gradient mask on image

[linckx]

hi there,

can I do a gradient mask on an image?
doesn't even have to be as great as on networkshadow,
just a simple mask will do.

the problem is our designer wants backgrounds (and the beauty's are 1024 x 768) to fade on top of each other. And when regularly faded, flash tends to become veeeeerrrrrry sloooooooow. I warned her for that, but of course she tried it anyway and fell in love with the idea... i did too actually, looks sooo beautiful... but I need to find a way to make it happen smooth.

there are no other anim's playing similarly, so it can't be that, it's just the flash player having to do toooo much work...

robin

[Sualdam]

Well, the Flash 5 way was to create a mask and masked layer - the mask being the shape you wanted as a mask, and the masked layer being your image.

In between the two layers create a second masked layer and then put an appropriate movie clip in there that you can apply an alpha fade to.

Basically, the alpha's movie clip acts like a window through which the underlying image is visible (or not, depending on alpha).

Maybe you wouldn't even need the mask/masked layers as such unless you needed to mask out surrounding stuff. The use of the word 'mask' gets confusing because you can mask an image (in a general sense) without actually applying masking (in the Flash sense) :)

Is this what you meant?

Alpha-fades on bitmaps are notorious for grinding the processor to a halt.

[linckx]

the problem is that my image doesn't have to alpha-fade upon a solid color but upon another image... really heavy stuff, and that's why I was hoping that masking would be a better solution than tweening, 'cause tweening also makes things go slow.

robin

[linckx]

forgot to mention:

the project doesn't have to be online, but will be on a cd-rom, will director be able to play that right when I import the flash into it?

robin