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Written by Rawpulse
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Monday, 06 February 2006 |
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Using the PolyStar tool to create some crazy shapes
The PolyStar (Polygon + Star) Tool is widely overlooked in Flash,
because it's only accesible via the Rectangle Tool. You can see on the
Rectangular Tool logo that there is a small black arrow pointing
downwards. This means that it can be expanded for more options. If you
click and hold the mouse button when you select the Rectangle Tool, you
will see this small menu appear:
Once you have selected the PolyStar tool from this menu, you may notice
that the Properties window changes to incorporate the PolyStar
settings. If you click the "Options..." button on the Properties menu
(below), you'll see the Tool Settings box:
Here you can choose which shape you would like to draw. You can change
the "Style:" drop down box to select either Polygon or Star. Changing
the "number of sides" is quite self explanatory. The higher the number,
the more sides your shape has. The maximum number of sides you can have
is 32, the minimum is 3 (if you try any lower than 3 it will draw a 3
sided shape). The "star point size" only affects stars, not Polygons,
hence the name, and determines the size of each side.
Drawing Polystars is different to drawing regular shapes like
rectangles and circles because you can also rotate the shape as you are
drawing it. If you hold the shift key while you are drawing your shape,
it will make it so you can only draw it on 45 degree lines, to make it
straight.
Here are some examples of Polygons and Stars, with varied sides and star point sizes.
You can experiment with PolyStars to find how to make these different
shapes. If you have had trouble following this tutorial, please post on
the KnowFlash.com forum for assistance.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 06 February 2006 )
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