Creating Flash Fading Effect
Macromedia Flash Fading - Making Movie Fading Effect
Fading is an indispensable technique for flash designers. If you are a movie fan, you would have seen this technique a lot during the intro to the main movies. And sometimes designers use multiple fading effects to give a nice touch and professional look to their designs.
Today we are going to make this great effect. Take a look at item below
1- Create a new flash movie and change the size to 150 x 50.
2- Choose a text tool 
or press T on your keyboard.
3- Open the Property Inspector (Ctrl+F3).
4- Change font to Impact. We choose Impact because the effect of fading can be clearly seen.
5- Change the font size to around 24 and color to anything you wish.
6- With the text tool still selected, click on the left side of the stage and type any words you wish and limit the length so that there’s no overflow on the right hand side.
7- Choose an arrow tool 
or press V on your keyboard.
8- Select the word you just typed by clicking on it once.
9- Click ‘insert’, choose ‘Convert to Symbol’ and select ‘Graphic’ as behavior.
10- Type ‘fading’ in the name field then click ok
11- On the timeline use your arrow tool to click on frame 25. Do this by clicking the gray rectangle below number 25.
12- Click ‘insert’ and choose ‘Keyframe’. You get something like this
13- Open up your property inspector by pressing Ctrl+F3
14- Without do anything to the timeframe, use your arrow tool to click on the word you type earlier to select it
15- In property inspector, change the drop down list of color to Alpha.
16- Use slider to slide the number to Zero.
Now, you have created two objects. One is at the first frame with no Alpha value or Alpha value is 100 and the other one is on the 25th frame with Alpha value set to zero.
Alpha value is very useful property to create transparent images. Alpha value of 100 means the image is completely visible whereas alpha value of zero means the image is completely transparent.
17- Now, choose the arrow tool (V) and click any where in between the frame number 1 and frame 25.
18- Click ‘insert’ and choose ‘Create Motion Tween’.
19- Test your movie by pressing Ctrl+Enter
Now you have completed this essential technique. Combine with the tweening tutorial; you will have the power to create something more pleasant. Here is an example:
Finally, use your creativity to create any effects you like using this flash fading technique and I assure you that you will love it too.
Click here to get source code
original tutorial is created on 1st December, 2004
Adobe Flash Tweening
Macromedia flash tweening - Making Animation Works
I would say the simplest and easy way to learn flash is start with the basic.
Today I’m going to walk you through the process of making a simple animation known as TWEENING in Flash.
Tweening is a key process in flash animation. Flash animation is created by making changes to position or shape of the object frame by frame. The process is done in the way that it gives the appearance that the first object evolves smoothly into the final object.
Without further ado, let’s begin our lesson. Below is the final product of this tutorial.
1- Create a new flash movie and change the size to 350 x 100
2- Choose a rectangular tool by clicking on
or press R on your keyboard
3- Create a small rectangle to the left of the stage
4- Choose an arrow tool by click on or press V on your keyboard
5- Select the rectangle by double click on it
6- Click ‘insert’, choose ‘Convert to Symbol’ and select ‘Graphic’ as behavior
7- Type ‘rectangle’ in the name field then click ok
8- On the timeline use your arrow tool to click on frame 25. Do this by clicking the gray rectangle below number 25.
9- Click ‘insert’ and choose ‘Keyframe’. You get something like this
10- With your arrow tool (V) still selected, click on frame 25 of the timeline. Make sure you have something like figure above.
11- Use your arrow tool (V) to move your rectangle towards the right side of the stage. You do this by click on the rectangle and drag it to the right hand side.
12- Now, click ANYWHERE between frame number 1 to 25.
13- Click ‘insert’ and choose ‘Create Motion Tween’
14- Press ‘Ctrl + Enter’ or click ‘Control’ and choose ‘Test Movie’.
Congratulation, you have just create your first animation :). You may have notice that my flash movie actually stops playing after it has reached the right hand side of the stage.
This is because I’ve tell Flash player to do so. And don’t panic, I’m here to help you. Here we go:
15- Choose an arrow tool (V) and click on frame 25. By now you would be able to know where frame 25 is.
If not, refer back to point 8 earlier.
16- Click ‘Window’ and choose ‘Actions’ or press F9 on your keyboard.
17- Click on the blue arrow on top right corner of Actions Panel and select Expert Mode
18- And now type in the Action Panel with this line:
stop();
19- Now Test your movie again by ‘Ctrl+Enter’.
In case you can’t seem to get it to work. here is the flash mx source code.
Finally, this technique is great but if you need cool effect to use with this technique, you may find flash tutorial on fading useful. Click here to go to flash fading tutorial.
original tutorial is created on 1st December, 2004
What is Adobe Flash?
What is flash?
Macromedia Flash or Flash is a multimedia graphic program invented specifically for the web. Flash allows us to create interactive animated vector graphics for the webs as well as for desktop presentations.
Flash has rapidly become significant animated graphic software for the web. The reason behind its success is due to its ease of use, bandwidth friendly and browser independent vector graphic technology.
- “Ease of use” Simple animation in flash can be done without any knowledge of programming.
- “Bandwidth friendly” Flash movie is mainly vector-based, so flash animation is relatively smaller in size and hence large animation can be viewed on the web relatively quickly.
- “Browser independent vector graphic” Flash movie delivers the same quality in all platforms.
To be able to display flash movie in the browsers, you need a special piece of software call
“plug-in” or “Flash Player”. This “Flash Player” can be downloaded from macromedia site at no cost.
What are flash applications?
The power of flash is unquestionable. Its application ranges from simple cartoon animation to whole e-commerce site. Below are some common flash applications:
- E-card and animation : http://www.hallmark.com
- Gaming : http://www.khemer.com
- Movie industry :http://www.terminator3.com/main.asp
- E-Commerce : http://www.footjoy.com
- Website : http://www.flashtrue.com
In summary, flash’s ability for interactive web and desktop content is limitless. Although, flash can do almost everything, some applications require knowledge of programming in
JSP, ASP, PHP and ColdFusion etc.
Original post is on 1st December, 2004