Ok so this is the third image animation which again has taken me a ridiculously long time! I started by duplicating the original image and turning it into a night-time shot in Photoshop. Then I created a button from the top fluorescent light which triggers a fade transition between day and night.
This was all pretty simple stuff and I introduced a flicker into the up state of the button to signify its function. The cloud animation behind the glass, on the contrary, caused me a great deal of stress. I had to introduce “depth” into the AcrionScript of a simple movie clip to generate the dispersing cloud effect, and then use the cursor tracking function to apply the movie clip to position of the cursor.
The result is that the user can draw a cloud trail across the glass. The next problem was limiting the cursor trail animation to the area of the window, so that it appeared as if the clouds were forming behind the glass. I initially used the StartDrag function and limited the active area to top, right, bottom and left boundaries, but this had the disadvantage of restricting the area to a rectangle, whereas the window consisted of a series of rhombus-shaped panes.
After some further research it seemed the way forward was to create a button with a hit area which filled all the glass panes, and to assign the cloud trails movie clip as a RollOver state. This button had to have an instance name, and I then had to duplicate its hit area to be used as a mask for the animation.
Finally I had to create an empty movie clip which was subject to the mask, and give it an instance name. Again the process was rather long-winded and certainly more complicated than I’d expected, but the result is quite effective.
I feel I need to work on the actual cloud trail animation, specifically for the night-time image. Please test the animation and send me any feedback you have: rich@rafolio.co.uk
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[...] this effect to create more of a trail, like the cursor was drawing clouds behind the glass [see previous post]. I had huge problems limiting the effect to just the surface of the glass however, and after much [...]
Rafolio | UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION IMAGE 3 | May 17, 2009 @ 4:39 PM