Flash :: Re: Animating Buttons

Re: Animating Buttons
Thanks ahead for the help!!

I have a Flash opener for a website that has a bar of multiple images slowly scrolling across the page.
The client would like the scroll to stop on rollover and play on rollout and I have that accomplished.
If and when the user clicks on a passing portion of the scrolling image, I would like that portion to send(navigate) them to another scene.

Is there any way to place INVISIBLE buttons over the individual images within the symbol?

To view the file:
http://bluewoods.com/pbi1.html

Thanks,
Bluewoods

Animating Buttons HELP
Hey could someone check this out do it and explain it much better please i would be most grateful.

http://www.cbtcafe.com/flash/advbutt...edbuttons.html

It kinda skips parts pisses me off when tutorials arent thorough thanks a bunch if anyone can help

Animating Buttons
I'm trying to get an effect similar to the buttons on this page, where the image fades in on roll-over.

http://www.digital-assault.com/

however, when inside the movie clip, flash doesn't seem to let me adjust the alpha setting on the .jpg that needs to fade in.

what am I doing wrong?

thanks a ton in advance!!!

Reverse Animating Buttons
I have seen (on one of the featured sites this month - jimmymcgrathphoto.com) a neat little trick for buttons.

Basically when you are 'over' a button, a short movie animates the button, but and heres the main point, when you move off the button, the animation plays back and smoothly returns to it's original position.

I believe these are 'reverse animating buttons', and have been informed that there is a nice tutorial on Flash Kit somewhere... can I find it???
I have looked everywhere and done several searches with no luck!!
Can anyone help, a direct link to the page would be nice.
Moderators? do you know where it is??

Animating Buttons On ROLLOUT Only
I am very new to Flash and this is my first post here. With that said...

I am trying to create a button that will animate on a rollout only. I have a Movie Clip Symbol created that I want to replace my OVER Graphic Symbol on the occasion of a rollout.

Basically I have a button that comes out at you on rollover, and if the user chooses not to click on it and rolls off of it, I want it to slowly slide back into place.

Thanks

Animating Buttons Both Ways
Can someone tell me an easy way to make a button play a movie clip when you mouse over a button but then play the movie clip backwards when you mouse off of it? I looked at a tut on this site but it wasn't much help.

Problem With Animating Buttons
Hi all,

Just made an animated button by creating 3 different states on a timeline; 'over', 'down', 'return'. The TEXT animates (moves down) on mouseover, among some other things that happen. I was happy with the button so decided to duplicate it and rename all the copies bio, contact, etc. and when I drag the 'bio' copy onto the stage, and click inside the text field to rename it 'bio' to replace the word 'home', it changes all buttons to bio.

How can I copy the buttons, but change the text and make the text animate for each different button, all with different names? Do I have to create the button first without the text, copy a bunch of buttons, then add animating text to each one with different names? Seems a bit time-consuming..hopefully I'm just overlooking something that tells flash to treat them as different buttons, even though they share the same animating properties.

Thanks in advance!
-Casper

[F8] Animating MovieClips/Buttons
Hey, I working on a photo Album project. There are some thumbnails in a column that animate up and down depending on where you put your mouse over them, then stop animating once you rollOut. The only problem is that now the movieClips that are nested inside (the thumbnails themselves) lost their functionality (they're supposed to load up a photo in another section). I guess that this is because the movieClip is executing the animation functions and can't do the others at the same time. I tried to fix it by creating an invisible mc and placing it over it with all of the animating actions on it, to sort of free up the actions of the little thumbnails. This didn't work - same problem. I hope I'm not being too confusing. Thanks ahead of time.

http://jtnatoli.googlepages.com/base.fla
http://jtnatoli.googlepages.com/slideShow.fla
http://jtnatoli.googlepages.com/slideShow2.fla

slideShow is the thumbnails, slideShow2 is the full size photos.

Animating Buttons With Rollover
I have very little experiance with flash. Im trying to animate some buttons with mouse rollsover. Im using a motion tween to have images fade in and out. I can teach myself all the graphic stuff on it, but I think i need action scripting to do this. I had an .fla, but trashed it so that I could start over fresh. Does anyone know where I can find out how, or anyone willing to help. Thanks

Animating Flash Buttons
Hi there!
I have start making a flash page and I would like som nice buttons.

Well what I have planned is something like the buttons on the fontsforflash webpage.

http://www.fontsforflash.com/

I contacted them but, they could not tell me how to do. They just told me that they used a simple mask. but when i try to mask the over state moves to another place.
Please tell me how to do

Animating Buttons With Actionscript?
Hey guys, here's another one I'm having trouble with (no surprise there =P). I picked up a site I half did a long time ago, when I knew a lot less about Flash. Since I knew so little, I made the timeline very dense (ie 100 things on 1 layer lol), so here's my problem: I have some buttons on there that I'd like to do some rollover animations on, but since the timeline is so dense, if I put a tween on them, it would royally screw everything up. Any way I can do a simple animation (ie gradual alpha or color change), as if it was a tween, except with actionscript? Thanks for any and all help, I really do appreciate it.

About Animating Linking Buttons
Ok, my question is like this:

In the button timeline there is only 4 frames. So a animation is not possible there. How to do if I want a (url-linking) button to animate. Like fading in when mouse over and like that. Thanx for answers.

[SWE]Roger

Animating Function Generated Buttons
below is some script which i am using to create a submenu, i have been trying to add to it to make the buttons 'slide out'
(i.e. one moving to the right into a position then generating the next button where the first stopped and sliding to a new position and so on..)

i've been trying to use the setInterval command with no joy and am wondering if im barking up the wrong tree.

can anyone point me in the right direction?

// generate submenu
function gensubmenu() {
_root.attachMovie("submenu_mc", "submenu", 2, {_x:50, _y:200});
for (n=0; n<_root.selectedCount; n++) {
_root.submenu.submenuItem.duplicateMovieClip("subm enuItem_"+n, n);
currentItem = _root.submenu["submenuItem_"+n];
currentItem.labelName = _root.selectedNames[n];
currentItem.frameName = currentItem;
if (n != 0) {
prevItem = _root.submenu["submenuItem_"+(n-1)];
currentItem._x = prevItem._x+(prevItem._width-prevItem._height);
}
}
_root.submenu.submenuItem._visible = false;
}

Backwards-animating Buttons, With A Twist
I'm making navigation buttons in Flash MX. Here are my files:

http://www.75thtrombone.com/contest/contestbutton2.html
http://www.75thtrombone.com/contest/contestbutton2.swf
http://www.75thtrombone.com/contest/contestbutton2.fla

The text and link are passed through the FlashVars parameter in the HTML.

The movie has an animation (naturally). These are the effects I want:

1) Movie begins paused.
2) When movie is rolled over, the animation plays and stops on the last frame.
3) When the movie is rolled over while the last frame is showing, I want the animation to play backwards and stop at the first frame.
4) When you continuously hover over the movie, I do >>NOT<< want it to go back and forth constantly. I want it to STOP until the mouse is moved off of the movie and back on again.
5) The ENTIRE TIME, the movie should be clickable to take you to the linked page.

I have succeeded at 1, 2, and 3. I'm stuck on 4 and 5.

I have three transparent buttons over the movie. One exists on the very first frame; this begins the animation. One exists on the very last frame; this calls a movie clip that "rewinds" the movie. One exists on all frames inbetween; this acts simply as a link. The "rewind" movie clip exists on all frames EXCEPT the first one.

My problems are:

1) Holding the mouse over the movie causes it to constantly go back and forth.
2) I have assigned the same on (release) script to the play/rewind buttons as I did to the link button. However, it works ONLY on the link button, as clicking on the first or last frames does not link.

Thanks in advance for any help,
-Lanny Heidbreder

Newbie Question About Buttons And Animating.
I've built a character and broken it down into symbols on multiple layers, with one set of animation for idle, and one for action. What I need to do is set up the character so when he's clicked, it plays from frame "____", the action animation. I know the basics of making buttons and movie clips--sort of, but am confused as how to apply them all in this kinda setting. Any help please?

Newbie Flash Help: Animating Buttons
This will seem very simple, but it is killing me.

I am trying to create simple animated buttons that scroll across the screen when clicked and then will load more content (pictures and info).

I created my buttons and manipulated their rollover states, then in the "down" state, I made a new movie clip out of the button that I want to scroll.

When I test the movie, the button will scroll as I want it to, but only so long as the user continually presses the mouse button down. As soon as you let go of the mouse button, the animation starts at the beginning and resets the location of my button.

I have looked through what I believe to be all the action script options controlling the playback of the movie clip that shows the button scrolling across the screen, but no matter what I try, the same result occurs.

Any suggestions for a frustrated noob?

Thanks,
Jamie

[MX04] Flash Buttons Animating On Its Own
I am trying to create some flash buttons for my site, but when I go to place several buttons on the stage, the first couple work normally, but the other buttons act like Im in the over state and animate. The only thing I can figure is that it is getting confused from the other buttons on the stage, and thinking they are being hovered over, but I don't have a clue about a solution. Any help would be appreciated.

Animating A Drop Down Menu W/ Mc's And Buttons
Hi,

I'm trying to make a animated menu. the menu consists of buttons and movie clips. when a cursor hovers the button the actionscripting targets a movie clip and plays the "slidedown" frames animation revealing the real menu. when hovering off the button, and lets say moving to another button that consist of another menu, i have the actionscripting target the "slideup" frames animating the movie clip menu back upwards and hiding it.

I am a complete novice to actionscripting so i made a layer on my timeline just for actions and used the basic:

ActionScript Code:
this.MainNews.onRollOver = function() {this.MenuNews.gotoAndPlay("slidedown");};this.MainNews.onRollOut = function() {this.MenuNews.gotoAndPlay("slideup");};

that didn't work. then i tried putting the actionscripting on the button itself:

ActionScript Code:
on (rollOver) {this.MenuNews.gotoAndPlay("slidedown");}on (rollOut) {this.MenuNews.gotoAndPlay ("slideup");}

that worked. it animates down and up. the problem i'm having though, is that when i tried to test the movie clip menu, i'm hovering off the button and it animates up, and i can't use the menu.

my question is, is there a way that i can have the button trigger the mc menu on rollover and allow me to use the menu, then when i move onto another button or roll onto other parts of my header the menu for the button i was just on rolls back up?

I'm not sure whether i'm on the right road with this one, and i'm trying the best i can to use trial and error before asking for someones help, but i've been tackling this for awhile now.

I also apologize if i'm not clear on what i'm asking. I have no previous knowledge of actionscripting and i'm currently learning so all the terminology is still unclear to me.

thank you to whoever can help with this problem, its very much appreciated.

Links to my .fla and working .swf:
http://fileplanet.us/files/3/BAFM%20Header_5.fla
http://fileplanet.us/files/3/BAFM%20Header_5.swf

Note: the only button im working with now is news. after one works, i was planning on putting the same code for the others.

Buttons That Continue Animating After Mouse Rollover
hello

I'm trying to make a button with quite a common effect, that is, it animates while you are over it, and also animates to its starting position after[i] the mouse moves off it.

Like on this site:
http://www.christinavarro.com/flash.html

the buttons at the bottom go smoothly up and down.

I found a tutorial for a similar effect and it worked, it was a button inside a movie clip, BUT, when i tried to add simple frame actions like:
on (release){
gotoAndPlay("frame10")
}
or similar, to the movie clip, it didn't work.

is there any way of making these nice button effects?
please help if possible!

[CS3/AS2] Animating A Menu From Forward And Back Buttons
I have a long menu of horizontal thumbnails. When I press the Next button I want the whole thing to move say 100 pixels forward and then 25 back. With the Prev button I want to do the opposite.

I've been looking at tween classes and I believe I understand them to a degree. I know how to do two tweens at the same time, but how do I do two consecutive tweens from a single button press?

Also I understand how to move an MC from its current position to specific coordinate on the stage, but how do I move it a certain amount of pixels from its current spot instead?

Animating 2 Buttons Linked On An Axis, For Mouseover.
HELP!
I'm a rookie at flash and need some help to get started. On my index page I have 2 links (one a picture of a camera and the other a picture of a cocktail. I want the 2 images or buttons to be linked on an axis, with the axis being in the middel of the 2 images. So if you imagine a camera and a cocktail on a invisible tray. When you rotate the tray, the camera gets bigger and comes towards the viewer, and the cocktail rotates away from the viewer becoming smaller. And when the tray is rotated the other way, the camera goes smaller to the back and the cocktail rotates closer to the viewer. So when the cursor is over the camera it will rotates closer and the cocktail rotates to the back, and vise versa.
I want it to look realistic with the perspective changes as well so i will photography the items myself in the different states.

Where do I begin? Is this a motion tweening thing and/or actionscript? Any help is much appreciated, thank you...

Just need some help to get pointed in the right direction...

Disabling Buttons Until Fuse Has Finished Animating
Hi everyone,

Got a problem that I thought may be shared with the experts if people didn't mind looking over it.

Be gentle, i'm a rookie to say the least.

I'm working on a project:

http://81.201.129.35/~seekingfisher/index.php

You can grab the source files here:
http://81.201.129.35/~seekingfisher/files.zip

My problem is that once the Fuse animation is complete the movie.swf does not move to the next frame which enables the buttons.

My set up as follows:

1. I have a container.swf that has a preloader, and a loadMovie function that loads in movie.swf (the content)

2. movie.swf has its own preloader and when complete it is supposed to play the Fuse animation (which it does) then move to the next frame which enables the buttons.

The reason I set it up this way is because if the code for the buttons was all on the same frame with the Fuse code when user interacts with the buttons during the animation sequence they fail to load in correctly.

So to recap, once Fuse is finished animating the movie.swf that is loaded externally into a container.swf, movie.swf will not move to the next frame that has the code in to re-enable the buttons container within it.

I'm almost certainly sure I'm going about this in completely the wrong way and any advice would be greatly appreciated!

:D Hope I explained that ok

Controlling Animating Walking Character With Arrow Buttons
Hello - I'm a newbie, especially to using message boards, and I just got some great help from TonyPa in this forum and I thought I'd post this here since I had such a hard time finding info on making characters walk in Flash.

To do this, you have to have already created your walk animation. Mine was a movie clip that consisted of 6 frames (steps), you can do this many different ways of course. But here's the basic principle:

Put a "stop" on last frame of walking_animation

Put this code on the instance of clip on stage:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (Key.isDown(key.LEFT)) {
//^^tells to move with left arrow key
this._xscale = 100;
//^^tells to face normal direction
this._x -= x+12;
//^^affects pixel distance travelled (speed)
play();
//^^tells clip to play while key is pressed
} else if (Key.isDown(key.RIGHT)) {
//^^tells to move with right
this._xscale = -100;
//^^makes character face opposite direction - "100" keeps same scale
this._x += x+12;
//^^affect pixel distance travelled (you may wish to tweak these #s)
play();
//^^tells clip to play while key is pressed
}
}

I've been at this for three YEARS! And I'm still a NEWBIE!!!

Hope this helps someone
-beetnik

Text Animating And Zoom Animating
Hey im a beginner at animating and i need advise on how to animate text. Like when the viewer is watching my movie I don't want a whole paragraph to come out of no where I want it like word by word or letter by letter like someone was typing it right then and there. I tried figuring out a way but the only thing was adding a key frame for each individual letter. any tips? and also any advise on how to make the text come in with flare? like fading in or coming in from the top?

Also another thing. Let's say I make a city from far away on the stage. I want to zoom in on a person (a stick figure) for a couple seconds and then zoom back out to it's original position. Is there a way I can do this without having to disassemble the city and make the person zoomed in and then make it look zoomed out construct the city from scratch again?
I would like any help please.
Thanks in advance.

Anyone Know Why This Isn't Animating?
Ok, it's a redux on the looping movie question. I've fixed all my problems except for one.

http://www.kitsunestudios.com/temps/Movie5correct.html

Here's how it should work: after the preload page (big green button) there is a set of 5 menu items on the bottom of the screen. When you click on one, the entire bar scrolls left, then launches the secondary navigation (Represented by the white box with the funny words). Everything works, except that instead of scrolling over, it jumps immediately to the final position. I've tried a trace, and it spits down a continual countdown, but does so instantly, instead of over a period of time.

Here's the animation code; frame 2 of a 3 frame Movie instance called "Control"

Code:
play ();
if ( CP > 0) {
CP = CP - 5;
setProperty ("_root.botnav", _x, _root.botnav._x - 5);
nextFrame ();
} else if (CP <= 0) {
if (_root.botnav._x<500) {
setProperty ("_root.botnav", _x, _root.botnav._x+750);
}
tellTarget ("_root.film") {
gotoAndPlay (title);
}
tellTarget ("_root.botnav") {
gotoAndStop ("active");
}
prevFrame ();
}

The previous frame in this movie is a Stop action, the next frame is a "prevFrame" action.

What this should do is count down, move the navigation over by a set amount, then go to the next frame, jump back, and repeat. When it's finished, it then resets the navigation bar invisibly, so it dosen't scroll off the page, tells the secondary "film" navigation window to launch, then reactivates the buttons.

Everything is working except for the animation. If anyone knows why this is jumping to the last frame instead of slowly moving to it's new position, I'd appreciate it.

the original FLA can be found here:
http://www.kitsunestudios.com/temps/Movie5correct.zip

Thanks in Advance!

A Little Help Animating
ok....i just got flash 5......so far.....i know how to make a circle turn into square..........make a car move across the screen.....but i want to make animations that have a lot more detail(like xiao xiao movies)......i cant seem to make a stick man kick......only move across the screen......a little help on how? i think it involves layers

Animating MC
Is there a way to animate a MC so it looks like a motion tween? If so, how do you do it? Say you have a simple square box as a MC, and you want to move it from point A to point B - in AS how do you make look like a regular motion tween?

Thanks...

Animating An Arm
Hey All...
I'm trying to animate an arm. What I need to do is get the arm (from the elbow up to the hand) to move counter-clockwise, with one point (the elbow bit) to stay still, then stop... At the same time, I need the hand to move clockwise but at an extremely slow speed, while attached to the moving bit of the arm..
Any help would be much appreciated!!
Thanks!

Animating A JPG?
I just got Flash 5.0 and I'm trying to animate a .jpg file. All I want it to do is spin clockwise. How can I do this? Thanks...

Animating My Dog
How do I turn his tail, eyes & head into separate "movies" so that they move when the mouse rolls over them? HELP! I'm going crazy!

Animating
how do i make characters in a cartoon animated like moving just an arm or elbow? do i make a movie clip for each limb?

Animating
Can anyone direct me to a good tutorial to animate a stick figure walking?

Animating PNG
anyone knows why animating PNGs or Gifs causes some pixels of the background image to flicker?

Animating W/ AS
I know how to animate a clip using actionscript but I seem to have a problem that I cant get my head around! Here is what id like to do:

There are two movieclip buttons, one that will animate a ball MC up and another that will animate it down. When you press the up button, I want the ball MC to animate up say, 50 pixels with easing, then gradually start to animate downwards until you press the up MC again. It will keep animating up as fast as you press the up MC until you get to a certain height and then it wont let you go up any further. At that point it will start coming down again. If you click on the down button I want it to do that exact opposite of the up MC of course. As fast as they can press the button, it will keep animating downwards (this time w/out easing) until they get to a certain y coordinate and it wont let you go any further. Any help would be great guys! Thanks!

Animating
I was just wandering how I start a animation. I,m new and I need 2 no where I can download a program to make flash animations prefebly a free program.

Animating
I would like to figure out to how to create the effect on the polyphonic spree website (http://www.polyphonicspree.com). Specially how to animate lines to form objects or words.

New At Animating
All I want is a program to create cartoons or movies.
If anyone has any ideas, please post them here.
Thanks,
Thethingamabob

Help Animating A Dog
I need help to animate a dog....Any one know of a good tutorial.....a good web site or even have a good fla I could look at? Thanks

Animating Jpg
OK..I'm just getting started with FlashMX 2004. I created a background with 3d text in another pgoram and saved it as a .jpg file. I imported it to the flash stage and then I added a timeline effect. I was wondering if I can add multiple timeline effects to the same image...also, I want the text only of the first logo pic to be animated, but it animates the whole jpg with the background. Also, how do I add another image and add a timeline effect? do I hafta make a new scene? When I make a new scene with the same background and a new pic it's not that smooth when going to next scene..Here's what I am aiming for...a logo wehere the text only zooms in then zooms out, I know how to do the zoom in in transform effect which makes the whole pic move and not the text only which I want....Then I want the text to zoom out or fade out, not sure which effect I want yet, then fade or zoom in with another picture, I can add the stars background and send it to back and then add the pic I want in front on top and animate just the pic there, for the other pics..I have done that before. So for now this is my problem...adding mulitple timeline effects to a jpg. How do I make the effect last longer or shorter? even when I slide the bar to slow at end, it's still a bit too fast. I'm sorry I made this post as long as I did, but I need some help with these things. Also I will be using mp3s playing while the images are loading. I know how to add the sound, it's just that I want the mp3 to keep playing while the images are on screen with the effects applied to each one. So far I get the audio with the pics, but can't add a new timeline effect to the 2nd pic I use unless I make it a new scene and then only part of the mp3 will play and it goes to the next scene. Hope someone can guide me on my way with this. Being a newbie I have a lot of stuff to ask.

Animating A .gif
I'm trying to animate a .gif for an AIM icon in Flash.

Everything works just fine, except for the text. It looks hideous and completely illegible.

I was wondering what my publish settings should be or how the text should be? I noticed that it really screwed up when I tried using static text or any text that was selectable.

Age For Animating
about what age do you think most poeple start or should start using things like flash animator

[F8] Need Animating Help
So I have a question about creating a growing animation. Basically my navigation has straight lines that go into a rounded curve. I want the mousover to animate the bars starting from the straight part and into the curve. Anyone have any expereice with this? I want it to be as smooth as possible. Some of the curves come back around (see the attached example), and I think that is what is so hard for me to get my head around.

See Example

THANK YOU

Animating With AS2
Hey I'm trying to create this animated interface where when you click on each paper, it'll rotate out and load some content, and if you click it again it will go back. I'm only up to the rotating part. This is really just an experiment so that I can learn. Anyway, it all works well, but only once. It goes out, you click it again and it goes back, but if you click it again it just kind of jumps around instead of repeating the process.

Also, I may be getting ahead of myself, but I'm sure you'll notice that the mcBluePaper is clickable even behind other mc's. I'd like only the visible parts of the mc's to be clickable.

I'm really new so there's a chance that I've just done everything in some weird backwards way that isn't working out, so thanks ahead of time.

http://jtnatoli.googlepages.com/papers.fla

Flash 8