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Adobe Director 11 Tutorials
Sprites / Sprite Properties
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Director 11 / Sprites / Sprite Properties)
As I mentioned previously, much of learning Director is learning about Sprites and how to manipulate and manage Sprites. One of the main tools you'll use to do this is the Property Inspector so that's why I usually keep it open. Notice that if I leave my Property Inspector open and then click on a Sprite on the Stage, I get this Sprite tab, enabled by default. Using this tab I can adjust the location of the Sprite. Let's change that from 66 pixels from the left edge of the Stage to 100. Notice that this Sprite will move over to the right. You can also move it down. Let's leave the location, vertical location here, the Y location, change that from 25 to 50. Now it's going to move down. I can also adjust the width and the height size of the Sprite. Notice, notice that these numbers are changing. The ink is a special feature of Director, a little bit hard to describe and define. Probably easier to talk about. I think the first couple there, the most important ones that I use are the matte inks. Notice that using the matte ink that my text Sprite mattes out against the background. Also background transparent. Compare that to the copy. With the copy you see this white text box there. So a real common property that you'll want to manage with many Sprites, including most text Sprites is changing the ink. You can also change the transparency down to zero. We'll make it completely invisible. You can also animate all of these properties, which I'll be getting into shortly. And you're not restricted to changing the opacity of text elements. You can also change the opacity of all your other Sprites, including a real common one is take your pictures and set the opacity down real low so that they act as a background. Obviously this tree is in Sprite channel number five, so it's actually on top. So to put that on the bottom I'll want to make some space down here in a lowered numbered channel and now notice that it's in the background there. The filters property of a Sprite enables you to apply effects to any non-Director score Sprite using the filters tab in the Property Inspector. That's this one right here. Probably a good way to demonstrate this is to use the text. Let's go ahead and change my opacity back to 100 percent and let's make this text bigger by choosing, highlighting the text there and then choosing Modify, font. And let's bring this up to 48 points like so and let's go ahead and click on the filters, click on the filters pop-up button and add a Drop Shadow filter on that text and let's change the distance from four to ten so you can really see this. And let's change the angle from 400 to 300, or 40 I should say to 300 places it down and to the right, which is the standard location for a Drop Shadow. Another real handy filter is the Bevel filter. Let me click on this rectangular Sprite here to demonstrate that. That one can be found right here; Bevel filter. That adds a little bevel to the Sprite. Notice I can do type inner, outer or I can do a full bevel. I can change the shadow color. Let's change that to a blue color. I think that might look a little bit better, as well as the strength of the bevel. Oftentimes my students really go too crazy on these bevels and make them too strong so they look like candy lozenges, but you just kind of want to add some 3D effect to that. If you change the quality to high, it often looks better but it's harder to animate those. It takes more memory, more processor power to animate those. So I recommend if you're going to animate your Sprites using the Filter, I would go with a low-quality while the Sprite is moving or being animated and then shift that to a high filter or high quality after it's done animating. Notice you can also change the highlight color and the shadow. So there's a lot of experimentation that you'll want to do with the Sprite properties tab here and the filters tab. Another property that I should mention here is you can also give each Sprite a unique name. You can assign a name by using the Property Inspector and then view the Sprite by that name in the Score and on the Stage. Otherwise it gives you the name of a cast member. So let's try that with this photograph here. Click on the photograph, then click on the Sprite tab. Let's give this a name, Palms, like so. Notice that it has the name right there. Palms. I can also do picture one for example. Assigning a name this way allows you to refer to the Sprite by that name in Lingo or JavaScript syntax and not just by the channel number that it occupies. You can then move a Sprite to a different channel and not have to worry about changing your scripts. Editing scores and code scripts is much easier when you refer to a Sprite by its name. I'll be talking more about Lingo and JavaScript syntax a little bit later in this tutorial. Now, there's a lot more to working with Sprites than I've introduced here in this movie. So let me now move on to the next several movies and go into more detail about working with Sprites here on the Stage and also the Score.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Director 11 |
| Author: | James Gonzalez |
| SKU: | 33901 |
| ISBN: | 1-934743-84-4 |
| Release Date: | 2008-07-31 |
| Duration: | 9.5 hrs / 107 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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