Animate sand in hourglass using Flash MX

programming flash
1

Hi, anybody knows how i can animate the sand in an hourglass using Flash MX?
Can someone give me more detailed tutorial or instructions on how to go about doing it?

What i did is to using masking. I created the hourglass as the outline and create a rectangle and animate it from top to bottom.

But it looked so fake, like a big jelly moving down the hourglass.

Anyone got a better idea? HELP!!

2

make the mask shape a little smaller inside the hourglass, so you can see highlights around the edge… Also, maybe doing two masks would help for the realism. One mask could be the top half, where the sand level is dropping, and the other half could be the bottom, slowly filling up with a steady stream coming through the gap…

3

You’d also need to make sure that the sand fell into a triangle shape rather than just blobs… If you tweened that right, it should work. I reckon you’d need about two or three little animations running there to get the right effect. :slight_smile:

4

Thanks for the help! There’s 1 more problem, the sand need to go through the middle segment of the hourglass and it will looked like the sand going down. That’s a problem down there. Wonder anybody can explain how i can go about doing?

5

split it up.
have the top part of the hourglass be a rectangle behind a mask, and the bottom part be a triangle shaped “pile” of sand moving up. then just draw a line for the falling sand

6

I get what you mean, but anyone care to show me a simple sample how i can actually get all these done? Would be greatly appreciated.

7

sure

8

Yah! That’s what i want. Simple and not that fake. Thanks alot clownstaples!!