Subtitles of the Movie

And now we'll review the Geometric Shape Tools. The Geometric Shape Tools are under the Rectangle Tool here in the Tools Panel. Depending on how you have your Tools Panel configured it's going to be underneath the T, adjacent to the Line Tool here in two-column mode. Maybe you can detach your Tools Panel and new in CS4 version of Flash, you can also adjust the number of columns. I'm going to standardize with the two-column mode there and anchor this over to the left. The tools here, underneath the Rectangle Tool are: the Oval Tool, and then you have two Primitive Tools, and then a Polystar Tool. So, here you can create Geometric Shapes, and apply Strokes and Fills, and specify Rounded Corners. Now in addition to the Merge and Object Drawing Model, the Oval and Rectangle Tools also have these Primitive Tools, which actually move you into the Primitive Object Drawing Mode, yet another mode in Flash CS4. When you create rectangles or ovals using these Primitive Tools, like so, Flash draws the shapes as separate objects, not unlike the shapes created when you use the Object Drawing Mode, but notice that I don't have the Object Drawing Mode selected. The Primitive Shape Tools lets you specify the Corner Radius of rectangles. You'll do that here in the Properties Inspector. Let me go ahead and put a value in for the upper left-hand corner. Let me go ahead and select the object first. There we go. And, let's go ahead and use my Rectangle Options down here to adjust the Corner Radius, so there's the Corner Radius of 20 all the way around. Here is 30 and so on. So you can use the settings here, the Rectangle Options in the Properties Inspector, to modify the corners of your Primitive Rectangles. In terms of the Primitive Oval, you can use the Properties Inspector to set the start and end angle, and the inner radius of the ovals. I'll go ahead and demonstrate that by choosing the Primitive Oval Tool; draw out an Oval, and here in the Properties Inspector the Oval Options for the Start Angle, and the End Angle, kind of interesting. Notice I have some more space down here, that's why it's always a good idea to open up your Properties Inspector all the way down. As a beginner you want to make sure that you have all the options visible, and there is the Inner Radius. So, you can create these kinds of shapes, basic geometric shapes, using the Geometric Shape Tools here, and here I'm demonstrating the specifics of the Rectangle Primitive and the Oval Primitive Tool that gives you a few more adjustments here in the Properties Inspector. Notice also that if you go back and create a new Primitive Rectangle Tool, the Properties Inspector maintains the settings of the last time you used the tool, so notice that these corner angles have the same curvature as my original one. Also, if I go back and use the Primitive Oval Tool I'm going to get an arc, just like the one that I created previously. One more comment about the Properties Inspector for these Primitive Tools; there's also a Reset Button there, so if you want to reset either the selected object or you want to create a new Primitive using the default values, notice that I've now reset that, so if I go back to the Primitive Rectangle Tool, draw another one there, and then click on the Reset, it'll reset that to the angles there, at right angles, instead of having the curved edges. At the very bottom of the list there is the Polystar Tool. Let me demonstrate this a little bit. Let's clear the Stage and select the Polystar Tool. By default, you're going to be creating multi-sided polygons. You also have a Tool Settings option; a little bit hidden. You have to actually click off of the object that you created and then click back on the Polystar Tool. Here in the Properties Inspector is a Tool Settings area. Click on Options and here you can change the style from Polygon to Star. Polygon is the default, but I often use, or need to use, some stars, so let's do a five-sided star, star Point Size set to .50, and notice now I'm creating instead of a pentagon there with five sides, a five-pointed star. Let's go back and create a two-pointed star. Actually the minimum is 3, so even though I set that to 2, it's going to reset that to 3. And I can also change the point size here; let's do a 7-pointed star, Point Size 10. So, notice that you cannot modify the object using those options after you've created it. You'll need to delete the object; let's say that that isn't quite what I wanted. Delete that, and let's get the Stroke as well. Click on the Polystar Tool, click on Options, and let's change the Point Size to .3, seven-sided star, and there we go. It's a little bit tricky, a little bit hidden there for the Polystar Tool. Let's go back and change that to Polygon and let's change the Size to, the number of sides to 12, point size .7, click OK, and go ahead and draw out my polygon. Not much of a polygon there. Let's modify that so that I have 12 sides but the point size is .1, like so. There we go. There's a, I think it's called a Dodecahedron, if I remember correctly, a 12-sided polygon. So, there you have an overview summary of the kinds of shapes you can create with the Geometric Shape Tools underneath the Rectangle Tool here in the Tools Panel. Let me now move on to the next movie and demonstrate the Brush Tool.