All,
Well it's been a busy while and now that I finally have a little down time I'm trying to re-visit flash. I've forgotten a lot unfortunately.
I was looking at a tutorial on masks and decided to try to use them with a guided symbol. It turned out to be more of a pain than I anticipated.
What I was trying to do was create three circles as a mask and then have an image (a mosquito) flying "behind" the circles so that it appears as if you are looking out of a few holes and seeing the mosquito flying behind a wall and only showing up when it crossess the holes. I used a motion guide for the mosq flight and then tried to drage the guide/mosq layers under the mask layers but it wouldn't take. I read somewhere about movie clips and masks and so I converted the guide and mosq to a movie clip and then tied them to the mask. It worked but seems clunky. If I wanted to change the path I'd have to redo the movie clip and re-test the movie hoping that the new path lined up with the mask and fix it by trial and error if it doesn't.
Is there a better way? I'd sure like to be able to tie the guide to the mask and then the mosq to the guide and call it done. Can I not do this?
If you are interested in seeing what I'm trying to do, you can get the fla file at http://senator.org/~mparker/animations/skeeter.fla
Thanks for any help.
-Mark
P.S. Is it possible to test your movie and have the layers that are marked not visible not show up rather than have to delete them?
Hey Mark, first make change your symbol into a graphic and not a movie clip. Unless you are doing this for the web and are going to assign action scripting to it.
An easy way to do this is to not mask it. On a layer above your motion path and mosquito layer make a big black rectangle. Now cut out those circles and now he'll only be seen in those holes. Other than that, you have to nest your animation and guide layer in a symbol and then mask that symbol. Flash doesn't let you assign two different functions to the same layer. So you are doing it right, but yes, it is alittle cumbersome.
As for making layers invisible when you export them out, make that layer a "guide layer" and you won't see what's on that layer when you export.
Hope that helps you out some.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Ape,
That's really obvious now that you've pointed it out. Don't know why I didn't think of it. Not enough experience yet to be thinking in flash yet I guess.
Thanks for your reply!
-Mark
No worries Mark. I've been animating with Flash for 7 years now, and I'm still learning new tricks all the time.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."