A 3D looking cylinder can be drawn reasonably easily using two ellipses joined with a rectangle. Shading is then applied to give a 3D look. Although easy, it becomes tedious if a number of cylinders need to be drawn. To make the task easier, we have created a new SWiSH Max3 / miniMax3 cylinder component.

The component allows the size of the cylinder to be specified, as well as the 3 colors. This greatly speeds up the drawing process if multiple cylinders of different shapes and colors need to be drawn. The height measurement is the height of the rectangular middle section. The overall height of the cylinder will be greater. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people may be unaware that the scripting used by SWiSH Max3 is mostly compatible with Flash AS2 (Action Script 2). This means that even though the Max3 help file does not describe some of the more advanced objects available to AS2, you can still probably use them with Max3. The Max3 help file does detail areas where known differences occur. One interesting object that is not listed in the Max3 documentation is the Shared Object. It allows a Flash movie to save configuration data (depending on configuration settings) to the local computer. This behavior is analogous to cookies in http.

The Shared Object is available with Flash Player 6 and later. Documentation for the Shared Object can be found on the adobe site. The Adobe AS2 script reference can be viewed (and downloaded) in pdf format here.

Shared Objects are like cookies. They are snippets of data created in the SWF which are stored locally on the user’s computer. Other SWF movies (or the original movie, on the same domain) can then retrieve the stored data. This type of data storage is useful to store things like user high scores in games, user configuration options for a website or shopping cart data. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few months we’ve released and revised a lot of new components. Most of the releases are discussed elsewhere on this blog. We have also corrected some minor reported problems with other components.

Get all the latest Max3 / miniMax3 components for download here.
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A while back we demonstrated how to make a magnifying glass using simple masking. Although this masking technique works very well, it cannot be used to simulate fish-eye type lenses or other lenses that result in distortion of the image.  Using the Flash 8 displacement filter, we have created a new component that simplifies the creation of lenses that show distortion.

The lens outline can be made invisible which allows the user to distort areas of an image in a seamless manner. The image below is an example of such distortions. The left most image is the unaltered image, the middle image shows its head expanded using a magnify lens and the right most image shows its head reduced using a reducing lens.

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SWiSH Max3 comes with a number of ready-made video controller components in the Components | Video Players section. However, many users want more control over the final look and feel of their controller. In this tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how to make a simple controller.

Once the basic concepts are understood, you can expand the design to achieve exactly what you require. As miniMax3 cannot import videos, this tutorial is intended only for Max3 users. Max2 users may also be able to follow the process although the sample files were authored in Max3.

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We have had feedback from a few users that the Countdown Timer should make a beep sound each second as it counts down. Consequently we have added some new parameters that allow you to enable the sound and adjust its volume.

The revised component can be downloaded here. Copy the contents to your Components\Data display folder. The component requires SWiSH Max3 (or miniMax3) build 20091130 or later.

The new parameters allow the sound to be enabled or disabled (Beep parameter), the volume to be adjusted (Volume parameter) and the sound file to be altered (Sound File Properties parameter). The default sound is a 0.1 second sine wave, 440hz (A above middle C).

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