assign some actions to it ...
click on the telltarget action (it's under basic actions)
assign it the value jump
so it shows someting like ...
on (release) {
tellTarget ("jump") {
}
}
not much it's gonna happen ... but this means on release (so we will have to click the button it's gonna tell target jump something ... but what ... well we click on the GoTo
and change frame 1 into frame 2 ...
now select the first line of code on (release) {
and you see the different possibilities ... change the release in rollover and the final code should look like this ...
on (rollOver) {
tellTarget ("jump") {
gotoAndPlay (2);
}
}
Go back to the stage and hit F12 ...
Yeahhhhhh ... it works
This example sounds silly but if you completed it with no big problems you learned a lot ... and you can take these little things into much more complicated actions ...
You created a button that targetted a different actor to perform an action of his own timeline and you just learned that if you would want to make something like this in an animated gif it would be much more as the actual 1K this swf file is ...
downlad the fla End of Lesson 1.
[ May 20, 2001 10:30 AM: Message edited by: knuffel ]
