If a swf is already made, can I later change the objects to transparent ones?

Seanie M

I already have the swf made up. If, for example, I wanted to add a couple of graphics into the background, can I make the 'text' objects transparent? Do you follow?

Seanie.

forbairt

I don't believe so ...

You'll need to have your .fla or you'll either need to deconstruct your swf file using some program ... flash swf decompiler or similar ? can't remember exact name at the moment ...

Hmm adding in

<PARAM NAME="wmode" VALUE="transparent">

doesn't help does it ?

Seanie M

forbairt wrote:

I don't believe so ...

You'll need to have your .fla or you'll either need to deconstruct your swf file using some program ... flash swf decompiler or similar ? can't remember exact name at the moment ...

Hmm adding in

<PARAM NAME="wmode" VALUE="transparent">

doesn't help does it ?

Where would I add that in the Actions panel? And yes, I do have the .fla source.

Seanie M

forbairt wrote:

I don't believe so ...

You'll need to have your .fla or you'll either need to deconstruct your swf file using some program ... flash swf decompiler or similar ? can't remember exact name at the moment ...

Hmm adding in

<PARAM NAME="wmode" VALUE="transparent">

doesn't help does it ?

Where would I add that in the Actions panel? Or, are you suggestiong I add that to the first frame of the start of each object? And yes, I do have the .fla source.

forbairt

sorry that bit goes into your html code

forbairt

got an example of what you're talking about online ... ?

As far as I can tell you want a background image on a html page .. and you want your flash to be transparent against it ?

Gordon

I think we're talking about basic Flash opacity here. If so - add a new layer underneath the objects you want and add whatever content; images, text you want. If you want to make something slightly transparent - select the object (image or text) and go down to your toolbar and alter opacity from there. If you are working with text then you may need to convert the text into a movie/picture first.

Incidentally, it's pretty hard to try to help you out if you aren't explaining what you want concisely Seanie.

Seanie M

Gordon wrote:

Incidentally, it's pretty hard to try to help you out if you aren't explaining what you want concisely Seanie.

Understood Gordon, I guess I thought that because I am standing on the shoulders of giants in this forum (compared to what I, ahem, can do!), I thought the jist was clear enough!

In a (large-ish) nutshell guys:
I have the swf movie (and the source .fla). It was made up of pretty much text BUT represented as objects IMPORTED into flash, i.e. I made the graphics outside of Flash, instead of converting the text to objects inside of Flash.

They are all black set against a white background. The swf in question is the header on www.dezynaweb.net (it would help to see it I guess!)

I want to add a few I.T.-type graphics into the background to take away the plain look of it. But, I want to know if I can do somthing, in Flash, akin to simply selecting the white areas of my objects, and making it transparent, like one would do in Photoshop. Obviously to save time. It's no beef if I have to start from scratch, only it will take me a while to sit down and start from scratch!

Does this help guys? Oh, and, thanks for the feedback. This forum is always helpful to the relative newbie in this stuff.

Seanie.

forbairt

ok you're using graphics in that flash ...

thats a no no for what its doing ... you should just make them up in flash

text shouldn't be a graphic ... graphic object within flash yes but it shouldn't be a graphic you're using for it ...

Also your logo isn't that complicated ...

so the simple solution is .. just recreate them ... it won't take that long ..

Gordon

Aye, the logo won't take long to do if you have Inkscape/Illustrator, once you've got the first sweep it's just a case of copy pasting vectors. You can even do it in Flash but I personally hate using flash for creating vectors.

Adam

Also, you should look into the built in motion "tween" in flash, because it looks like you've moved that text frame by frame, whereas you should have just set the start and end keyframes and tweened the layer.

forbairt

Mirror wrote:

Also, you should look into the built in motion "tween" in flash, because it looks like you've moved that text frame by frame, whereas you should have just set the start and end keyframes and tweened the layer.

I'd say its more a case of using a graphic .. and having a low frame rate ... that said my head hurts ...

personally I threw the logo into flash and it was done in 5 minutes ...

decreases file size not having graphics included as well ...

Seanie M

Mirror wrote:

Also, you should look into the built in motion "tween" in flash, because it looks like you've moved that text frame by frame, whereas you should have just set the start and end keyframes and tweened the layer.

I imported the "text" as an object (button) from Xara Webstyle, in order to have a smooth text appearance. And that's what I did - keyframe to keyframe. I probably just don't have enough frames in between and the framerate raised sufficiently to make it smoother.