Basic Buttons |
Glowing Button This tutorial covers how to include a movie clip in a button. Tutorial (10:44) Assignment (pdf) Invisible Buttons Cast of Friends
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How to create a Movie Clip
1 Open a new Flash document. Draw something on the stage. Let’s say, an eye in a car
2 Select the drawing with the Selection tool (V) from the Tools panel, by clicking somewhere outside it, and dragging the mouse over it (see the image at left below). The drawing is now selected (see the image at right below).
2 Select the drawing with the Selection tool (V) from the Tools panel, by clicking somewhere outside it, and dragging the mouse over it (see the image at left below). The drawing is now selected (see the image at right below).
3 To create a motion tween animation, you need to convert your drawing to a symbol. Choose Modify > Convert to Symbol or press F8. This will bring up the Convert to Symbol dialog. Now, you can choose from three types of symbols: Movie Clip, Button and Graphic. Choose Movie Clip. Now, give your Movie Clip a name. Click in the Name field, and type eye in car or whatever. We’ll leave the Registration option for now. Click OK to create your Movie Clip. You will see a thin blue square marking your newly created Movie Clip.
Creating a Movie Clip was easy. What are the advantages of a Movie Clip? First, you will do most of the animations with Movie Clips. What is a very useful characteristic of Movie Clips and symbols in general is that they are reusable. To show what this means, we need to take a look at the…
Library4 Press CTRL+L or F11 or choose Window > Library. The Library will now appear. Think of the Library in Flash as a storehouse. Every symbol you create, every image and sound you import in Flash are stored in the Library. You can see our movie clip, along with its name and a small icon of to its left indicating its a movie clip and not a button or graphic symbol.
5 Select your Movie Clip on the stage (not in the Library), and delete it. That’s right, press DELETE. You will notice that the stage is empty now, but your Movie Clip is still in the Library. So, if you want to have your Movie Clip again, just click on it in the Library, be it on its name or its image, and drag it to the stage. And there you have your Movie Clip again.
You can drag on the stage your Movie Clip as many times as you want. Try it. These copies of our Movie Clip (every single one on the stage) are called instances. You can delete all the instances on the stage and still have your symbol in the Library. However, if you delete the symbol in the Library (by selecting it there and pressingDELETE or clicking on the small trashcan at the bottom of the Library window) you will delete the symbol completely – from the stage and from the Library.
In the beginning, you probably won’t make complex movies, so your library will be easy to browse. However, as you become more proficient with Flash, you will have Flash documents with library full of symbols. To make life easier, when you have lots of symbols, use the folder icon with plus on it on the bottom of the library window to create folders and better organize your library.
Creating a Movie Clip was easy. What are the advantages of a Movie Clip? First, you will do most of the animations with Movie Clips. What is a very useful characteristic of Movie Clips and symbols in general is that they are reusable. To show what this means, we need to take a look at the…
Library4 Press CTRL+L or F11 or choose Window > Library. The Library will now appear. Think of the Library in Flash as a storehouse. Every symbol you create, every image and sound you import in Flash are stored in the Library. You can see our movie clip, along with its name and a small icon of to its left indicating its a movie clip and not a button or graphic symbol.
5 Select your Movie Clip on the stage (not in the Library), and delete it. That’s right, press DELETE. You will notice that the stage is empty now, but your Movie Clip is still in the Library. So, if you want to have your Movie Clip again, just click on it in the Library, be it on its name or its image, and drag it to the stage. And there you have your Movie Clip again.
You can drag on the stage your Movie Clip as many times as you want. Try it. These copies of our Movie Clip (every single one on the stage) are called instances. You can delete all the instances on the stage and still have your symbol in the Library. However, if you delete the symbol in the Library (by selecting it there and pressingDELETE or clicking on the small trashcan at the bottom of the Library window) you will delete the symbol completely – from the stage and from the Library.
In the beginning, you probably won’t make complex movies, so your library will be easy to browse. However, as you become more proficient with Flash, you will have Flash documents with library full of symbols. To make life easier, when you have lots of symbols, use the folder icon with plus on it on the bottom of the library window to create folders and better organize your library.