Last night was dSCAPE’s designers’ night, this year taken over entirely by Flash bandits! The event was sold out with around 200 attendees, and I was co-presenter along with Tara Solesbury from Wired Sussex. As self-appointed Flash ambassador of Brighton, it was great to catch up with all the local Flash companies and see their […]
Here’s another demo of the work we’ve been doing on a custom cacheAsBitmap utility, we’re calling superCacheAsBitmap. The circle in the middle of the demo is made up of 1000 transparent lines, so you shouldn’t be surprised that it’s very slow to render using traditional methods! Click Move Clip to get things started, and you’ll […]
One of our very own FlashCodersBrighton members has just posted an extremely useful FAMES installation guide. Check it out here. [no longer available] FAMES is an completely open-source solution to building Flash swf files, based around the ubiquitous Eclipse IDE. Was it Aral who came up with that acronym?
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New improved cacheAsBitmap!
I’ve been working on a smart function that can convert a MovieClip into a bitmap so that it renders faster. “What’s wrong with the cacheAsBitmap property?” I hear you cry. Well much as it’s an amazing way to optimize the speed of moving clips, it can sometimes actually slow down render time! It’s fine as […]
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MovieClip.transform.matrix experiments…
Just been playing with the MovieClip.transform.matrix property to copy one movie’s rotation, scaling and position to another, and it’s been behaving a little unexpectedly… Here’s an example: movieclip2.transform.matrix = movieclip1.transform.matrix; This code copies movieclip2‘s position, scale and rotation to that of movieclip1. But importantly, it only sets movieclip2‘s transform object, and not its _xscale, _yscale, […]
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More realtime easing : Flash 3D Boxes
Here’s another example of the realtime easing method I described in the last post, this time being applied to the rotation of 3D boxes. The target rotation of each box is changed on a rollover. I think this could make a good game… see if you can get all the squares to be red at […]
I’m going to tell you all about the scary horror that has been programming the Plug-in Media news page. It’s been tricky to say the least, but then that’s probably my own fault because it was my idea to have realtime generated 3D news panels that float and flip to reveal each news story. It […]
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3D in Flash – Cel shading
[kml_flashembed movie=”/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/3ddemo-cellshading.swf” width=”445″ height=”200″ FVERSION=”8″ SCALE=”noborder” /] It seems like weeks and weeks since we started developing the new Plug-in Media website. It’s like a huge alien organism from outer space, growing and growing out of control, not satisfied until it overtakes the Earth! Which is only to be expected, considering its 50s and 60s […]
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Thank you for the particles
Just had a really sweet email from Steve Heffernan who was the guy who did the George Bush particles (check the audience submissions from yesterday). Apparently he was so inspired by FlashForward speakers that he had to express his gratitude in swf form [link no longer available] (Flash 9 required) :-). Thanks Steve! And thanks […]
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Particle-mania
I thought I should just post a quick follow up to my particles session at FlashForward… you guys have been going particle crazy! First of all, here are the audience submissions* that you guys made during the session… seriously entertaining. 🙂 My favourite by Bronius Motekaitis…he actually took the picture mid presentation! hahaha! And yes […]