galahad

Hi, having problems at the moment trying to make areas of a Flash movie pop up various images when hovered over. Basically what I'm trying to do is what's covered in this Yahoo Answer here:

How to make area in flash show and image, i.e. hover over and area and image pops up?(flash cs3 as2)? - Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers

Unfortunately however it doesn't work- although the mouse cursor changes when hovering over where the secondary image should show, the secondary image doesn't show at all- despite my following the answer fully (albeit in Flash 8 rather than CS3 but that shouldn't matter)

Anyone got any ideas?

canuckster

I just added a comment to that Yahoo answer. The original answer was wrong.

galahad

Cool, I'll give that a go, see if it works. Thanks

galahad

I've managed to create the button areas with the images behind them- only thing is now I need to find a way of making the images "fade in" (or have another good transitional / "soft" effect) when the mouse pointer rolls over the button area.

Anyone know how this can be done?

canuckster

A bit more complex, but here's what to do:

First, you have to figure out how to make a standalone (ie not part of the button) movieclip that does the fade-in you want. Then, drag an instance of that clip onto the 'over' frame of the button; use it instead of the image that's currently there.

galahad

Okay, I tried doing this:

Created a new Movie Clip, and moved the image for it onto the stage

In the color window, set the Alpha setting to 0.

Moved ahead 20 frames and inserted a new keyframe. Then change the Alpha to 100%

Create motion tween by right clicking between the first frame and the one on 20.

I then got rid of the static image in the Over state of the button and dragged the new Movie Clip onto it instead.

However the behaviour is exactly the same- the button works but there's no fade-in- the image just appears immediately rather than fading in.

I'm guessing this is because for some reason when I set keyframe 1 to have Alpha 0 and keyframe 20 to have Alpha 100, the values don't seem to save- when I tried making keyframe 20 have Alpha 100 I found that it did the same for keyframe 1!! (and vice versa)

Any ideas??

Adam

are you selecting the item to alpa when changing the settings?

galahad

Yes, I double-click the button so I've gone into the movie clip inside it, then tried changing Alpha at keyframes 1 and 20, with the appropriate keyframe highlighted in both cases... just doesn't seem to work though.

canuckster

First of all, the colour panel is not where you want to change the alpha in this case; it's only for changing the colour of what you're about to draw, or of a raw graphic currently selected on stage (like if you'd drawn a blue box, selected it, then you could change its alpha with the colour panel).

What you want is to create a simple movieclip (call it image_basic) with one frame only, and have it contain the image in question. Once that's done, do this:

1) Create a new movieclip called image_tween; give it 20 frames, and 2 layers.
2) On the top layer, create a new keyframe on the last frame; using the Actions panel, insert a stop() action here.
3) On the second layer, first frame, drag image_basic from the library onto the stage.
4) On the last frame (same layer) make a new keyframe (not a blank one, though; you want the image still there).
5) Back on frame 1, select the image_basic. In the Properties panel, you should see it mention "Instance of: image_basic". If you don't you haven't selected it properly. In its Color dropdown, select alpha and set it to 0.
6) Now click on the current frame on the timeline (make sure it's the layer with the images on it). Using the Properties panel again, create your Motion Tween.
7) Double-click your button symbol in the library to edit it. Drag an instance of image_tween onto the button's second frame.

That should do it.

galahad

Okay, managed this... I did have to swap the layers round though i.e where you said "top layer" I used the bottom one and vice versa. Seemed to work that way!

Thanks!

canuckster

Great to hear.

If you get the bug, there are a ton of tutorials (at all levels) at Flash Kit, A Flash Developer Resource for Macromedia Flash MX Tutorials SWF FLA images clipart Sounds WAVS Animations Help and Support.

galahad

Of course, the customer always wants something more once they've seen something they like!

They now want the image that fades in to fade out at the same speed when the user hovers over a different button (i.e when the user moves off the first button and effectively kicks off the fade-in procedure on a second button).

In other words, the first image fades out at the same time as the second image fades in. (and not only that but they need to fade in and out over the same visual area)

Not sure if this is possible at all, if there's a quick way of doing this?

I will have a dig around the tutorials again and see if it can be done, but if you or anyone know of a quick way to do this...

Thanks again