Subtitles of the Movie

Vector shapes and bitmaps are the two main types of graphics that you will be using with Adobe Director. I covered bitmaps previously so now let's turn our attention to vector shapes. A vector shape is a mathematical description of a geometric form. It can include the thickness of the line, the fill color, any other additional features of the line or shape that can be expressed mathematically, whereas a bitmap defines an image as a grid of colored pixels and then stores the color for each pixel of an image. Vector shapes are defined mathematically. You'll be creating most of your vector shapes either in the tools window here, the various tools here in the tools window or in the Vector Shape Window. You can access the Vector Shape window from the main menu by choosing window and then midway down the drop-down menu choose vector shape. There's also a set of tools to the left of the Vector Shape window that will allow you to create and modify different types of shapes, as well as tools for manipulating the workspace. You'll essentially create vector shapes in the Vector Shape window by defining points through which a line passes. The shape can be a line, a curve or an open or closed irregular shape. It can be filled with a color or gradient. You can also use Lingo or JavaScript syntax to dynamically create and control vector shapes. You can create a vector shape entirely with script or modify an existing one as the movie plays. But you'll first start off probably using the various tools here in the Tool Panel. These will create very small and useful vector shapes. Notice that as you zoom in using the View, Zoom option, even to 800 percent here. It looks like I lost my images. There they are. That as you zoom in, everything stays crisp and clear and clean. Contrast that with the same kind of image created in the Paint Window. If we drag this out side by side, that's a good comparison between a bitmap on top here in yellow and a vector image underneath it. You can also zoom in here and work with your vector shapes in the Vector Shape window. Notice that you have quite a bit more control once you've created this vector shape into exactly how it looks. I'll be talking more about modifying existing vector shapes in the next movie. Now, in addition to maintaining this smooth look as you zoom into them, because vector shapes are stored as mathematical descriptions, they also require a lot less RAM and disk space than equivalent bitmap images. So they download faster from the Internet. Let me now give you an introduction to creating vector shapes with the drawing tools in the Vector Shape window. First thing you'll want to do is click on the plus button in the upper left-hand corner to create a new cast member. You can use the Pen tool to create irregular shapes. The Pen tool probably requires the most practice. If you just click with the Pen tool, you'll get straight line segments. Then I double click on the end there to close out that shape and then I can move that shape as a unit. You can also click and drag on the Pen tool to create curved line segments. Again, double click on the end to close out the line segment. It takes a little bit of practice. It looks like I messed that one up. I'm going to deselect that and try the Pen tool again to create an enclosed shape. You can also split and join these curves, which I'll demonstrate in the next movie. Shape properties such as fill color, stroke color and stroke width are set at the cast member level and not for individual curves. Notice that there's a drop-down here for the stroke width and I can set up for those to 12 point. Likewise I can set my fill color to red and my stroke color to blue. Notice that all of the strokes change. I don't have any fills in these currently. But if I were to create another shape with the Pen tool or one of the geometric tools and then click on the solid color option here at the bottom, notice that all of them fill except for those shapes that are not filled completely. Notice I have a white line through there. The next option here is I can also add a gradient to those objects. Set the gradient colors here at the top. So let's set up a gradient from red to blue like so. Notice that there's an icon there, a sampling of the gradient that you create. So down here set your fill options; No Fill, Solid Color or Gradient and then set your colors here in the color chips. Now, one quirk I should mention here in the workspace of the Vector Shape window is notice that there's no Magnifying Glass here in the toolset. To zoom in and out of your work you'll need to use the main menu to choose view, zoom and then set one of these zooms: 100, 200, 400 or 800. Then use the hand tool to move your way around the workspace here. To zoom back you'll need to go back to the view, zoom in or out options or choose a value from the Zoom drop-down. So I'm back now to 100 percent. Now, you'll probably spend more time editing your vector shapes than actually creating them. So let me now move on to the next movie and go over in more detail how to edit vector shapes using the Vector Shape window.