[thelist] re :Flash gradients

At 12:19 PM -0500 8/14/99, cate meredith wrote:
>Newbie question:
>
><mumbling and blushing>
>Um.  Using Flash 3.0, how do create a gradient?  Ex: making an image or
>text fade in or out.
>
></mumbling and blushing>

Cate, I'm not sure what you're asking.  Making a gradient is a completely
different thing from fading something in or out. So I'll answer both
questions just to cover my bases.

To make a gradient select the "Colors" from the Window menu.  Select the
Gradient tab.  You can choose a preexisting gradient to begin with from the
window on the top left if you want.

Select one of the colored arrows above the rectangle which shows your
current gradient to choose the colors you want to gradiate between.  You
can choose the color by either entering the RGB values of the color in the
boxes, clicking somewhere in square on the right, or choosing a color from
your color palette (right under the big square).

You can make your selected color darker or lighter by moving the arrow on
the strip to the left of the square up and down.  The lever next to that
controls the opacity of your color.  If you want to add another color to
your gradient click anywhere in the gradient and another colored arrow will
appear above where you clicked. You can have up to 8 colors in one
gradient.  Move the colored arrows to the left or right to control the
relative size of each blend. Select either "linear" or "radial" from the
popup menu depending on the kind of gradient you want to make.

Click "New" to save your gradient.

To use it, first select the paint bucket tool, then select your gradient as
your fill color. click in the area you want to fill with the gradient. You
can further tweak your gradient fill by clicking the transform fill button
on the bottom right of the toolbar. See the manual for more (or more
coherent) instructions.


To fade in or out:  First make sure the object you want to fade is a
symbol.  Create a keyframe in the timeline at both in start and end points
of your fade. Go to the frame of your the "out" point. Double click the
symbol.  Select the color effect tab of the window that pops up.  Choose
"alpha" from the pop up menu.  Select a low percentage for the alpha value
(0 makes it completly invisible, but I always use a value of 5-20%
depending on the graphic followed by an empty keyframe instead).
Double-click anywhere on the timeline between your two keyframes.  Select
the tweening tab. Select "motion" from the pop up menu.  You can adjust the
rate at which your fade occurs (ie. speeding up or slowing down) by moving
the lever between ease in and ease out.  Finally make sure that if you are
fading out you put an empty keyframe after your out keyframe, otherwise it
may needlessly slow down your movie after that point.

hope this helps (and makes some sense),

Karen