RE: FLASH: Trippy...

[Len Harrison]

Russell,


This is a Wintel solution because of the plugin. There are equivalent Mac

thingies I'm sure, though. I assume you have Photoshop or an equivalent that

will handle Photoshop plugins. Get the Persian rug plugin here:

http://www.teleport.com/~pegasys/8/3/77/. This just does an adjustable

symmetric transform of an image around both the x and y axis. Which is

basically want you want because tie-dye has that characteristic.


Now you need a starting image. Something abstract and colorful. I used the

Electrosphere plugin for that which gave me a soft-edge neon-like effect.

Kai's could give you something equally useful. There are many possibilities

depending on what you want. If your initial image is very hard edged though,

I'd run a Gaussian blur on it. Duplicate the initial image and run it

through Persian rug. Duplicate the original again and run it through Persian

rug at slightly different settings. Repeat as desired. Result will be a

series that when viewed sequentially animate well. Save as jpegs at a fairly

low quality.


Bring your images into Flash, one on a level and convert to symbols. Do

motion tweening with alpha channel values changing from keyframe to keyframe

so that as one image fades out, another fades in. Copy, paste frames and

reverse frame sequencing so that the final result is symmetric across all

layers. Export to shockwave with the lowest jpeg value you can get away

with.


Images can be significantly smaller than the movie size, just enlarge them.

Until the pixelation becomes gross, it doesn't matter that much because

they'll animate faster and they're abstract anyway. If your movie is small

(pixel-wise) enough you could expand and contract them also, but that

tweening tends to slow things down a lot. Dump the result into a movie clip,

drag it onstage and you've got something that I think will meet your needs.


Now, if you really want to get creative, create a movie clip for each image

(in this case you'd need at least three). Keep your transpariences well

above zero and well below 100 on the extremes of each clip. Implement a

randomizer clip per JC's recent post and poll it to jump to a random frame

in a random clip. Now your background will not cycle but will change

constantly in an unpredictable fashion. PSYCHEDELIC, man!


There might be a way to do this in vectors, but it's hard to make fuzzy

vector images and that would seem to be what you want.


len harrison

instructional designer

lenhabtcorp [dot] com

> -----Original Message-----

>

From: ownershocker [dot] com [ownershocker [dot] com]On">mailto:ownershocker [dot] com]On Behalf Of Unger,

> Russell

> Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 10:32 AM

>

To: 'flashershocker [dot] com'

> Subject: FLASH: Trippy...

>

>

> Can anyone think of anyway that a "tie dye" back ground could

> be simulated

> in Flash?  I'd like to think that it'd be able to change, as well.

>

> The only one that I'm able to come up with is a couple of

> different shots

> that simply "morph" into each other, but I'd be curious to hear other

> suggestions as well.

>

> Thanks,

>

> Russell E. Unger

>

> Modern Business Technology

> 1300 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 302

> Schaumburg, IL 60173-4984

> tel: 847.605.1917 x256 (vm x411)

> fax: 847.605.1905

>

rungermbtinc [dot] com

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