Help with Flash CS3 and transitions

monkeyracer · 04-07-2008, 09:18 AM

I am just barely learning flash, and am a total newbie at it. I want to have a skin with a more dynamic flavor to it, and one component of that is a transition that makes it seem the different skins are connected to a theoretical cube, and changing between them "rotates" the cube to that screen. There will be other effects, but this is the first thing I want to try to get.

I was able to take screenshots in Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 and visualize what I am after:

Is it possible? and how do I go about doing this?

2poor4mods · 04-07-2008, 10:57 AM

I would think this would be very possible. But It may be a bit more involved for a person new to Flash. I personally haven't done this, but have seen it. I would try searching around on different flash forums. You will definitely have to learn mid-level, and possibly advanced level actionscript.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress. I think this would be a pretty cool effect when completed.

monkeyracer · 04-07-2008, 11:01 AM

I think that given the example script, I could probably manipulate it to my needs. I've found a few different examples, but most of them are not what I was looking for. the actual "cube" would be a physically impossible shape since it's not a perfect square, but I just need to manipulate the images so that when you change screens it appears as if you are rotating a cube (kinda like the touchFLO application.)

I'm willing to learn if someone can point me into a direction that helps get me to a flying start.

2poor4mods · 04-07-2008, 11:59 AM

Had a chance to ponder this, and this is what I came up with.

First off, you'd have to make each screen it's own movieclip, because that's how you would be able to manipulate each screen. Depending on how you set up your Flash movie, this may or may not give you trouble. I would also make sure all of the movieclips have the same basepoint, usually 0,0.

This would be for the right to left sweeping action:

Say you're in the main screen (800x600 resolution) and want to go to the audio screen. You currently have the main movieclip loaded on the 0 layer. You would then load the audio screen on a different layer, say layer 1 so you don't overwrite the main movieclip, but you would insert it off the stage at 0,800 and with an _xscale of 0. You would then use the _xscale property in action script to make the sweeping effect (main screen would have a decreasing _xscale, while the audio would have an increasing _xscale) while at the same time, moving the audio screen in the x direction to make it look like it's attached to the end of the decreasing main screen (you can use the _x property)

Of course would have to make variables, and get the mathmatics right, but that's the idea anyways.

Kind of get the drift?

monkeyracer · 04-07-2008, 12:48 PM

I think that helps with what I was thinking of trying.

This would visually shrink the left and right edges of the main screen and the audio screen would squish it to one side until it's at 0.
That would be a pretty cool effect, now to make it look more like a cube, we'd need to make the opposite side of the screen skew inward to make it appear that it's getting further away from the field of view.

Another thing that I want to consider is that there will be more than a few faces, so if we're at the main screen and the audio screen is to the left, and GPS to the right, if i move to the audio screen (-800) and I want to have audio player to the left of that would I place that layer at -1600? Also I'd like the main screen to be at the top of the "cube" so from any screen, going to the top will bring up the main menu, but if this makes it harder to do, then I can re-organize the skin.

Here's what I'm trying to get at:

Basically the image on the right looks like a 3d shape in the middle of rotating between the two screen since the top and bottom edges are shorter than the center shared edge. the image on the left looks more like the two are on the same plane and just sliding between the two.