When coming up with a new layout for my website, http://cyberfroggy.com, I decided [to go along with the whole frog thing] I’d go for a more themed look. I came up with this:[url=“http://cyberfroggy.com/flash/mainscreen.gif”]http://cyberfroggy.com/flash/mainscreen.gif [the black area would be grass]. When I opened up flash for the first time for this project, I decided I would work on the water animation first. It was a good idea, becasue it was the hardest.
***The following is my long and bumpy road to figuring out how to make a decent water animation. If you would find this flash noob’s failed and fairly rediculous attempts at creating water amusing, feel free to read about them. Otherwise, you can just cut to the chase, and scroll down to the big bold heading for my final project. ***
[size=1]My first attempt at water: Particles. I figured that maybe I could use some for loops and make tons of particles move around, with a kind of springy effect keeping them all together. Uh…No.[/size]
[size=1]That being too hard, I figured I should stick with ther basics. Aided with Photoshop, I created some clouds of varying darknessesesess, and changed their alphas and layered them and made 'em move around. The overall effect was this:http://cyberfroggy.com/flash/cfv4-1.swf , which happends to be not much.[/size]
[size=1]So, then I got the crazy idea of taking out the dark or light parts of the clouds, creating around 3 or 4 different layers of different shades, and then move THEM around. http://cyberfroggy.com/flash/cfv4-3.swf . No va. My bro said it looked like moving camouflage. Heh.[/size]
[size=1]Ok. I was getting kinda out of ideas at this point, so please forgive me for my stupidity… but next I thought to myself…How about I stick with the Camo, make GIANT circles out of it, place the centers of the circles a ways above the stage, and spin them around. [wt…?] [/size]
[size=1]http://cyberfroggy.com/flash/cfv4-5.swf[/size][size=1] . CPU=
[/size]
FINALLY, when hopelessly looking at my mainscreen.gif trying to think of how I could create water, I got this brilliant idea. Using the EXACT same methods and filters [Clouds, then Ocean Ripple] as I used to make my concept pic of CF.com, I made around 10 pictures of water, and lined them up in the timeline at 30fps, with 2 frames each. http://cyberfroggy.com/cfv4-6.html [since there is no loading sequence, the water may take a bit to get going]
And THAT, ladies and gentleman, is the best overhead-view water effect I could come up with. Overall, It was a very humbling experience. Please feel free to download the .fla’s, just follow the links above, only type .fla instead of .swf. Also, if you know an even better water effect [which I wouldn’t doubt], please feel free to share. Seriously.
