Design Question

[jmcochra]

So being this: I've never done anything in flash, or have ever had the need to want to learn flash. But now I do, and i've been putting it off to get into the nitty gritty.

So I've decided to take on a project and make a flash based interactive form. Allowing the user to "design" a certain item by clicking on check boxes, combo boxes, things of that nature. And as each "feature" is added, it simply makes a image "appear". Simple enough explination. But I want the image to layer on top of another image, creating the effect that the item clicked, Appears on the base item but not just changing the image. Like if i want to put a dot onto another dot.

Now I'm a Computer Forensic Science graduate, but they never tought flash in a schemes of the programming world they so made me endure. But thats okay, I wasn't anything graphical or web based. But took a few courses on html, and php/java scripting. So i'm pretty fluent to attempt what I want to do.

So I basically want to know if it is even possible (from you guys who use flash) to make and design a form that interacts with php scripting, and do the things I want with out having to have a HUNDRED MILLION FRAMES... cause I want to make this as simple but pleasing to look at.

So i was hoping I could get your thoughts on it. I'm catching on to the syntax, so let me know what you guys think about this, or should I go another route.

And I don't know how nice this forum is, but please don't be like "wow your such a idiot thats so simple." I am simply asking before I began to just learn a new way of web design all for one problem, then find out i can't do what I need it to do. Not making a waste, but need to get my task done as effieciently as possible.

many regards to your comments and concerns, thank you in advance

[email protected]

[Wino]

It is more than possible. I think you are describing an effect like the old Gray's Anatomy books where a transparency with a lung was put on top of a transparency of the heart, and you could still see the part of the heart that was not covered. Then the ribs were put on top of that, etc.

This is very easy in flash. Look up masking, and setChildIndex in ActionScript areas, and you'll be half-way there.

[jmcochra]

I'll take a look, if anyone could give me any more detail about masking and how I could go about that way to what i want to do.. The pictures I want to use would either be actual edit pictures edited precisley to mesh together. Exported Auto Cad Drawlings. Don't want to, but needed, in flash personally drawn (I want something alittle more detailed that I think flash can allow me in that draw space :-) ). So let me know... To be more specific about what I want to do... Guy has nothing on but underwear... Click a check box that says pants, and then poof pants lay ontop of the image that is already there. Is not a NEW image... Then if i pick hat, the hat pops ontop of his head, kkeeping the pants still there ect... I mean if I could just have an image on top of image, then have code to make visible, and invisible. that would be better, then i can just make the spaces transparent, and run it that way through flash. Also...

Still curious about variables in flash, and exporting them into php scripts???

[tay]

You could do this in a few different ways. If each article of clothing is a movieclip instance, you can use code such as dressPants.visible = true. or false as the case may be. Graphical, flash layers stack just like, for example, photoshop layers, so if you have say 6 possible combinations of clothing, then you can set up 6 different frames where across the 6 layers and, having a combination of clothing for each frame, set up a function gotoAndStop("frame number") based on what articles were selected and specify what covers what.

Hope that helps.

[sgartner]

So I basically want to know if it is even possible (from you guys who use flash) to make and design a form that interacts with php scripting, and do the things I want with out having to have a HUNDRED MILLION FRAMES... cause I want to make this as simple but pleasing to look at.

I'm wondering what you mean by Flash interacting with PHP scripting. PHP is running on the server and Flash is running on the client. Do you mean PHP Web Services (called from Flash)? Do you mean Flash interacting with a PHP-generated page (which basically means JavaScript)? Or something else entirely?

A data-flow diagram would be helpful.

[jmcochra]

Ignore PHP information. I figured that part out.

[sgartner]

I'll take a look, if anyone could give me any more detail about masking and how I could go about that way to what i want to do.. The pictures I want to use would either be actual edit pictures edited precisley to mesh together. Exported Auto Cad Drawlings. Don't want to, but needed, in flash personally drawn (I want something alittle more detailed that I think flash can allow me in that draw space :-) ). So let me know... To be more specific about what I want to do... Guy has nothing on but underwear... Click a check box that says pants, and then poof pants lay ontop of the image that is already there. Is not a NEW image... Then if i pick hat, the hat pops ontop of his head, kkeeping the pants still there ect... I mean if I could just have an image on top of image, then have code to make visible, and invisible. that would be better, then i can just make the spaces transparent, and run it that way through flash. Also...

Still curious about variables in flash, and exporting them into php scripts???

OK, Just thinking out loud.

Assuming there is a form with a drop list for all of the different kinds of clothing (which I would do in HTML, not Flash), and assuming you have each article of clothing in PNG files (not JPG because there is no alpha channel support):

I would create the unclothed figure as the background in flash. Then I would create "placeholder" objects in flash that will tell me, for this mannequin (because there might be multiple, at least two for man and woman) where each article of clothing should be displayed (you can hide the placeholders in the final movie).

Then when the user chooses items in the HTML drop lists, I would communicate their choices to Flash (lots of tutorials exist showing you how to do this) to update the display. I would pass the graphics from the HTML to the flash (rather than trying to make the flash flexible enough to know about all of the clothing graphics). That way I can pull the graphic list from a database easily in PHP and build the lists. (You could of course do this with a Web Service and XML directly in Flash if you don't like mixing HTML and Flash.)

On the other hand, I found some people saying that Flash doesn't load PNG files properly maintaining the transparency (links below), so you may not have a choice but to import all the graphics into Flash SWF files (but you could break each piece of clothing out into separate SWF files and load those). Yuck.

Here are some interesting links for you:

http://www.phong.com/tutorials/flash/transparent/
http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=163537

Hopefully this was helpful.

[jmcochra]

Well luckily I purchased the Adobes CS3 package. I been using the old MX package I got back in college. Now I get to have fun with learning all the new tricks in all the adobe up-to-date software... So I will try everyone's Ideas, and if I get stuck, I know you guys would be glad to help. Thanks again everyone...