SWiSH Max3 and miniMax3 come with a number of animated banners. To use one of these banners simply go File | New Project and then choose from one of the available Vertical or Horizontal banners. We recently had an inquiry from a user who wanted to add a custom banner size. Although not obvious, this modification is reasonably easy to achieve. Below is the modified banner with a custom size of 220×180 pixels. Read on to find out how to make the modifications.
The grids and guides provided with Max3 work very well, however they only allow easy alignment along the horizontal and vertical axis. If you want to align objects along a set angle, or measure the point to point distance between two objects, this new autoshape component may help.
The Ruler autoshape is used like a conventional ruler to measure and set distances between objects. Its angle can be set via the Parameters panel, or the angle between two objects can be read back from the Parameters panel after positioning the ruler via its handles.
In the example below, the ruler is used to align two ellipses along a 30 degree line at distances of 100 and 300 pixels from the bottom left hand corner of a rectangle.
This new autoshape component allows you to easily add dimension arrows to your movie. To place the ends of the arrows, simply drag the green handles to the desired position. By default, the measurement will be the number of pixels between the arrows, however this can be altered to a user defined quantity via the Dimension Type parameter in the Parameters panel.
Have you ever wondered what the “D” button in the Text Properties panel in SWiSH Max does? It allows selection of Embedded or Device fonts. Selecting between Embedded and Device font can affect the clarity and accuracy of the displayed font as well as the size of the exported movie. As the choices, Embedded or Device may sound cryptic, I have described the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each of the font options below.
The ‘Use Device Fonts’ option is on the Typeface options shown in the Text object’s Properties panel.
If you want to gradually fade out the audio in your .SWF file, it can be done using Actionscript. It isn’t always necessary to provide an actual volume control bar, and in some cases you might simply want to fade the audio out during some other event (such as fading out the background audio while a video plays). The code snippet below will help you do just that.
The source .SWI file for the example above can be downloaded, here: fade-to-volume_v1
You will need SWiSH Max3 (build 2009.11.30 or higher) in order to open/edit the sample file.
Note: The code can also be used in SWiSH Max2 SWI files (you just can’t open the sample file with it).
If you are looking for a convenient way to fade the alpha level (transparency) of an object through Actionscript, then this simple code snippet may be what you need. Without relying on any overhead in the timeline or increasing the file size, this function allows you to animate the alpha level of any object over a specified period of time.
The source .SWI file for the example above can be downloaded, here: fade-to-alpha_v1
You will need SWiSH Max3 (build 2009.11.30 or higher) in order to open/edit the sample file.
Note: The code can also be used in SWiSH Max2 SWI files (you just can’t open the sample file with it).
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