In this tutorial, available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium members, you’ll learn to build a card-matching game, in Flash, that uses Flickr as the source of its images. The first part of this two-part series will get you started, leaving you with a basic game structure that you can improve on later.
Become a Premium member to follow this awesome tutorial, as well as hundreds of other advanced tutorials and screencasts.
Preview
Here’s what you’ll create in this part of the tutorial:
In the second part of the series, you’ll add multiple levels and improve the interface, ending up with this:
What You’ll Learn
Naturally, you’ll learn how to search for and retrieve images from Flickr, so that you can use them in other apps and games. But since this tutorial explains how to build a Pairs game from scratch, you’ll also learn about game logic (such as how to detect a match) and interface tweaks (such as the way the cards “flip” over when clicked).
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to mimic the photos created by the Lytro camera. The end result will allow you to create your own dynamic and interesting pictures to display on the web, allowing viewers to alter the focal point! No special camera required — you can use any camera which allows manual focusing (which includes most phone cameras).
Final Result Preview
Let’s take a look at the final result we will be working towards:
Click a guitar to focus on it.
Step 1: Setting Up
Before you start, make sure you have a camera that can select a focus point manually. In this tutorial you cannot use the focus lock method to change points of focus. A DSLR would be best when doing this tutorial but a compact camera with decent manual controls will be fine! Also make sure you have a sturdy tripod.
First, set your camera up on a tripod. Make sure it’s secure and not going to fall or move in any way because we don’t want the composition to change at all between the shots.
Ensure your subject remains static throughout taking your images, otherwise in the final result, your images will appear to move, and that wouldn’t look good at all!
Step 2: Shooting Modes
To get a really effective image, your need to set your camera to a mode were you can control the aperture. This will allow you to set a wide aperture (Small f number), and blow the background (or foreground) out of focus. Remember, the lower the f number, the greater the blur!
Aperture Priority mode (A/Av on Canon) is a great mode which will allow you to set the aperture, and the camera will choose all the other settings for you. Though be warned, this mode may produce two images with slightly different exposures, and each may have slightly different color so be careful!
Manual mode (M) would be better because you can dial in the exposure settings, and keep your shots consistent. Manual white balance settings are also a good idea to keep the colors in your images consistent.
For this tutorial, I would recommend anywhere around f1 – f5.6, depending on the distance from your subject and the camera.
Step 2: Shooting
Now with a wide aperture selected on your camera (Small f number), move your AF marker over your foreground subject by using the directional pad on the back of your camera. Let the camera focus, and then shoot. Without moving your camera at all, select a new focus point in the background, focus, and then shoot as shown in the picture above.
A handy tip if you have a DSLR is to go into live view mode. Here you can select any point on the screen, allowing for a greater flexibility in choosing your points of focus. If you have a compact camera, use your control pad to select your focus point.
You should now have two images that are exactly the same, apart from the focal point. Keep shooting until you are happy with your composition and depth of field. Then transfer your photos to your computer and get started in Flash!
Step 3: Now Onto the Computer
First set up a suitably named project folder. I always like to keep projects in clearly named folders so I can find them if I need to look back on what I’ve done at a later date. Here you will keep your original images, resized images, and your Flash/ActionScript files.
To make the images web-safe, we need to resize them. Open up your favourite image editor and just resize your photos to a suitable size you feel is appropriate. Here, I’ve resized them both to 600x400px, but you can use any size you wish, and make sure the ‘constrain proportions’ box is checked.
Next, save the images as a high quality JPEG. This is important because Flash will compress the whole file later, so losing image quality at this stage is pointless.
Step 4: Flash Setup
Boot up Flash, and open a new ActionScript 3.0 document. Click the edit button under the properties tab, and resize your stage to the size of your images; I picked 600x400px.
Step 5: Document Layers and Frames
Next, create two layers on your stage; name the bottom layer “Photos”, and the top layer “Buttons”. Add another key-frame on the “Photos” layer, but make sure on the “Buttons” layer, you just add another frame. See the picture above.
Next, import both your photos to the library, so drag and drop them both from your project folder into the library panel. Now make sure you have both of your photos on a different key-frame.
The photo layer is now complete!
Step 6: Button Masking
Now, we need to make the buttons that users will click on to change the focal point. To do this, we will mask the out of focus areas of both images, fill them, and then make them invisible.
First, select the first frame on the “Buttons” layer. Use the pen tool and mask the shape of the out of focus areas, and complete the path. You don’t need to be too accurate here; just make sure you get the general shape of the object.
Next, select the paint bucket tool and fill in the paths you just created. Delete the black stroke around the edges if necessary.
Step 7: Creating a Symbol
Next, select the shapes and go-to Modify > Convert to Symbol (F8). Make sure the type of symbol is a button, and call this what you like. I have named my shape ‘Guitar1’.
Step 8: Making It Invisible
Double click on your new button, and you will then enter the button isolation mode. Here you can edit the states of the button.
In this case, we want to make it invisible, so click and drag from the ‘UP’ state, and release over the ‘HIT’ state.
Then return to your original timeline and your shape should have a see-through mask. Congrats! You just made an invisible button!
Step 9: Naming Your Button
The next step is to name this button. While it is selected, on the right panel, under the properties tab, name your button ‘btn_back’.
Step 10: More Button Masking!
Next, click on the next frame on your “Buttons” layer over the second image, so the other part of the image is out of focus. This just makes it clearer to see where to mask.
Now do exactly the same as before:
Mask the out of focus area with the pen tool.
Fill it with the paint bucket tool and delete the black stroke around the button.
Convert it to a symbol. (F8) (Remember to make sure the type of symbol is a button, and you call it a different name than before. I have named mine ‘Guitar2’.
Double click the new button, and drag from the ‘UP’ state, to the ‘HIT’ state.
Return to the timeline.
Now, name this new button, ‘btn_fore’.
You should now have two transparent buttons that span over both images as shown. They may overlap slightly, but this does not matter too much. The buttons layer is now complete!
Step 11: Preparing to Code Your File
The final part is to create the code which will make the buttons work. This step involves the use of document classes so use this tutorial to help you understand them if you are new to them, or just want a refresh.
First, locate the ‘Class’ box in your FLA file under the properties panel. In here, type Main. This is now the name of your document class, and will be the name of your ActionScript file that you will be creating next.
Next, go to File > ActionScript settings. You need to un-check the box that says ‘Automatically declare stage instances’. This means that you have to now manually declare the two buttons in code, which is what we want. (The location of this dialog may be different in earlier versions of Flash, so if you cannot find it, use a search engine.)
Step 12: Building the Code
Next it’s time to create the ActionScript file that holds all our code in. Click File > New > ActionScript file.
Now save this as Main.as, and make sure it is held within the same file directory as the FLA file. Now, the FLA and ActionScript file are linked!
First, use this piece of code as your base:
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
public class Main extends MovieClip
{
public function Main():void
{
}//Function
}//Class
}//Package
I have included an import statement for MovieClip to start with, but we will be adding more statements as we go along.
Step 13: Building the Buttons
To start, you need to declare your 2 buttons as variables. These go between public class Main extends MovieClip and before public function Main():
public var btn_back:SimpleButton;
public var btn_fore:SimpleButton;
To make Flash understand what SimpleButton is, you need to add this with the other import statement at the top:
import flash.display.SimpleButton;
After you have done that, your code should look like this:
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.display.SimpleButton;
public class Main extends MovieClip
{
public var btn_back:SimpleButton;
public var btn_fore:SimpleButton;
public function Main():void
{
}//Function
}//Class
}//Package
Step 14: Stopping on the First Frame
The next step is to make sure the clip stops on the first photo. To do this, simply add a stop() command inside the public function Main()
public function Main():void
{
stop();
}//Function
Step 15: Adding Event Listeners
The next step is to add event listeners. These go inside public function Main(), and below the stop(); command you just added. You must have an event listener for both buttons; btn_back and btn_fore, so first create one for the back button:
First, I’m referencing the button name btn_back. Then I’m adding the event listener via .addEventListener. In the brackets, MouseEvent.CLICK is simply telling it to listen for a click on the button. Finally we’re telling it that, when the button is clicked, it should call onClickBackground() — we will create this function next.
Now, because we have used mouse events, we need to put an import statement at the top along with the other statements to make Flash understand what one is. Add this line below the other imports:
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
Your code should now look like this:
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.display.SimpleButton;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
public class Main extends MovieClip
{
public var btn_back:SimpleButton;
public var btn_fore:SimpleButton;
public function Main():void
{
stop();
btn_back.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClickBackground);
btn_fore.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClickForeground);
}//Function
}//Class
}//Package
Step 16: Adding Functions
Finally, two public functions need to be created to tell the buttons we made what to do. Add these inside the public class Main extends MovieClip, but below the public function Main():void.
The names of the functions must match the names in the event listeners. So in this case onClickBackground, and onClickForeground:
public function onClickBackground(evt:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndStop(2);
}
public function onClickForeground(evt:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndStop(1);
}
Inside the function, we need to tell Flash which frame to go to when the button is clicked. The simplest method is to use gotoAndStop(). The number inside the brackets denotes the frame number that Flash will go to. Simply add the number 2 for the onClickBackground function, and the number 1 for the onClickForeground function.
A complete example of the code is below to help you understand the complete ActionScript code:
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.display.SimpleButton;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
public class Main extends MovieClip
{
public var btn_back:SimpleButton;
public var btn_fore:SimpleButton;
public function Main():void
{
stop();
btn_back.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClickBackground);
btn_fore.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClickForeground);
}//Function
public function onClickBackground(evt:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndStop(2);
}
public function onClickForeground(evt:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndStop(1);
}
}//Class
}//Package
The only thing left to do now is to test the movie, so go to Control > Test Movie > Test (or hit Ctrl + Enter). It should be working perfectly! Now all that’s left to do is publish it, and share it on the web!
Conclusion
You have now made a Lytro style photo animation! This is just an example of how to use this technique to mimic the Lytro camera images. Use this technique to create compositions and effects of your own for your portfolio, website or blog!
To take it a step further, you could create your own effects and transitions between frames to give your project a personal touch.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Let me know what you think! Now let’s see some of your own. Pop a link in the comments below!
It’s time for another excellent Active Premium tutorial exclusively available to Premium members. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a Pong game that can be controlled by moving your hands, and a picture gallery that can be navigated in the style of Minority Report — all in the browser’s Flash Player with no drivers required, if you’re on the Mac.
Preview
Let’s take a look at what we will be working towards. First, a Pong game where each paddle is controlled by a player’s hand:
Second, an image gallery with gesture control, in the style of Minority Report:
Zoom is two hands on one image and then you expand them away from each other.
Rotate is two hands on an image, one going up and the other going down.
Will It Work for Me?
You’ll need a Kinect, of course! Assuming you have that, if you’re on a Mac, it’s very easy to get this working; no drivers are required. On Windows it’s a little more fiddly: you’ll need to install some drivers, and the libraries to make Flash recognise the Kinect are still in beta and not as polished as the Mac versions.
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
Ever wanted to make a manageable and beautiful photo viewer app? In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to design and code a nifty Polaroid photo viewer, focusing on the design and tweening.
Final Result Preview
Let’s take a look at the final result we will be working towards:
Section 1: Organization
In this section we’ll discuss our folder structure, also we’ll acquire our stock imagery.
Step 1: Creating Our Folders
First let’s create a folder in which our project will be located. We’ll name it “Polaroid Viewer”.
Afterwards just copy this folder structure:
Step 2: Understanding Our Folder Structure
When creating very visual projects, it’s very important to first really know what you want to design. Inside the Design folder I always have my visual concepts and also in the Design folder I edit the images I’ll need for a project.
After I’ve finished working on my concept I proceed to making a working product, I do this inside the Project folder. Inside the Project folder is the very known bin, lib and src folder structure:
bin: Everything which is being exported and is needed to launch the final product, including data assets.
lib: Our Flash documents.
src: All our code, our own classes, as well as other frameworks.
Step 3: Acquire Stock Imagery
Now that we’ve created our folders, let’s proceed to the images. In this tutorial we’ll need at least two images:
You’ll need a Stock Xchange account to download these images, if you don’t yet have one, you should sign up! It’s a website filled with free stock imagery!
Click the links to download the images, afterwards save or move them to our Design folder.
Also we’ll need images to place inside the polaroid frames. Here’s a list of images which I’ve used, but feel free to use your own images.
In this section we’re going to edit our stock images. After doing so, we’ll import these images inside our Flash document, which we’ll create later.
We’re going to edit our images with Photoshop, I’ll be using CS5, however you can always use older versions. If you’re not so confident in your Photoshop skills, you can download the images which I’ve already edited. Just download the source files from this tutorial, and you can find the images inside the Edited Images folder.
Step 4: Preparing Our Wooden Floor
In the final example all our polaroid pictures lie on a wooden floor. We’re now going to create this background.
Create a New Document in Photoshop with the dimensions 600x600px.
Add the wooden texture image to the document. Scale it so you’re pleased with the final result.
I’ve also added a Gradient Map, setting the colors to black and white.
Lastly I’ve changed the gradient map’s transition to 80%. To do so, click on one of the lower arrows, and afterwards click on the dot in the middle of the gradient. Drag this dot to 80%.
And voila! We’ve created our wooden background! Save it as a Photoshop Document (.psd) in our Design folder, and name it Background.psd.
Step 5: Preparing the Polaroid Frame
We want to place our own images inside the polaroid frame. We must do two things, we’ll first need to remove the polaroid frame from its (white) background, and also we’ll need to cut the “photo” part away.
To do this, we’ll first create a new 600x600px Photoshop document. Paste the polaroid picture inside the document, scale it down till it fits.
Why do we scale the image down? Because we’re creating a 600x600px Flash document, and it’s unnecessary to have and load a huge image if we won’t even scale it larger than 600 px.
Step 6: Isolating the Polaroid Frame
Select the pen tool (P) and click around the polaroid frame’s outer edge. When working with the Pen tool, be sure to set the Pen tool in its Paths mode.
Press Control + Enter (Windows) or Cmd + Enter (Mac) to select your current path.
With your path selected click on the “Add Layer Mask” button. We’ve now isolated the polaroid from its background!
Step 7: Cutting the Photo Part Away From the Polaroid Frame
This step is very similar to Design Step 4. Again select the pen tool, and click around the inner area of the polaroid’s frame. Afterwards select the current path with Ctrl + Enter/Cmd + Enter.
Now Alt-click on the mask in the Layers Panel. You’re now editing the mask directly.
Select the Marquee tool (M). Right-click your selection and select Fill > Black.
Alt-click again on the mask icon, to return back to our “normal” Layer view. We’ve successfully edited our mask and now our polaroid is ready for use. Let’s save the image as a Photoshop document (.psd), I’ve named my document Polaroid.psd.
Section 3: Flash
In this section we’re (finally) going to use Flash. We’re going to set our Flash document to use the folder bin for exporting, and the folder src for our code. Time to open Flash!
Step 8: Creating Our Flash Document
Create a new Flash Document (ActionScript 3.0) with Flash Professional. Set the dimensions to 600x600px and the framerate to 24 fps. Set the Document Class to Main. Also change the background to black (#000000). Save it as “Polaroid.fla”, inside the lib folder.
Step 9: Changing Our Publish Settings
Afterwards go to File > Publish Settings, change Polaroid.swf to ../bin/Polaroid.swf, you can uncheck the HTML option. Now everything we export (only a SWF) will be in the bin folder. Do not close the Publish Settings window.
Step 10: Changing Our Source Path
Click the Flash tab. Afterwards click on the Settings button next to Script: ActionScript 3.0.
Now we can change the source path. You’ll see a folder icon with the text “.”, change that to “../src”.
Flash will use the src folder for all its classes.
Step 11: Importing Our Graphics to Flash
It’s now time to start importing our graphics in to our Flash Document. If you had any trouble with the images, you can always download the source files from this tutorial at the top. There’ll be a folder named “Edited Images”, inside there’ll be the edited images which you can use.
Create a new Flash Document (ActionScript 3.0) with Flash Professional. Set the dimensions to 600x600px and the framerate to 24 fps. Also change the background to black (#000000).
We’ve saved our images as .psd files because they work so greatly with other Adobe products, like Flash. After creating our document, select File > Import to Library and select Polaroid.psd and Background.psd. After doing so our library looks like this:
Step 12: Creating Our Background Sprite
Drag Background.psd from the Library to our stage, afterwards convert it to a movie clip. Name it Background, and check the box “Export for ActionScript”. Set the base class to flash.display.Sprite. After doing so, you can remove the background again from the stage.
Why did I set Background’s base class to Sprite instead of the default base class MovieClip? Because the only difference between a MovieClip and a Sprite is that MovieClips can contain multiple frames, and Sprites cannot. We don’t need multiple frames for our Background, so let’s set the base class of Background to Sprite.
Step 13: Creating and Our Polaroid Movie Clip
Just like we did with our background, drag polaroid.psd from the Libary to our stage. Convert it to a movie clip and name it Polaroid, again check the Export for ActionScript box. Set the base class to flash.display.Sprite.
Step 14: Creating Our Polaroid’s Layers
Our Polaroid is still on the stage, double-click it, so we can edit it. So far Polaroid only has one layer, rename this layer to Polaroid Frame.
Create two new Layers, naming them Mask and Image Holder.
Step 15: Creating the Image Holder
Our Polaroid will contain an image, this image must be displayed somewhere, this will be done in a movie clip named “Image Holder”.
Draw a rectangle of approximately the size as the “photo area” of the polaroid, do this in the Image Holder layer. It doesn’t matter which color the rectangle will be. After creating this rectangle, convert it to a movie clip, name it “Image Holder”.
Give Image Holder an instance name of imageHolder.
Step 16: Adding a Mask to the Image Holder
Image Holder will contain the images which we will load. Sometimes these images are too big — take for example a 400x100px image; this image is much too wide, and its edges would extend out of the polaroid. We want to prevent this. Therefore we must hide all imagery which extends outside of the Image Holder’s area.
To do this, we must create a mask. A mask tells a layer which part should be displayed, and which part should be hidden.
If we want every image to be displayed inside Image Holder, without any edges protruding, we should set the mask’s size to the same dimensions as Image Holder itself.
Copy Image Holder, and paste it in place with Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows) / Cmd + Shift + V (Mac) on the layer Mask. Afterwards break the copied Image Holder with Ctrl + B (Windows) / Cmd + B (Mac).
Lastly we must tell our Mask layer that it is a Mask. Right-click on the layer Mask and select the option Mask.
Section 4: Code
It’s time to start coding, if you had any trouble with the Flash Section, you can just copy the folder Flash Section Completed. Inside that folder is everything you need to start following these steps.
Step 17: Creating an XML File
To load our images, we’ll use an XML file. The XML file will tell our product where the images are located.
You should change IMAGE_1.jpg, IMAGE_2.jpg, etc. to real filenames, which refer to images located inside the bin folder. If you don’t have any images, download the images that I mentioned in Step 3.
Save this XML file as images.xml, inside the bin folder.
Step 18: Which Classes Do We Need?
Before we start coding, it’s important to know which tasks our project must do:
We must load our images from an XML file.
We must display these images inside a Polaroid.
We must prevent other Polaroids from zooming in when we are already zoomed in on a Polaroid.
To code all these functionalities in one class would make that class extremely complex, it’s better to seperate each task to a different class.
ImageLoader: Will load the XML file and pass the images to PolaroidHolder.
PolaroidHolder: When it receives the images, it will create a Polaroid for every image, so it also makes sure that only one Polaroid is zoomed in at a time.
Polaroid: The image will be displayed inside this class.
Step 19: Creating Our Main Class
The Main class is the class which Polaroid.fla calls when it gets initiated.
Create a new ActionScript file and name it “Main.as”, save it inside the src folder. The Main class looks as follows.
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
public function Main():void {
}
}
}
It’s so empty because we first need to create our other classes, while we’re busy we’re going to keep on adding code to the Main class.
Step 20: Explaining Absolute and Relative File Paths
In this project we’re loading several assets: an xml file and various images. We can use relative file paths or absolute paths. Let me explain the difference with an example; we have the following folder structure:
Loader.swf must load image1.jpg. From its current position Loader.swf must “open” the images directory and load image1.jpg. We tell Loader.swf to load images/image1.jpg. This type of loading is called relative file path loading, because the url is relative to Loader.swf’s current position.
So how do you load image1.jpg, regardless of where Loader.swf is located? This is done with absolute file path loading. The file path starts from the upper core, from the root. If it’s on a computer, its root is a hard drive. We’re deploying our project online, so the root would be the site server.
Step 21: Why We Need Absolute File Paths
When our project is done, we’d like to deploy it. Most probably it would be embedded inside an HTML page. There’s one small problem. If Loader.swf wants to load, it will load from its current location, from the location of the HTML page. We don’t want this, and therefore we must use absolute file path loading.
Now comes the biggest problem, we won’t know the location of the HTML file. We need to find the absolute path to the .swf file, and edit that path so we can load our imagery.
We can get the absolute path to the .swf file with root.loaderInfo.url.
It’s time to create our ImageLoader class.
Step 22: Creating Our ImageLoader Class
Create a new ActionScript file and name it ImageLoader.as, save it inside the .src folder. The class looks like this, it has been thoroughly commented:
package {
//import the classes we need
import flash.net.URLLoader;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.display.Bitmap;
import flash.display.Sprite;
public class ImageLoader extends Sprite{
//will load our xml
private var xmlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
//stores the xml
private var xml:XML;
//a list of file paths to the images
private var imageFileList:XMLList;
//the path to the .swf file
private var swfPath:String;
//the project folder path (where the folders bin, src and lib are located)
private var projectPath:String;
//we must know the title of our project, so we can edit the .swf url to get our projectPath
private var projectTitle:String;
//we need to count how many images we've already loaded
private var count:uint = 0;
//we must store the images, the images are Bitmaps
public var images:Vector.<Bitmap> = new Vector.<Bitmap>;
public function ImageLoader(_projectTitle:String) {
//we must know when ImageLoader has been added, then we can figure out what the root's url is
addEventListener(Event.ADDED, whenAdded);
//store the project's title
projectTitle = _projectTitle;
//when imageLoader is done with loading, call xmlLoaded
xmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, xmlLoaded);
}
private function whenAdded(event:Event):void {
//store the swf path
swfPath = root.loaderInfo.url;
//get our projectPath
projectPath = swfPath.substr(0, swfPath.length - projectTitle.length);
}
//this function will load the images from an xml, and store the images
public function load(url:String):void {
//load the xml, which we'll need to load the images
xmlLoader.load(new URLRequest(projectPath + url));
}
private function xmlLoaded(event:Event):void {
//store the xml, which xmlLoader has loaded
xml = new XML(event.target.data);
//store all the file links in an XMLList
imageFileList = new XMLList(xml.image.file);
//now that we have the file information, we can load the images
loadImages();
}
private function loadImages():void {
for each (var imageFile:String in imageFileList){
//create
var imageLoader:Loader = new Loader();
//whenever an image has been loaded, call imageLoaded
imageLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, imageLoaded, false, 0, true);
imageLoader.load(new URLRequest(projectPath + imageFile));
}
}
private function imageLoaded(event:Event):void {
//we're counting how many images we've already loaded, we've just loaded (another) one
count++;
//get the image Bitmap
var image:Bitmap = Bitmap(event.target.loader.content);
//store the image in our images Vector
images.push(image);
//if this is the last image we needed to load
if(count == imageFileList.length()){
//we're done, dispatch an event
dispatchEvent(new Event('imagesLoaded'));
}
//--cleanup
//unload the loader
event.target.loader.unload();
}
public function cleanUp():void {
xmlLoader.data = null;
xmlLoader = null;
xml = null;
imageFileList = null;
count = 0;
images = null;
}
}
}
Step 23: Improving Our Main Class
Now that we have our ImageLoader class, we can improve our Main class.
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
//a custom class we've made which will load all images from an xml file as Bitmaps
private var imageLoader:ImageLoader;
//this class will hold and display all our Polaroids
private var polaroidHolder:PolaroidHolder;
public function Main():void {
//load our images, give imageLoader the name of the .swf file, so it can load using absolute paths
imageLoader = new ImageLoader('Polaroid.swf');
addChild(imageLoader);
imageLoader.addEventListener('imagesLoaded', displayImages, false, 0, true);
imageLoader.load('pictures.xml');
}
private function displayImages(event:Event):void {
//we've loaded all our images
polaroidHolder = new PolaroidHolder(imageLoader.images);
addChild(polaroidHolder);
//also clean up the imageLoader
imageLoader.cleanUp();
imageLoader = null;
}
}
}
Step 24: Creating Our PolaroidHolder Class
The PolaroidHolder will receive the images as a Vector. After receiving the images, it will create a Polaroid for each image. Let’s create our PolaroidHolder class:
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.display.Bitmap;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
public class PolaroidHolder extends MovieClip {
//this vector will hold all our Polaroids
public var polaroids:Vector.<Polaroid> = new Vector.<Polaroid>;
//with this variable we no
private var zoomedIn:Boolean;
//the Polaroid we're zoomed in on
private var currentPolaroid:Polaroid;
public function PolaroidHolder(images:Vector.<Bitmap>) {
// constructor code
for each (var image:Bitmap in images) {
//create a new Polaroid
var polaroid:Polaroid = new Polaroid(image);
//position and rotate it
polaroid.x = Math.random() * 200 + 100;
polaroid.y = Math.random() * 200;
polaroid.rotation = Math.random() * 60 - 30;
//add a clicking eventListener
polaroid.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onPolaroidClick);
addChild(polaroid);
//add it to the polaroids vector
polaroids.push(polaroid);
}
}
private function onPolaroidClick(event:MouseEvent):void {
//there's been a click on a Polaroid!
if (currentPolaroid == null) {
//no currentPolaroid has been set, we're zooming in
//set the clicked Polaroid as the current Polaroid
currentPolaroid = event.currentTarget as Polaroid;
//mute all other Polaroids (the ones which aren't zoomed in)
for each (var polaroid:Polaroid in polaroids) {
if (polaroid != currentPolaroid) {
polaroid.mute();
}
}
} else {
//check if the click was on the current polaroid
if (event.currentTarget == currentPolaroid) {
//the same polaroid has been clicked (again), time to zoom out
//unmute all other Polaroids, they can respond again to events
for each (var polaroid:Polaroid in polaroids) {
if (polaroid != currentPolaroid) {
polaroid.unmute();
}
}
//now we're not zoomed in, so we don't have a current polaroid
currentPolaroid = null;
}
}
}
}
}
In lines 50 and 62, we call the functions mute() and unmute(). Mute makes the Polaroid numb to all events, it won’t respond to mouse overs, or clicks. This is precisely what we want when we’re zoomed in. We don’t want other Polaroids to do anything. After we’re zooming out, we want the Polaroids to respond to events; by calling unmute, the Polaroids will respond again to mouse overs and clicks.
Step 25: Creating Our Polaroid Class
Now it’s time to create our most interesting class, our Polaroid class! For this class we’ll need the popular tweening library tweener. Download it, and save the library inside the src folder (see this guide for more details).
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import caurina.transitions.*;
import caurina.transitions.properties.*;
import flash.display.Bitmap;
import flash.events.Event;
public class Polaroid extends MovieClip {
//the scale at which the Polaroid is zoomed in
private static const ZOOMED_IN_SCALE:Number = 1;
//the scale at which the Polaroid is zoomed out
private static const ZOOMED_OUT_SCALE:Number = .6;
//the max height an image can be
private var IMAGE_MAX_HEIGHT:Number;
//the max width an image can be
private var IMAGE_MAX_WIDTH:Number;
//we must scale the loaded images, remember the scale
private var scale:Number;
//when we zoom out, we zoom out back to the Polaroid's original position and rotation
//the Polaroid's original x coordinate.
private var origX:Number;
//we also need the original y coordinate
private var origY:Number;
//store the Polaroid's original rotation
private var origRotation:Number;
//when this Boolean becomes true, the Polaroid will not respond to mouse events
private var muted:Boolean;
//we need to know if the Polaroid has been clicked
public var clicked:Boolean;
public function Polaroid(image:Bitmap) {
//make the Polaroid a button
buttonMode = true;
//the maximum dimensions for an image are limited by the dimensions of imageHolder
IMAGE_MAX_HEIGHT = imageHolder.height;
IMAGE_MAX_WIDTH = imageHolder.width;
//scale the Polaroid down
scaleX = ZOOMED_OUT_SCALE;
scaleY = ZOOMED_OUT_SCALE;
//we'll need to resize the image to make it fit
//first check if it is a portrait or landscape
if (image.width > image.height) {
//it is a landscape
//the scale is limited by the image's height
scale = IMAGE_MAX_HEIGHT / image.height;
} else {
//it is a portrait
//the scale is limited by the image's width
scale = IMAGE_MAX_WIDTH / image.width;
}
//scale the image
image.scaleX = scale;
image.scaleY = scale;
//add the scaled image
imageHolder.addChild(image);
//add event listeners to the Polaroid;
addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, onMouseOver);
addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, onMouseOut);
addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick);
addEventListener(Event.ADDED, whenAdded);
}
public function mute():void {
//calling this function will make the Polaroid not respond to events
buttonMode = false;
muted = true;
}
public function unmute():void {
//calling this function will make the Polaroid respond to events
buttonMode = true;
muted = false;
}
private function whenAdded(event:Event):void {
//store the Polaroid's original coordinates and rotation
origX = x;
origY = y;
origRotation = rotation;
//we won't need this event listener anymore, remove it
removeEventListener(Event.ADDED, whenAdded);
}
private function onMouseOver(event:MouseEvent):void {
//only respond if the Polaroid has not been muted
if (! muted) {
//only respond if the Polaroid has not been clicked, clicked Polaroids should not respond to mouse overs.
if (! clicked) {
//move the polaroid to the front
parent.setChildIndex(this, parent.numChildren - 1);
//move and turn the polaroid in a random direction
Tweener.addTween(this, {x: origX + Math.random() * 30 - 15, y: origY + Math.random() * 30 -15, rotation:origRotation + Math.random() * 20 - 10, time:1});
}
}
}
private function onMouseOut(event:MouseEvent):void {
//only respond if the Polaroid has not been muted
if (! muted) {
//only respond if the Polaroid has not been clicked
if (! clicked) {
//move the polaroid back to it's original position and rotation
Tweener.addTween(this, {x: origX, y:origY, rotation:origRotation, time:1});
}
}
}
private function onClick(event:MouseEvent):void {
//only respond if the Polaroid has not been muted
if (! muted) {
//if it hasn't been clicked before
if (! clicked) {
//we've been clicked, let's make that true
clicked = true;
//we're zooming in, let's dispatch an event (Main will pick this up)
dispatchEvent(new Event('zoomIn'));
//zoom the Polaroid in to the center of the stage
Tweener.addTween(this, {x:stage.stageWidth/2 - width/2, y:stage.stageHeight/2 - height/2, rotation:0, scaleX:ZOOMED_IN_SCALE, scaleY:ZOOMED_IN_SCALE, time: 1});
} else {
//we've already been clicked, so make clicked false
clicked = false;
//we're zooming out, let's dispatch an event (Main will pick this up)
dispatchEvent(new Event('zoomOut'));
//zoom the polaroid out, back to its original position
Tweener.addTween(this, {x: origX, y:origY, rotation:origRotation, scaleX: ZOOMED_OUT_SCALE, scaleY:ZOOMED_OUT_SCALE, time:1});
}
}
}
}
}
Step 26: Adding Our PolaroidHolder to Our Main Class
Make the changes as seen in the code below.
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
//a custom class we've made which will load all images from an xml file as Bitmaps
private var imageLoader:ImageLoader;
private var polaroidHolder:PolaroidHolder;
public function Main():void {
//load our imagges
imageLoader = new ImageLoader();
imageLoader.addEventListener('imagesLoaded', displayImages, false, 0, true);
imageLoader.load('pictures.xml');
}
private function displayImages(event:Event):void {
//we've loaded all our images
polaroidHolder = new PolaroidHolder(imageLoader.polaroids);
addChild(polaroidHolder);
//also clean up the imageLoader
imageLoader.cleanUp();
imageLoader = null;
}
}
}
Step 27: The Result So Far
It seems to work, but it’s not very interesting. When zooming in, the user is not “pulled in”, our product is not immersive enough. What we need is a background! By chance we created one in Step 4. Time to add our background!
Step 28: Adding Our Background
We had exported our background with the class Background.
Not only will we add Background as a child of Main, we’ll also make Background darken when we’re zoomed in, and lighten when we’re zoomed out. How do we do this? Whenever a Polaroid is clicked, it dispatches a custom event, zoomIn or zoomOut. We can trace this event, just add event listeners to our Main class, they’ll pick up the zoomIn and zoomOut events, and whenever they’re picked up, we can tell our Background to lighten or darken:
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
import caurina.transitions.*;
import caurina.transitions.properties.*;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
//a custom class we've made which will load all images from an xml file as Bitmaps
private var imageLoader:ImageLoader;
//this class will display all our Polaroids, by receiving a Vector of Bitmaps
private var polaroidHolder:PolaroidHolder;
//the wooden background, bg is an abbrivation for background
private var bg:Background
public function Main():void {
//load our images
imageLoader = new ImageLoader('Polaroid.swf');
imageLoader.addEventListener('imagesLoaded', displayImages, false, 0, true);
addChild(imageLoader);
imageLoader.load('pictures.xml');
//add our bg as a child
bg = new Background();
addChild(bg);
//add event listener, so we know when we're zoomed in or out
//3rd parameter of addEventListener is true, so we can capture the event, when it "bubbles" up from the Polaroid
addEventListener('zoomIn', onZoomIn, true);
addEventListener('zoomOut', onZoomOut, true);
}
private function displayImages(event:Event):void {
//we've loaded all our images
polaroidHolder = new PolaroidHolder(imageLoader.images);
addChild(polaroidHolder);
//also clean up the imageLoader
imageLoader.cleanUp();
imageLoader = null;
}
private function onZoomIn(event:Event):void {
//upon zooming in, we'll darken the bg
Tweener.addTween(bg, {alpha:.6, time:1});
}
private function onZoomOut(event:Event):void {
//upon zooming out, we'll lighten the bg
Tweener.addTween(bg, {alpha:1, time:1});
}
}
}
Step 29: Looking Back
Tada! We’re done, this was quite a tutorial! I hope you guys had fun following this tutorial, and also learnt something from it. Why not play around with the code? You could try adding text fields and somehow display the title of the image. Or use several types of Polaroids. Thanks, and feel free to comment if you have any questions or comments. Keep an eye out for my next tutorial!
I’m neither an artist nor an animator, and yet I was able to lip-sync an audio track in next to no time, all thanks to SmartMouth by Justin Putney. This Flash Professional extension really impressed me with how quickly it was able to automate an otherwise extremely tedious task. Read on to see how it can make animating your cutscenes so much easier.
First Impressions
SmartMouth comes in a standard MXP package, like most Flash Professional extensions, so it was a snap to install: I just double-clicked the MXP and followed the on-screen instructions. (It’d be the same for any version of Flash from CS3 upwards, though for CS3 itself you must have installed the Extension Manager.)
Once I installed it and restarted Flash, I could access the main panel via Commands | Lip Sync with SmartMouth:
The Help document can be brought up by clicking the question mark button; this does a great job of explaining the separate elements of the panel, but — call me biased — I felt it could also have used a brief tutorial walking me through how to use the tool. Still, there’s a detailed tutorial over on the Adobe Developer Connection, and the process is pretty simple anyway:
First, I imported a sound track (I picked this public domain reading of one of Aesop’s Fables, from LibriVox), put it on its own layer, and set its Sync to Stream.
Next, I created a new layer for the mouth to go on. Like I said, I’m not an artist, but fortunately we have a free Lip Sync Assets pack in the Activetuts+ archives, so I downloaded and imported that. I dragged and dropped each symbol onto a frame in my MouthShapes layer.
Then I re-opened the SmartMouth panel; it had taken a guess at the layers I wanted to use for audio and animation, so all I had to do was choose the shapes that corresponded to each phoneme:
As you can see, it picked a Start Frame and an End Frame for me, so all I had to do was click Tell me, SmartMouth. This kicks off the audio analyzer, which plays the whole audio track through (visualizing it as it goes):
After that, there’s a brief wait while it adds the keyframes for each mouth sound. I picked a 45 second sound file, which took up about a thousand frames (at 24fps), and SmartMouth figured out which mouth sounds went where — and actually placed the keyframes — within twenty seconds:
All I had to do then was remove the original mouth shapes from the timeline, and add a “grin” to the end (okay, technically that last one was optional). Check out the results for yourself:
Click to start the audio and animation.
I’m impressed!
Room for Improvement
I did come across a couple of bugs while using SmartMouth. When I entered my registration key, the “Success” dialog got stuck in a loop, and kept reappearing no matter how many times I hit OK. Then, later, I tried deleting all the mouth frames which SmartMouth had placed and running it again; this made it run a lot slower, and in fact it took longer than the 60 second time limit Flash imposes, making it crash without finishing its job.
Still, neither bug was a big problem, since SmartMouth has a kind of “emergency exit”: right-click the main panel and click EXIT, and it’ll shut down, putting you back in control. Plus, if the audio is too long, you can work in chunks of a few hundred frames at a time by changing the Start and End Frame options.
I mentioned, the Help docs are well-written — but I would have liked to see tool tips on the various buttons within the panel. It’s not immediately obvious what the buttons next to End Frame are for, nor what Mode or Limit To actually do, without reading up on them. Even “Tell me, SmartMouth” doesn’t suggest a command that will automatically place symbols in the timeline. But these are just nitpicks; once you’ve used the options, you’ll know what they do.
My one major gripe was that, even though I placed the mouth shape symbols in different places around the stage, SmartMouth aligned them all when syncing to the audio (I think the mouth shape for the letter O is out of place in the SWF demo above). However, this proved to be my mistake: if I’d created a new symbol on the MouthShapes layer, and placed the individual mouth symbols inside that symbol, SmartMouth would have preserved my positionings.
My Verdict
After Ian finished Animating the Envato Community Podcast, he told me that a tool like SmartMouth would have saved him a lot of time and tedium. (Actually, he used rather more excited terms than that.) I can see why.
In that video, there were several different people talking in turn, so there were different mouths that needed to be animated. SmartMouth doesn’t have an interface for doing this specifically, but it would be pretty simple to use it for that. Either:
separate the speakers’ voices into separate tracks on separate layers and run SmartMouth once per track,
use the Start and End Frame boxes to isolate the section of the track corresponding to one character at a time, or
run it once for each character and simply delete the frames that don’t match the character who’s talking.
Although SmarthMouth’s most instantly impressive feature is its ability to put the mouth symbols on the stage in sync with the vocal track, this isn’t strictly necessary. If you prefer, you can tell SmartMouth just to create a new layer with labels corresponding to each phoneme in the vocals, so you can put the graphics in manually without having to keep scrubbing the timeline to see what sound you’re supposed to be imitating. This would be useful for frame-by-frame animation, or a scene with a lot of motion.
It’s also possible to make SmartMouth export the phoneme data to an XML file; this could then be used in another platform, like Unity, or even loaded into a SWF with AS3 so that you could animate a custom avatar’s mouth dynamically. (From what I hear, Justin is working on a version of the tool specifically for that purpose.)
Overall, I highly recommend SmartMouth if you need to do any lip-syncing in Flash. The basic functionality it amazing by itself, and the extra features push it over the edge.
Hey there and welcome to "Flash Video Training Source", a resource for anybody interested in learning more about Adobe's great tool. We feature educational videos, which will help you master Adobe Flash and help you get to know all of its features. We at "Flash Video Training Source" believe that video training and video... more
Why don't you follow us on Twitter and get the latest video tutorials twitted to your account. Just click on the floating twitter bar to your right!
