https://www.angelfire.com/az3/flash5basics/pacificvstar_5-24-03_0h31.htm
Flash 5 Basics for Christin
I'd put the screen size to 1024 x 768 if I were you (large images)
I. Layers
Layers separate and organizes things. Yes they do. They also separate and organized animations for these different things. I suggest putting everything different into its own layer: i.e. for a door, have the wooden rectangle in a layer, the doorknob into another, and the sign "do not enter" in another. Order is very important:
Notice what shape is on top of the others? Yes. So you want to move the shapes around now? You click and drag around the shape, let's say you want to move the triangle elsewhere. Do it. Alors quoi?
Notice that it selects parts of the triangle and the square? Also notice that the two frames are highlighted in the timeline (at the top)? That's why you see this freaky eye and lock and box button on the top of all the layers.
The dots under the eye is to hide/show certain layers (click on it you get an X and the stuff in the layer disappears).
The dots under the lock is to lock/unlock certain layers (click on it and you get a lock and stuff in that layer can't be touched until you unlock it). Now you can select that triangle without bothering Mr. Square. (that was fruity)
The filled squares under the little outline square makes everything in that layer an outline.
Crap, I forgot something. "How do I add these layers, Andrew," you say? There are other buttons... Click the little white plus sign thingy:
"I accidentally added a layer, Andrew, how do I-," click the little trash can thingy to erase it.
A better way to select what's in a layer is to click the layer itself (if you have more than one thing in a layer and you click the layer, everything in it will be selected):
Hmm...hope I'm not missing any more for layers. If you have a question on it, just ask, if I don't know, there are lots of tutorials and stuff online!
II. Symbols
Hope you're not getting too bored: symbols...think of your freshman year when you played cymbals in marching band, there not bored anymore! Anyway, symbols are used to organize things basically. "Why not use layers, Andrew, oh why," you ask? Well, if you wanted to have many things within a single layer, just ONE layer, it would not be organized. So by pressing Ctrl + F8, a window called Symbol Properties comes up.
You have the choice of Movie Clip, which is an animated (continuously or not) object, Button, which calls user-interactive commands, and Graphic, the other one that is just for still images. Movie Clip and Graphic are pretty much the same, except Movie Clip is for animated stuff and Graphic is not, that's why we won't worry with Movie Clip right now. But let's go ahead and explore Graphic.
So type a name for this Graphic and select Graphic as the behavior, then click OK. Let's say "triangle" is the name, click Graphic, OK. And you get a large work area with no edges (that you can't edit on at least).
While were, here, a little drawing lesson!...
Ooh, intimidating, n'est-ce pas? Hmm, it's been an hour. Anyway, the black arrow is to edit lines and select things,
white one is to select and edit control points of objects,
line is to create lines,
lasso is to select part of something,
pen is to (I just discovered this) make tangent lines to points,
"A" is to create text,
circle is to create circles,
box is to create boxes,
pencil is to draw things (as if you are holding a pencil),
brush is to paint things (as if you are holding a brush),
ink bottle is to edit color of lines,
paint bucket is to fill in closed objects,
dropper is to get certain colors and eraser is to erase things. Je ne suis pas d'artiste (I'm no artist) but you have to admit that Flash is awesome for drawing stuff! YEAH! (that was supposed to be a shark) Well, now where were we? Ah yes, you want to put this into the real thing, so click "Scene 1" on the top left:
I guess I got carried away and made a shark instead of a triangle (or at least a malformed shark). Now we are back to our original blank screen with the triangles and squares and circles from last time in the Layer section, but let's get rid of those. Now where's our little sharky? Hmm...try Ctrl + L to open up our Library of symbols and other stuff.
Ooh, there we go, now just click and drag the name of the symbol to the work area. DAMN MY SISTER'S CRAP RAP! (she's blasting her radio to some crap rap song and it has the most annoying bass that I have to hear only on my left ear...) :-D Anyway, now we have Mr. Shark on the main work area.
Too big is it? Well, that's what these are for:
Make sure that the black triangle is selected as well as the image you want to alter the size, then click that scale button to scale the selected object (in this case, it's "triangle"). Just mess around with the little boxes on each corner and on the midpoints of each side to see what they do.
Wanna make it upside down nah? A little rotation nah? Click the rotate button nah
and one of the circles on the corners to rotate the selected object.
Clicking the midpoint-circles of the selected object will skew it.
Mais, c'est tout pour cette étape? (Is that all for this section?) I hope it is and I hope I didn't forgot nothin'.
III. Animation
Like I said, these are just the basics and what you will barely need to know. Coding and other stuff, I can help you online as that takes a while to explain and stuff. But for now, ANIMATION, S'il vous plaît!
Go to frame 20 by clicking the actual rectangle under the labeled number:
Press F6 to create a Keyframe. "What are keyframes, Andrew, that sounds scary, Andrew, that really scare-" keyframes are just the...key frames. They are frames that are special and have...stuff in them and...you'll see what I mean later. Now you should have:
YOU JUST CREATED AN ANIMATION! That doesn't move. Hmm...well to play it, press Ctrl + Alt + R (unless you defined a shortcut for another program with this hotkey) to rewind it, and then press Enter to play it. Hmm, movingless it is. Now go to frame 20 (this time clicking the actual number label). Now alter the image of the shark, by skewing, rotating, scaling, etc. it in frame 20. i.e.:
or something to that extent, now when you play it, it goes straight to that new altered form at frame 20...but if you want some ANIMATION, or movement, then go back to frame 1 (this time click the actual rectangle under the labeled number [this rectangle should have a dark circle in it (this happens when there is something in that frame)], but yeah, click that). The image should be selected as well, which it should be in order to do this, so go to the Frame tab of the Instance window panel:
then select Motion from the Tweening drop-down list. Now rewind and play. OOOH, AHHH! Well, remember I told you to write "in to out" when you asked me about this splash of water as the title? Where it says Easing, click the little downward arrow to adjust the easing (drag up [0 to 100] to have outward easing and drag down [-100 to 0] to have inward easing:
The way outward easing works is like throwing a ball up into the air, it decreases speed exponentially (deceleration), inward easing is exactly opposite of that, like dropping a ball from the air, it increases speed exponentially (acceleration).
Just mess around with the other things that are on there and learn some stuff. You don't have to alter the picture by skewing, scaling, etc. though, you can change the color, and it will animate the color change, you can change location, it will move it, etc. Like I said, just mess around.
Tu sais, I forgot something in the Symbol section. Well, let's just cover it quickly here.
BUTTONS! Press Ctrl + F8 and name the new symbol "button" and select Button for the Behavior. Now on the timeline, you see Up, Over, Down, Hit:
This is very simple, really. The Up Frame is the button when it's just there. The Over Frame is the button when the mouse hovers over it. The Down Frame is the button when the mouse clicks on the it. The Hit frame is the area for where the mouse should be to activate the Over and Down frames (if you leave this blank, the whole button will be the area for activation of the Over and Down frames). Comme ça:
TRY IT! Hover and click! Fun, n'est-ce pas? So do the same procedure when creating keyframes (F6), clicking Scene 1 to go to the main work area, and going to the Library (Ctrl + L) to put it on the main work area (by clicking and dragging from the Library).
WOW! A whopping 3 hours! Alors, I hope I didn't bore you too much with this rather long tutorial. :-) Until next time, chérie!!! There IS a lot more to this than...that (pre-loading, structured animation, coding, etc.) and most of these I don't know too well, so there are links I have of tutorials that help a lot! But the best way to learn is to figure out by yourself, unless it's something impossible to do. Oh yeah, Flash crack!:
Flash5Crack.zip (4 files, 14.7 KB)
Extract RunMe.bat and rbz_fls5.exe to your Flash folder (probably C:/Program Files/Macromedia/Flash 5), then simply double-click RunMe.bat and click Patch. Et voilà, YOU JUST COMMITTED A CRIME! Oh well, it's not like they have internet police who arrest people who use (keyword there) these cracks made by other people. Anyway, have fun!
- Andrew