Hi,
I’m trying to fade a bitmap picture into the stage from left to right. I have absolutely no idea how to even begin this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also… is there any way to edit a bitmap picture using flash? I tried to use the eraser tool to erase some stuff on my bitmap image and nothing seems to erase. Also… can you change the “pressure” of the erase tool like you can in photoshop?
Sorry… I’m pretty new to flash. thanks!
get your image and conver it to a sumbo by pressing F6 then make it fade by using the Alpha effect from the instance pannel. Edit>instanace, hope that amde sense.
Unless you mean that you want the fade in to start from the left and move across the picture.
In that case you do this.
Place the picture on the stage.
Make a new layer.
In this layer place a square box shape, without any stroke… so just the fill.
Open your “fill” panel, And your “mixer” panel.
Select the square in the stage… in your fill panel, use the pull down menu to make your fill a linear gradient.
Now, you should see two tabs… probebly gray and white… but I’m not sure… they describe the colors that make up the gradiant. Select the left one by clicking carefuly on that tab, in the color box to the right of the “fill” panel, select the same color as the background color of the movie. Do the same for the right hand tab.
(Note: If you accidentaly make a new tab, just grab it and drag it off the area… it will disapear.)
Now, with the right hand tab still selected, look at your “mixer” panel. Select the fill button if it’s not already selected. On the right side of THIS panel, there is an alpha level controler. grab and slide it all the way down to 0 alpha.
Now, if during this whole process you had the fill on the main stage selected, it will have taken on this gradient fill you just made. Check to see if it’s selected. If it is not, use the paint bucket tool on it first to give that fill to the obect.
With the fill selected, hit F6 to make it a GRAPHIC.
select it in the first keyframe and choose, “insert/create motion tween”. Select frame ten and choose “insert/key frame”. Select frame ten of the picture’s layer and choose “insert/frame”.
Select the frame ten key frame from the tween. Then click and drag your movie clip towards the left of the stage.
This will effectively mask things underneighth it and reveal it with an alpha gradient. You may find that the peice is too short… that the gradient is too much in the middle of the square fill to cover and reveal properly. in that case, go back into the object by double clicking on it until you get the selected fill again. Move the sliders on your “fill” panel to see what different effects you can make. In addition to that, you can always add extra solid fill to the solid end of the gradient fill.
jesus upuaut how is it that you have poster over 620 times?
SPAMMER, SPAMMER, SPAMMER. LOL no upuaut help good, its just sometimes he likes to explain some things over a few 1 or 2 hundred posts lol. I wish I had time to spam that much!
I asure you it’s perfectly legit. 
As for posting over a couple of posts… most of the time that’s cause I can’t figure out what I’m doing in the first post… or because I’m guessing. The other reason is because I like to explain things for the lowest common denomonation of experience level. I hated being really new to this coming into places like this, and just being confused as hell about what people were talking about.
As experienced flashers we have our own lingo we use, likewise we know all these short cuts to do things… A newbie doesn’t typicaly know these things.
So I guess I get a lot of post totals because I like to be helpful. 
Total Ezboard posts in any forum is 9600+… I’m almost at the 10K mark.
Hey upuatu8!
Thanks so much for your help! I should have been more specific… but what happens if the layering underneath is an image as well (instead of just the stage).
For instance… if you take a look at www.nanwob.net/oil2002
I have the background image and everything. And I want the “grid effect” to start from left and materialize to the right.
I have the grid saved as a transparent gif image created from photoshop and when I import it its just one long grid (with transparent boxes in between the white lines) spanning from the far left to the far right. I can’t seem to save the grid as its “faded” right now (it comes out as one big chunk).
Is there maybe a plug-in or a add-on for flash that selects a grid-area so I can maybe use vector images to do the grid?
Also… I’m also thinking this could be done with a transparent gradient… except I have no idea how to create a transparent gradient with flash. Any help would be great. thanks again!
Ok… you see my example above?? same general situation.
I would definitely do the grid in flash. Choose “view/grid/view grid”, and “view/grid/snap to grid”.
Now, using your line tool, draw lines along the grid you see. The line tool should “snap” to the grid vertecies so they will come out straight. once you have your whole stage covered in the grid, select all of those lines. hit “ctrl-G” to group them all together. Select “Insert/convert to symbol” and choose “graphic” from among the options.
now delete this graphic.
Now do the stuff in the above post to create a moving gradient square as I described.
Select the layer where the moving gradient square is located and add a layer. In this new layer, above the moving gradient’s layer, double clic on the square symbol to the left of the layer name. Choose, “mask” from among the options.
Now, select the layer below… the gradient square layer, and double click on it’s square symbol. Choose “maskED” for this layer. You will see it become indented under the mask layer above it.
Create a new layer. Click on it and drag it down below the moving gradient square layer. If it doesn’t automaticaly become a masked layer, double click on it’s square to make it one also.
In this layer, drag an instance of the grid symbol you created from your library to the main stage then center it.
In the “mask” layer, create a large sqare fill the size of the whole stage and centered.
The effect here is that the grid will fade in, while anything on the layers below it will always be seen.
If you would like me to put together an example of this. Please post your E-mail here. It would only take a couple minutes in the morning. I could have it in your mail box at 8 AM or so.
Hi!
Again, Thanks soo much for your help… I tried what you suggested and for some reason, I still can’t get the background image to just show while the grid fades in.
Here’s what I’ve managed to get so far:
www.students.uiuc.edu/~bcheng/oil2002/
Also, if you look at the swf file at that link, you’ll see that the grid “cuts off” at the bottom of the stage and also covers the person playing guitar on the left.
Is there a way with flash that I can have the grid just kinda “fade out” on the bottom and on the left like the one I was able to do with photoshop at:
Thanks again for your help… my email is [email protected] thanks
-Bow-Nan
Yes there is definitely a way of doing that. I’ll do a mock up of it this morning and send you the file… I think you’ll be able to figure out what I did with it.
Masking layers… learn em… they are one of my favorite tools in flash.
ah… I see what you are talking about. The upper level is blocking out the none masked levels below it. I know I’m just being a siv here because I know the way around that problem… I’ll think of it soon. In the mean while I may have come up with a better solution for that anyway. Let me work on an a/s mock up of that effect… I’ll be back later with an update…
Ok I found one work around for that, which I’m sending you… but it’s not optimal… it involves seting the alpha of the pic down a bit and laying the grid behind it. It still works, but it’s not the way I would settle for. I’m sending it to you.
I’ll keep thinking on this one.