Flash MX 2004 Games : Art to ActionScript

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4 Using CGI programs to create animation Although Flash is a great tool for creating and editing drawn animation, another method for creating animations for Flash games is to use a computer animation program. Teaching the techniques required to use all the many computer animation programs is way beyond the scope of this book, but the principles common to all programs are briefly covered in this chapter. Having created your animation images you then need to get them into Flash. To do this you can use certain import methods such as swf generators like Vecta3D, Swift3D and Flicker, or you can use bitmap images directly from within Flash. We will consider the options, which you can then judge from both a design perspective and the impact on file size. A further option that will lead to the most highly optimized files is to hand trace the images that are created by the computer graphic (CG) programs, we will look at how, by tracing the images, you can achieve file sizes one sixth that of using trace bitmap. Along the way we will create a couple of test animations to highlight the differences between the methods in terms of both design and file size. Character animation using a computer animation program Since 1985 I have been the managing director of an animation company in Manchester, UK, called Catalyst Pictures. At Catalyst we have been using Lightwave for character animation since 1998. The reason is totally pragmatic; it is the cheapest program to offer all the facilities needed for TV quality character animation. Indeed I wrote a little character animation plug-in called ‘Bendypoints’. As you no doubt gather I am something of a CG fan. Having spent the best part of 12 years doing drawn animation for clients who seem to like nothing better than changing things for no reason, CG is an absolute blessing. If the character changes colour or has to move faster or should be viewed from the left, right, top or bottom then the CG work has the blessing of being constantly editable. This is in marked contrast with drawn animation where almost all changes mean starting from scratch. The character that you see in this chapter was created from a clean sheet and animated in a morning by one person. There is no way that a drawn character could ever be done in that time. OK, let’s look at the process. Modelling with a computer generated imagery (CGI) program Computer animation is a three-stage process. First, you create a virtual model of the character that you are going to animate, then you animate and finally you render. When modelling, most CGI programs show four views of the model, as you can see in Figure 4.1. These days interfaces 46
Figure 4.1 Fatcat in Lightwave 7 Figure 4.2 A ‘standard’ triangular mesh Chapter 4: Using CGI programs to create animation are all so configurable that you can usually set up the display to show you whatever you like but the default is to show a top view of the character in the display to the top left, a front view in the bottom left, a 3D view in the top right and a side view in the bottom right. Different programs approach modelling in different ways. A few years ago there was a craze for NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) modellers. This craze has waned because NURBS modelling is extremely hard to do for arbitrary meshes. What is an arbitrary mesh? It is a mesh that has points 47
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Flash MX 2004 Games
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Flash MX 2004 Games Art to ActionSc
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Contents at a glance Introduction x
Page 9 and 10: Contents in summary Introduction xi
Page 11 and 12: Contents in summary Chapter 15: Maz
Page 13 and 14: Introduction: Learn to write Action
Page 15 and 16: 1 Your first game Rather alarmingly
Page 17 and 18: Chapter 1: Your first game view of
Page 19 and 20: Using the Line tool Chapter 1: Your
Page 21 and 22: Chapter 1: Your first game Adding t
Page 23 and 24: Chapter 1: Your first game is true
Page 25 and 26: Chapter 1: Your first game would tr
Page 27 and 28: _x = startX; _y = startY; moveX = 0
Page 29: Section 1 Animation The first secti
Page 32 and 33: Flash MX 2004 Games Using the drawi
Page 34 and 35: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 2.7 Stag
Page 36 and 37: Flash MX 2004 Games The Pencil tool
Page 38 and 39: Flash MX 2004 Games When you use th
Page 40 and 41: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 2.25 Sca
Page 42 and 43: Flash MX 2004 Games To use a gradie
Page 44 and 45: Flash MX 2004 Games tweening was se
Page 46 and 47: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 2.37 Usi
Page 48 and 49: 3 Simple cut-out animation Flash is
Page 50 and 51: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 3.4 Sele
Page 52 and 53: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 3.7 Usin
Page 54 and 55: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 3.10 The
Page 56 and 57: Flash MX 2004 Games pressing F5. Th
Page 58 and 59: Flash MX 2004 Games WalkLeft TurnLe
Page 62 and 63: Flash MX 2004 Games that sometimes
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Page 72 and 73: Flash MX 2004 Games A higher settin
Page 74 and 75: 5 Background art All your games wil
Page 76 and 77: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 5.3 A si
Page 78 and 79: Flash MX 2004 Games better to expor
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Page 82 and 83: Figure 5.10 Using symbols to add te
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Page 86 and 87: Flash MX 2004 Games Using photograp
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Page 90 and 91: Flash MX 2004 Games 3 Choose ‘png
Page 92 and 93: Flash MX 2004 Games User input on m
Page 94 and 95: Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 6.8 Opti
Page 97 and 98: 7 So what is a variable? After the
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Chapter 7: So what is a variable? n
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Chapter 7: So what is a variable? B
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8 In tip-top condition Should I go
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Chapter 8: In tip-top condition All
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Chapter 8: In tip-top condition Wit
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} } return false; Chapter 8: In tip
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Figure 8.5 Properties window for th
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Chapter 8: In tip-top condition to
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Chapter 8: In tip-top condition Tab
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Figure 8.12 The anchor point for th
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53 return 4; 54 } 55 } 56 } Listing
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Chapter 9: Using loops and the repe
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Chapter 9: Using loops Now instead
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do{ a++; if (a==10) continue; //Do
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Chapter 9: Using loops Two examples
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Figure 9.2 The Loops01 project at r
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Chapter 9: Using loops Creating sim
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Chapter 9: Using loops Creating phy
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1 //Initialise firing 2 for (i=0; i
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Chapter 9: Using loops heart of alm
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular a game
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular for(j=0
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular From a
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular To call
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4 pt2.init(20, 30); 5 pt2.sum(pt1);
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular a locat
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular 1 v1 =
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Chapter 10: Keep it modular Summary
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Chapter 11: Debugging would give th
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4 trace("n = " + n); 5 6 function s
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5 onClipEvent(enterFrame){ 6 count+
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10 name = "Box" + i; 11 eval(name).
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Chapter 11: Debugging 5 switch(i){
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Chapter 11: Debugging Using the Fla
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the Watch window, then you can see
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Figure 11.12 Debugging remotely Cha
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is presumed, www.niklever.net/flash
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Chapter 12: Using external files Th
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Chapter 12: Using external files Wh
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with a query string version: Chapte
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Figure 12.3 Developing the Weather
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function loaded(success){ if (succe
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Chapter 12: Using external files
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13 Small games to keep them loading
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Chapter 13: Small games to keep the
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Figure 13.7 Developing the Pong gam
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14 Quizzes Quizzes are a very popul
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Chapter 14: Quizzes For now we will
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Figure 14.5 Creating a user Chapter
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Figure 14.8 Setting user permission
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Remember that a querystring takes t
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Chapter 14: Quizzes 36 "\’, diffi
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Chapter 14: Quizzes the query strin
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s.Close(); conn.Close(); Response.W
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Chapter 14: Quizzes 1 function setQ
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5 status = "Question deleted"; 6 }
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Chapter 14: Quizzes Summary Most of
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Chapter 15: Mazes The strategy used
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Chapter 15: Mazes Notice that the f
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Chapter 15: Mazes 128, and exclude
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Figure 15.3 Creating the tunnel mod
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Chapter 15: Mazes Open ‘Examples\
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Chapter 15: Mazes sequence to show
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64 Tunnel.gotoAndPlay("T_Right"); 6
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Chapter 15: Mazes 32 dir = EAST; 33
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Chapter 15: Mazes Summary In common
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Figure 16.1 The traditional game Re
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5 cBoard = new Array(64); 6 pBoard
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Chapter 16: Board games 6 }else{ 7
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Chapter 16: Board games Once the pl
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Chapter 16: Board games Here ‘row
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19 }else{ 20 flip[2] = false; 21 }
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8 if (flip[6]) flipArrayLine(i, pie
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Chapter 16: Board games this way, i
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A simple example Figure 17.1 Develo
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Chapter 17: Platformers game much e
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Chapter 17: Platformers If the cat
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Chapter 17: Platformers 11 break; 1
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Chapter 17: Platformers 96 gotoAndP
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a metre. Therefore u − 20t = 0 an
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56 }else if (moveY-4){ 57 moveY -=
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13 name = "_root.Bin" + i; 14 dx =
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16 mc.scale = 1.0; 17 } 18 19 House
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Chapter 17: Platformers 68 }else if
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Chapter 17: Platformers array, ‘d
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Figure 18.1 Developing the football
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5 ScoreB = 0; 6 playerTeam = RED; 7
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50 Pitch.Red2.targetx = -96; 51 Pit
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations Havi
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations 37 k
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations 37 i
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations Upda
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26 break; 27 } 28 } 29 name = "_roo
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations 27 v
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations 1 fu
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations For
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Chapter 18: Sports simulations 22 _
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Section 4 Flash for mobiles The mob
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Flash MX 2004 Games Table 19.1 Synt
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Flash MX 2004 Games ‘Device sound
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Flash MX 2004 Games The game uses k
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Flash MX 2004 Games 316 Table 19.2
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20 Using Flash on a PocketPC Pocket
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Flash MX 2004 Games 1 2 3 Conker
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Flash MX 2004 Games 5 }else { 6 //
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Flash MX 2004 Games Figure 20.5 ‘
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Flash MX 2004 Games Reading the mai
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21 High score tables High score tab
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Chapter 21: High score tables Notic
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Figure 21.3 Creating an Access data
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Chapter 21: High score tables 12 Se
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Chapter 21: High score tables 1 so
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Chapter 21: High score tables ‘ge
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Chapter 21: High score tables Assum
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37 " has been set to " + score); 38
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Chapter 21: High score tables 19 fu
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22 Multi-player games using sockets
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Chapter 22: Multi-player games usin
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The possible tags in this example a
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Figure 23.1 Select Add/Remove Progr
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Figure 23.5 Configuring IIS Figure
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Figure 23.8 Running several simulta
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Chapter 23: Using Flash Communicati
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Figure 23.11 Live Log tab of the ad
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24 Embedding Flash In this chapter
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Chapter 24: Embedding Flash You can
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Figure 24.5 Choosing the source fil
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Chapter 24: Embedding Flash A dialo
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Chapter 24: Embedding Flash resourc
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Chapter 24: Embedding Flash can be
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Chapter 24: Embedding Flash 46 { 47
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Appendix A: Integrating Flash with
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Figure A.2 Importing the Flash inte
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Appendix A where ‘clipName’ is
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Appendix B: Tweening in code The ea
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Figure B.1 The graph of y = x 2 App
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Appendix B Joining together curves
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Appendix B want the result to start
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Figure B.7 Creating the tweening pr
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Appendix B Creating keyframes So fa
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and if the curve section is between
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} switch (channel){ case 0: return
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Bibliography Art The Illusion of Li
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Index 3D Studio Max animations, 54
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Buttons: concepts, 6, 113-15, 126-8
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fashions, 60 simplicity benefits, 3
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Floats: bugs, 96 concepts, 95-7 Flu
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Lightwave modeller, 46-54, 69, 226,
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Paint Bucket tool, 4, 5, 27-9 optio
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Set Score button, 340-2 Set-top box
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outline, 17 sections, 17, 21-8 usag
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