Final Exam - 810:088 Topics in Computing: Flash Animation This study guide is FINISHED and in its final form. Good luck on all of your final exams and see you on Monday at ONE P.M. 1. Study the previous quizzes that we have had. There will be many of the same questions or very similar questions as there were on those quizzes. The Study Guides for those quizzes are also very relevant. 2. Know how to add Shape Hints to a shape tween. Be able to describe how to do that for a simple task to someone who has never done them before but has a couple of weeks experience with Flash. (Just like we did in the group exercises in class). In class, we shaped tweened a circle becoming a square and then going back to being a circle again. We wanted the square back to circle to continue in the CLOCKWISE direction instead of changing direction to counterclockwise. shape tween 1 shape tween 2 KF#1 KF#30 KF#60 ---------------> ----------------> circle square circle The above diagram should help you to understand what I am talking about. Shape Tween one saw a square morph into existence out of a circle. It was going clockwise. Shape Tween 2 saw the square morph back into a circle, but it did this return to circlehood by going counter clockwise. Shape hints were needed to make it (shape tween 2) go the SAME CLOCKWISE DIRECTION. 3. Cafe Townsend tutorial will be covered again. This was covered on two different quizzes. 4. var dice1:int; var dice2:int; dice1 = Math.floor(Math.random() * 6 + 1); dice2 = Math.floor(Math.random() * 6 + 1); What word rhymes with the word floor and is what your Flash instructor's hand was after it hit the floor during class? What does x have as a value after the following statement finishes? var x:Number = Math.floor(3.999821); Do not fall on the floor if you get the wrong answer! Do hit the floor with your hand if you get the wrong answer when practicing this and you will be more likely to remember Math.floor(), and perhaps lots more if your hand is sore. 5. Know everything there is to know about Motion Tweens. Ease in and Ease out. Custom easing. What can be Motion Tweened besides changes of location. 6. Nested symbols. For example, the automobile project had theCarSymbol, wheelSymbol, and rotatingWheelSymbol. Or whatever you named the Library symbols. rearWheel and frontWheel might have been the instance names of what symbol? How do you refer to the rearWheel instance and make it stop or start? Assume theCarSymbol instance is named theCar. 7. Know the two different ways you can animate things with ActionScript 3.0 code. "timer" event for Timer objects and Event.ENTER_FRAME where the main timeline or the stage has the event listener. See the URL: http://www.uni.edu/jacobson/StarsRacing.html and your class handout and lecture notes and Friday lab experiences for this. --------------------------------------------------------- var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(100); myTimer.addEventListener("timer", moveEm); --------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------- stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, expand); or addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, expand); (Do not have to mention the stage object). ----- --------------------------------------------------------- 8. See http://www.uni.edu/jacobson/startOfNunchukaStriker.html and be sure to know mouseX and mouseY and Mouse.hide() and theBall.x and theBall.y and how all that fit together for two different quizzes and one Friday hand's on class. addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, followMouse); theBall.x = mouseX; theBall.y = mouseY; --------------------------------------------------------------------- The mouse was patented in 1970 as an "X-Y Position Indicator." http://www.bootstrap.org/chronicle/pix/pix.html On April 27, 1981, the first commercial computer mouse debuted as an included component of the Xerox Star 8010 personal computer. So, in many respects, April 27 is the "birthday" of the computer mouse. In many respects, that is, but not every—the mouse that shipped with the Star 8010 was almost 20 years in the making. In fact, several versions of working mice were in use before the first commercial model ever went on sale. If you wanted to suggest an alternative birthday for the mouse, you could make a strong argument for Nov. 17, 1970, when Douglas Engelbart received U.S. Patent 3,541,541 for his design of an "X-Y Position Indicator For A Display System." On paper, this is when the mouse began its legally recognized life. http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5675126.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- If the above helps you to remember mouseX and mouseY and the .x and .y properties of any symbol on the stage, it will have served its purpose. theBall.x = mouseX; theBall.y = mouseY; The x and y properties are important not only: For those of you not accessing this FLASH STUDY GUIDE using shortcut keys, touch screens, or voice-recognition interfaces, reading today's Geek Trivia is possible thanks to a critical computer peripheral that went on sale 24 years ago. ---------------------------- http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5675126.html If you do computer graphics, you become more and more aware of the x and the y properties as you work with 2D graphics. If you use Maya or if you fake 3D graphics using Flash 2D graphics, you become aware of x and y and z properties or dimensions! http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/flash/g/position_with_gravity.html 9. You are very familiar with these quiz 4 and quiz 5 study guides. The links are still on our class web page. http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/flash/email04_08.txt http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/flash/quiz4.txt 10. Regarding the Wednesday, April 30th example flowering plant: It had flowers, stems, leaves, grapes. It was part of a tutorial on Shape Tweening by Chris Georgenes. a. Why do you see the finished plant for several seconds before the animation repeats? b. What happened when we created a new layer (for the main timeline) and then selected Frame #235 in that new layer and did: F6, looked at the result, and then did ctrl Z F7, looked at the result, and decided whether anything was different than when we did F6. Did ctrl-Z again. Did F6 again and this time did NOT ctrl-Z undo it. Does it ever matter whether you use F6 (Insert Keyframe) or you use F7 (Insert Blank Keyframe)? Does it matter in this case? Why or why not? c. We used the F9 key and then inserted stop(); at Frame #235 of "Layer 29" (or maybe we renamed the new "layer 29" to be named "actions". Layer 29:235 or actions:235 would be what you see at the very bottom left corner of the actions panels for ActionScript 2.0 or ActionScript 3.0 Flash. d. What would you see at the very bottom left corner of the Actions panel if you FORGOT to FIRST use the F6 or the F7 key when you clicked on Frame #235 immediately after creating the brand new layer, "layer 29" or "actions" if you renamed it? We answered this question in each of the last two classes. We answered it on May 2nd and we answered it on April 30th. 11. Why you need to have a Wheel movie clip symbol if you are going to have a rolling, animated Wheel. The Wheel is a movie clip and can be animated and be in keyframes with Motion Tweens in between the keyframes. The Wheel is the building block for the Rotating Wheel Symbol. Why is a Motion Tween show a broken line instead of the long arrowhead when you do not use a Movie Clip symbol as the building block, but have key frames with just a Shape instead? 12. Your handout on making the Rotating Wheel is from early February or late January. Hour 12: Animating Using Movie Clip and Graphic Symbols. You used this handout to do assignment #2, i.e. the car project. What are the differences between movie clips and graphic symbols? When would you want to use a graphic symbol instead of a movie clip symbol? Symbols can be Type: Movie Clip or Button or Graphic. ---------- ------ ------- A graphic symbol is dependent and is synchonized. Know and understand this. A movie clip symbol is INDEPENDENT of the timeline into which it is placed, and if it, the movie clip symbol has 20 frames, for example, and the main timeline for the Scene has only 10 frames, the movie clip will STILL SHOW YOU ALL OF ITS ACTION, from frame 1 to frame 20. A graphic symbol with 20 frames, however, if placed into a main timeline for the entire Scence that is only 10 frames, it TOTALLY DEPENDENT on the main timeline. YOU WILL NEVER SEE IT SHOW ITS FRAMES 11 through 20. ----- "A movie clip animates on its own time, and it doesn't matter how much space you provide in the Timeline where it is used." "Using movie clips is usually much easier because they're more flexible than graphics." Subtleties of Movie Clips gives the following three differences: a. a movie clip's timeline is independent of the main timeline, of the entire Flash application, i.e. of the stage's timeline... b. movie clips are addressable, i.e. you can refer to them with ActionScript and make the Rotating Wheel, say backWheel, stop() or play() again. Can't do that with Graphic symbols. You cannot give them an instance name or export them for ActionScript code! c. Movie Clip instances download in a different manner. They are NOT capable of streaming, whereas Graphic symbols are capable of streaming download. Do NOT worry about knowing this for the test. You do NOT have to know this item c. for the test. Here is an example to illustrate the difference between Graphic symbols and movie clip symbols. http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/flash/a/GraphicVersusMovieClip.html