How do I do image crossfades in Flash MX? Is there a straightforward way of doing this? Basically, what I’d like to do is create a slideshow of images, possibly with music (though probably not) with typical crossfade transition effects.
Or if somebody knows of Flash developer utilities that can put out decent Flash slideshows, I’d be interested in looking at them. I’ve checked out PhotoPulse, Amara Slideshow Maker, and a few other ones, but they all leave much to be desired for me. The best program I’ve tried is ProShow Gold 2.0. While it does churn out fabulous slideshows, it requires a plug-in download to view. I’m guessing a good portion of my target audience will not want to download extra plug-ins to view my website, so it seems like I have to do everything myself in Flash.
If you have Flash MX, the tutorial will show you (I don’t know if they used the same tutorial in MX 2004, if that’s what you’re working with, but you can check under the help menu. It features three views of a car.)
Basically, you put each slide in its own layer. You keep the first slide on for a number of frames, then create a tween where its alpha (opacity) goes from 100% to 0%. On the layer for the next slide, you put a tween coinciding with the first layer that changes the alpha from 0% to 100%. And so on with the rest of the pictures. If you wish to make it a circular show, add the tween to the first layer at the far end of the timeline as the last picture fades out.
Ah. That’s more-or-less what I thought I was going to have to do. Layers and overlapping fade-outs and fade-ins. I hoped there would be some shortcut, some way to specify transitional effects like you can in Adobe Premiere.
I did find some simple fade-in DHTML scripts that would accomplish what I want to do nicely, but this might be a good opportunity to learn how to do it in Flash. At least with Flash I would have more flexibility like adding moving text and Ken Burn effects and the such.
You may be able to do it with Flash’s resident scripting, based on ECMAScript (Javascript related). I haven’t needed to do this so I haven’t explored the possibility.
I should have added that each image needs to be converted to a movie clip to get the alpha tweens to work.
Actually, you just have to convert them to a “Symbol” for the fades to work and if you’re going to do the fades as decribed above, a Graphic Symbol would work just as well.
You can, of course, script the whole thing or use a premade component like the one you can find here:
That Imageweaver program seems pretty cool. Have you ever used it before, because I have absolutely no idea what’s going on and I can’t seem to find any documentation for it anywhere. I’m lost at the opening Component Parameters.
Actually, nevermind. Through the time-tested process of trial and error, I’m starting to get a hang for this. I’ve still got quite a bit to go, but at least I got the directory structures figured out and all the images showing.
