DIRECTOR MX ® 2004 Using Director Trademarks ActiveEdit, ActiveTest, Add Life to the Web, Afterburner, Aftershock, Andromedia, Allaire, Animation PowerPack, Aria, Attain, Authorware, Authorware Star, Backstage, Blue Sky Software, Blue Sky, Breeze, Bright Tiger, Clustercats, ColdFusion, Contents Tab Composer, Contribute, Design In Motion, Director, Dream Templates, Dreamweaver, Drumbeat 2000, EDJE, EJIPT, Extreme 3D, Fireworks, Flash, FlashHelp, Flash Lite, FlashPaper, Flex, Flex Builder, Fontographer, FreeHand, Generator, Help To Source, HomeSite, Hotspot Studio, HTML Help Studio, JFusion, JRun, Kawa, Know Your Site, Knowledge Objects, Knowledge Stream, Knowledge Track, LikeMinds, Lingo, Live Effects, MacRecorder Logo and Design, Macromedia, Macromedia Action!, Macromedia Central, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia M Logo and Design, Macromedia Spectra, Macromedia xRes Logo and Design, MacroModel, Made with Macromedia, Made with Macromedia Logo and Design, MAGIC Logo and Design, Mediamaker, Movie Critic, Open Sesame!, RoboDemo, RoboEngine JFusion, RoboHelp, RoboHelp Office, RoboInfo, RoboInsight, RoboPDF, 1-Step RoboPDF, RoboFlash, RoboLinker, RoboScreenCapture, ReSize, Roundtrip, Roundtrip HTML, Shockwave, Sitespring, Smart Publishing Wizard, Software Video Camera, SoundEdit, Titlemaker, UltraDev, Web Design 101, what the web can be, WinHelp, WinHelp 2000, WinHelp BugHunter, WinHelp Find+, WinHelp Graphics Locator, WinHelp Hyperviewer, WinHelp Inspector, and Xtra are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. and may be registered in the United States or in other jurisdictions including internationally. 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Part Second Edition: September 2004 Macromedia, Inc. 600 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94103 CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 About Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 What's new in Director MX 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Guide to instructional media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 CHAPTER 2: Score, Stage, and Cast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Using the Tool palette with the Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Setting Stage properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Using multiple Score windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Changing Score settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Selecting and editing frames in the Score. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 About Cast Members. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Creating new casts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Creating cast members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Using the Cast window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Naming cast members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Using Cast List view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Using Cast Thumbnail view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Moving cast members within the Cast window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Organizing cast members within the Cast window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Setting Cast window preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Changing Cast properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Viewing and setting cast member properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Finding cast members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Importing cast members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Launching external editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Managing external casts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Creating libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Setting cast member properties using Lingo or JavaScript syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Setting Xtra cast member properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3 CHAPTER 3: Sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Creating sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Setting sprite general preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Selecting sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Naming sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Finding sprites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Creating sprite channel names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Layering sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Displaying and editing sprite properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Locking and unlocking sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Positioning sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Changing the appearance of sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Using sprite inks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Assigning a cast member to a sprite with Lingo or JavaScript syntax . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Exchanging cast members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 CHAPTER 4: Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 About tweening in Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Tweening the path of a sprite. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Accelerating and decelerating sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Tweening other sprite properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Suggestions and shortcuts for tweening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Changing tweening settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Switching a sprite's cast members. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Editing sprite frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Frame-by-frame animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Shortcuts for animating with multiple cast members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Using film loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Setting film loop properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Step-recording animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Real-time recording animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Linking a sequence with Paste Relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Animating sprites with Lingo or JavaScript syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 CHAPTER 5: Bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 About importing bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Using animated GIFs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Using the Paint window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Changing selected areas of a bitmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Flipping, rotating, and applying effects to bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Using Auto Distort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Changing registration points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Changing size, color depth, and color palette for bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Controlling bitmap images with Lingo or JavaScript syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Using gradients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Using patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Creating a custom tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Using Paint window inks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 4 Contents Using bitmap filters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using onion skinning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . About the Paste as Pict option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setting bitmap cast member properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setting PICT cast member properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setting Paint window preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Compressing bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Working with Macromedia Fireworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAPTER 6: Vector Shapes . 123 125 127 128 128 129 129 131 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Drawing vector shapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Editing vector shapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Defining gradients for vector shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Controlling vector ...