Adobe Director Basics

ADOBE DIRECTOR BASICS
3D: Controlling appearance
Dynamic overlays and backdrops
You can create overlays and backdrops that display animated 2D images. All you need to do is to update the texture
that is displayed by the overlay or backdrop, and its image will update automatically. You can see an example of this
with editable text in “Text in overlays and backdrops” on page 116.
Rotating overlays and backdrops
The built-in rotation feature is fine if you simply want to place a static overlay or backdrop at a particular angle. For
dynamic rotation, you may need a different solution. To simulate the needle on a speedometer, for example, you may
need to rotate the overlay or backdrop around its regPoint. The solution is to roll your own rotation code.
To see an example script, download the movie RotateOverlay.dir. This includes a Movie Script with a handler named
OverlaySetRotation(). You can use this handler to rotate an overlay around its regPoint.
A call to OverlaySetRotation() rotates an overlay about its regPoint
Drag the slider button to rotate the overlay. The regPoint of the blue overlay is set to the regPoint of the Needle
vectorShape member. If you change the regPoint of the member and relaunch the movie, the overlay rotates around
its new regPoint.
Text in overlays and backdrops
For most of your text requirements, Director's 2D text and field members provide everything you need. Sometimes,
however, you may need to display 2D in a 3D environment. To do so, you can use overlays and backdrops. Overlays
and backdrops display textures. You can set the member of a texture to any cast member that has an image property,
including Text members. To make the text look crisp when it is used in a texture, ensure that the rect of the Text
member has dimensions which are a power of 2.
The following example sets the rect of the Text member "Text" to rect(0, 0, 128, 256):
Last updated 8/26/2011
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