im having some trouble with an effect im going for. my goal is to have a graphic the full size of the movie that is masked so that you cant see it unless you move your mouse over the screen, much like the masking movie clips with a text element and draggable graphic, id like it to look as if your shining a light onto the background graphic and any elements that are above it, ( the screen should be black unless your mouse is above it)when i set this up in the same way you would for masking a draggable movie clip (as in the tutorial) the drag feature works but the thing your dragging is on top and the background is just white. what should i be doing with my background image to make this possible or is it another area i should be concentrating on? any ideas?
ive been thinking that perhaps masking may not be what i want to do to get this effect, would a large shape with a hole cut out for the top layer be more appropriate, and if so i need to be able to lock the object center to drag with the mouse. im obviously a bit lost here, lol, if i figure it out ill definitly post my findings if noone else has any ideas
Kirupa: Your sig was causing this post to freeze. I think your host may have been temporarily down or the sig was renamed.
Hey asmodias,
I really have no idea how to mask a background. I have seen the light effect on the Final Fantasy site, and I have yet to re-create it. If I find some insight on your problem, I’ll immediately reply back with my findings 
thanks
the footer below is the closest ive gotten, i was able to drag the viewable area over a background graphic button and scrolling image, the light effect is astoundingly dissapointing however and far from convincing
sorry about the sig problem feel free to remove them if it does that, ive changed it by the way hopefully the new spot wont do that
Asmodias… there are a couple threads detailing this… I’ll run it down here.
Try exactly what you did (as you did the only thing that can to produce the effect you’re talking about.), but inside the hole in your artificial mask, use a fill.
Open your mixer panel, and your fill panel. In the fill panel choose gradient circular. Select the left hand tab and then click on your mixer panel, selecting the “fill” button. Slide the alpha slider all the way to zero. Select the right hand tab on the fill panel and choose black.
You can play around with the fills in this way to produce a soft edged fill.
I hope this is what you were talking about. peace
thats exactly what i was talking about, thanks to all that helped with this