Help me with Blur effect

programming
1

Dear all,

This person shows how to do blur effect but i’m a new guy to flash, so please help me make this a little clearer! I imported my own image to make it blur but it doesn’t work.

this is the link
www.help4flash.com/tutorials/blur.swf

Thanks
TinyTim

2

Sorry… I see at least one error in that tutorial. It’s a simple one, so I’ll go over it completely though.

question: do you know all of your panels? i.e. you know how to open each of the following panels “instance” “effect” “fill” “mixer”, “library” and “Action”?

let me know that much before I continue so I dont’ waist a bunch of time discribing something you already know how to do. :slight_smile:

3

Upuaut8,

thanks for the reply. I thought that tutorial was pretty odd. Yes, I know most of the panels, such as how to go to instance, effect, and library. I really appreciate your help.

the link again is
http://www.help4flash.com/tutorials/blur.swf

btw, do you know how to flash multiply images using blur method?

Thank you
TinyTim

4

btw, do you know how to flash multiply images using blur method?

Not sure what this means… can you reitterate this for me?

5

I’ve seen ads that have changing images that look like they have blur method in them. The images are constantaly changing using alpha in and out.

Hope i make sense :slight_smile:

Thanks
TinyTim

6

Well. I had a full run down of that somewhere, but I can’t seem to find it… was in the last day or two too… so it’s confusing to me where it went. None the less, it’s not tough to re-explain it.

With regards to the tutorial you linked to. This is a textual run down of the same proceedure. Hopefuly I’ll be a little more clear than that guy was.
Step

  1. Open flash. Open your “effects” panel.

  2. In frame one, import any jpg you have handy. Any picture will do.

  3. Create a new layer above layer one.

  4. select your rectangle creation tool. In it’s color properties select no stroke. Select a dark gray fill.

4a) open your “mixer” panel. Select the fill button there, and then use the slider to the right, to set the alpha level to 50%.

4b) create a square over the whole stage.

  1. in the timeline, select layer 2 frame one. Choose menu option, “Insert/create motion tween”.

  2. in the “effects” panel, use the pull down to select “alpha”. Set the alpha to 0%.

  3. select frame 20 and choose menu option “Insert/insert keyframe”.

:cool: select frame 10 and choose menu option “insert/insert keyframe”.

  1. in the “effects” panel, set the alpha for this keyframe to 100%.

  2. select layer one, frame 20; choose menu option “insert/frame”

  3. test movie.

What this is doing is fading something in and out of visibility. The reason we create the two end keyframes first is that it saves us work. When creating a keyframe, the object in a motion tween will inherate any properties of the previous keyframe.
In this case, it is used over a pic, and can make that pic fade in and out in a sort of blury manner. It is useful because you can put any pic under there that you like, anytime during the movie, and it will always blur like that.

Now… you’re second question is actually an entirely different effect. It is more of a true blur effect.

in order to do that, you need to have an image editing program like Photoshop, or Painter, etc.
Take what ever picture you would like to produce the effect on, and import it into your image editing software. Using that program’s tools, blur, or do what ever else you want to the photo. Try a few effects in a few different places for this example, just to see how various one’s look. I did one today with a glass distort effect that looks really nice. I’m going to have that published, at least to look at sometime in the morning.
Save this blured pic as something similar to the untouched pic.
I usually use jpgs for this sort of thing, and at least for this example, make sure both of your photos are saved out as jpgs

Open flash.
Select frame one, and choose menu option “file/import”, select both of those pics that you just created.
Flash has placed them in frame one.

  1. create a new layer.
  2. deselect both pics by clicking somewhere off stage. Select the top pic and “copy/cut/paste in place” to this new layer.
  3. arrange the layers so that the blurred pic is the top layer.
  4. select the top layer, and create a new layer. You should now have three layers. The first empty, the second has your blurred shot in it, the third has you’re unblurred shot.
  5. Look at the layer labels. To their left are small square symbols. Double click on the top/blank layer’s symbol, it’s property sheet should pop up. Select the dot marked “Mask layer”.
    5a) open the property sheet for the middle/blurred layer, and set it to “Masked layer”. Do the same for the bottem/unblurred layer.

6)Select the top/blank layer. Get your square tool. In the tool bar, select no stroke and give it a bright green fill. Create a square on your stage in the top/blank layer.
{note: the color is arbatrary, but I use bright green in my movies so that I will easily recognize that it is a mask. In the test and final product you wont see this green.}

7)Place this square, just off stage to the left, and scale it to be the height of the stage. For a good look, using the rotate transformer you can sqew the square diagnaly.

:cool: In the timeline, select the top layer, first frame. Choose menu option “Insert/create motion tween”. Select top layer, frame 40. Choose menu option “Insert/insert keyframe”. grab and move the shape you created across the screen until it’s fully off the view area.

9)Test your movie.

A mask layer is used to cut everything from being shown, except where something is located in the layer. It will not take movie clips in the “mask” layer, only motion and shape tweens, and static fill. Lines as well, will not produce any affect if in the mask layer.

7

Just go and download the trial of Adobe Photoshop… They have 5-6 different type of blurs in there u can do…

8

BY the way, that help4flash tutorial is so phat. who ever made is doesn’t even know what they are talking about and shouldn’t be giving advise! I do believe that is called fading in… or "Alpha-ing’ in not a blur.

phaseshift

9

Yes… I would call that an Alpha effect as well.

In case you’re wondering that’s why I altered my explination a little to include a picture below an alpha’d square… which would be much more like a real blur.

10

follow the Flash motion Blur tutorial i wrote for Kirupa.