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Smoke in Flash

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Smoke in Flash

Hey dudes, I just got a graphics tablet and am now finally trying to make some animations! I have a question about smoke. I have a character sketched out in black and white and he is supposed to be smoking, but I don't really want to handdraw the smoke frame by frame(i'm animating frame by frame). How do I make smoke in flash coming from the cigarette? thx

I guess there's a five ways to do smoke in flash:

Mask layer

Shape Tween

Motion Tween

Frame by frame

and for perfectionists,

all of the above.

Let's talk about masking:

first, > on a fresh layer: draw the complete smoke trail you want ..then add a masking layer. create a shape on that mask layer that covers the smoke and motion tween the shape to reveal the smoke.

I guess that's the quickest way..

BTW :
you can have multiple symbols within symbols.. and you should get everything going in the library

'ADshareit' makes some software that allows movie clip symbols to transfer into DVD format

Shame game: my first week with flash3 - I was animating by adding scenes!!!!

Ouch.

For people who want a shortcut creating animated effects, I sell pre-animated effects that you can just drag and drop into your animations.

We have a smoke cycle that is an animated "graphic" symbol that loops and you can add it so your scene, pull the symbol to make it longer or shorter in length and you can even play with the 'alpha' of the symbol to make it more or less transparent:

http://www.cartoonsolutions.com/store/catalog/Smoke-Cycle-fast-p-16252.html

Flash Character Packs, Video Tutorials and more: www.CartoonSolutions.com

create a smoke loop then bring it into your animation symbol and use key frames to keep it in the right position

examples

http://www.brothersmcleod.co.uk/films/drfish2.asp

http://www.brothersmcleod.co.uk/films/theuncredibles.asp

The Brothers McLeod
[SIZE=2]brothersmcleod.co.uk[/SIZE]

just keep in mind, symbols won't output to video.

Symbols do output to video it's movie clips that don't.

However you can get a bit of software that does output movie clips.

The Brothers McLeod
[SIZE=2]brothersmcleod.co.uk[/SIZE]

Yeah, as long as the symbols are set as "Grahic" and not "movie clip" it'll export fine.

Oh, and I suck at effects so I'm no help there, sorry. :D

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Yeah, as long as the symbols are set as "Grahic" and not "movie clip" it'll export fine.

Oh, and I suck at effects so I'm no help there, sorry. :D

Aloha,
the Ape

Wait.... can you make "graphic" symbols with more than one frame in them? I guess I never tried that. I have also heard of the software that can make the movie clips work. Never bothered to use that either. What's it called? For me it seems just as easy to copy and paste frames. Although this sometimes then requires a little "edit multiple frames" action.

Wait.... can you make "graphic" symbols with more than one frame in them? I guess I never tried that.........

I had the same awakening after my first two years of fooling around in flash.

I had the same awakening after my first two years of fooling around in flash.

I must be abnormally dense... I've been using flash for many more than two years, and it never came to me. :confused:

Not So Much Smoke Related Question

Can Flash do this... Is a chromatogrraphy / streaming type thing possable?
One layer is a photo background with more layers with different photo images on them, placed on top.

Not sure exactly what you mean. You might post a link to something similar, but if you don't care how large the file size becomes, I see no reason why it can't be done. If it's for the web, depending on the complexity of the bitmaps it's going to suck processor power if it's scripted to stream the bitmaps. But that doesn't stop a lot of the sites out there.

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

Not sure exactly what you mean. You might post a link to something similar, but if you don't care how large the file size becomes, I see no reason why it can't be done. If it's for the web, depending on the complexity of the bitmaps it's going to suck processor power if it's scripted to stream the bitmaps. But that doesn't stop a lot of the sites out there.

I might be mixing photos with hand drawn stuff. It looks like the best thing for me to do is to just play around with it. I am looking to get some of the power of Flash with out using Flash. You know, how you can scale up an image and not have pixal problems.

Wait.... can you make "graphic" symbols with more than one frame in them?

yes, you can. you jsut have to make sure the "outer" timeline has enough frames to cover the frames in the graphic.

so if your graphic symbol animation runs for 10 frames, you hve to make sure the next timeline has at least 10 otherwise you won't see your animation. or you'll only see a portion of it, until it loops back to frame one.(if it's looping)

Website http://dapper-dandy.com

Cartoon Syndicate project
http://cartoon-syndicate.com

http://www.flashants.com/root/swf2video.shtml

Since I am old school, and learned in the days when everyone used just movieclips, it's something I've looked into. Not that my stuff will ever make it to video. I am happy with sharing on the net at this point.

I figure if I ever get discovered, either by video out technology or the tv stations having experts to convert, it will be covered.

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

For a simple cig smoke loop:
- I make a black wiggly S shape graphic.
-Set it to about 70 alpha.
-On the first frame I'll scale it down vertically to about 5%.
-Then on the last frame, stretch it up vertically over 100% and maybe even scale the width down a bit.
-Add a motion tween.
-Then place a key frame in the middle of the tween.
-Then go back to the first and last frames and bring the alpha down to zero.
-At this point point it should look like its appearing and then disappearing as it rises. Depending on how much smoke I want and how much attention I want to draw towards that particular prop, I may copy and paste those frames onto another layer. Then shift the frames around so that the two layers work as a continuous loop.
-Needless to say I do set this up in its own movie clip.

It's nothing fancing but it'll do the trick for a simple prop effect.
-MM

Flashkit has had a lot of cigarette smoke open source posted over the years. These are a few of the best:

http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Effects/Eye_Candy/randomi-Ian424-5817/index.php

http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Effects/Special_Effects/smoke-doudimme-1047/index.php

http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Effects/Special_Effects/cool_smo-Arne_E_-5118/index.php

The opensource movies at Flashkit is always a good place to start when you get stumped. Actually the third one is done through an old fashioned motion tween. The second one has some problems but maybe you could modify it to suit your needs. The first one is a particle type thing which incorporates actionscript to make it work.

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

Symbols do output to video it's movie clips that don't.

However you can get a bit of software that does output movie clips.

What software outputs movieclips? That would be cool!

There're different kinds of smoke. Learn how to animate them. There's the book timing for animation gives good basic explanations.

This contains my smoke drawn and scanned 3 years ago
http://www3.telus.net/drard/rfa.html*
....If I had to do it again I would draw it directly in the program but I was learning Flash on my own and had only a mouse at that point. I have reusued and reworked that animation for steam from a coffee: http://www3.telus.net/drard/oltimer.html (A lip synch and bit map fill test I did using a charcater who'd be used in other cards)

As well as drawing the diminishing of the smoke, I alpha it to zero in some cases, creating almost a secondary fading out. Wathc old cartoons; they animate the smoke dissipating or they dissolve (A film effect of incrementelly closing the aparature to zero on another pass of film, like twwening to alpha zero) the smoke as it dissippates.

Now if your asking about some programmatic smoke as from an AFter Effects or whatever....I don't know.

*I apologise for those memebers who've seen this for the millionth time