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Rotating Star With Filter Effects |
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Written by Rawpulse
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Friday, 17 March 2006 |
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Create a great looking rotating "Join" star!
Today we're going to make a rotating star, ideal for "Sign Up" buttons. They are commonly used around the internet, though often they do not animate. For this tutorial you should know the basics of Flash - how the tools work and how to use the features. I used Flash 8 to create this, as Filters were involved, which are exclusive to Flash 8. You can still create the effect in MX, without Filter effects. To view an example of what we will be creating, click here.
Stage 1
Select the Polystar tool. This is located under the rectangle tool. For more information on this tool, check out this tutorial. Click the options button on the Properties window, at the bottom, to enter the Tools Settings window. Select Star from the Style drop down. Change the number of sides to around 25. Make sure the star point size is somewhere around 0.80.
Draw your star on the stage. Change the fill color to red and the stroke color to black, as seen above.
Stage 2
Convert the star to a movie clip by double clicking it (to ensure the stroke it also selected) and pressing F8. Select Movie Clip from the options and press OK. Now change the frame rate, from the default 12, to 25, via the Properties window. This will make the animation smoother, as more frames are used each second.
Stage 3
Now we can add the Filter effects to our symbol. To do this, click on your star. Go to Filters, which is next to Properties, in tab form. This will open a new menu where you can add and remove filters. If you cannot add any Filters, you will need to click your star again. Now click the small plus sign to add one. Select Drop Shadow, and add the following settings.
Once that is done, click on the plus sign once more, and select "Bevel" from the list. Ensure your Filter effect has the same properties as mine, beneath.
After this stage, your star should look very cool, like this
Stage 4
We now need to add a keyframe to frame 25. Right click on frame 25 and select Insert Keyframe, or press F6. You should only have one layer at this stage. Add a motion tween in between these frames by right clicking anywhere between frames 1 and 25, and selecting "Create Motion Tween". Now, in the Properties menu at the bottom, we need to add a rotation, to do this, select CCW (Counter Clockwise) from the Rotate drop down box, and enter "2" in the times box. This will tell the star to rotate in a counter clockwise way, 2 whole times.
Stage 5
Add a new layer to your timeline by selecting Insert > Timeline > Layer. On frame 1, select the text tool and type the text you want. Place it within your star. You can add a Filter effect to your text to make it look better. Do this by converting it to a movie clip, then go to Filters, and add your filter. The drop shadow effect works really well with text, providing you don't "over do it". Of course you could add a hyperlink to it, to make it clickable. If you wish to do this, follow our Hyperlinks Tutorial.
Now you're done! Test your movie by pressing Control + Enter. To view my version of what you created, click here. If you had a problem following this tutorial, tell us about it on the KnowFlash forum.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 17 March 2006 )
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