Drawing a Perfect Parabola

[cyscholar]

I need to draw a perfect basic y=x^2 parabola without using actionscript (pre-rendered). Is there any way to do this manually?

Thanks!

[vulcanpimp]

without using actionscript ??? - pardon me but aren't you in the wrong place to ask that sort of question.

[cyscholar]

Jeez, why the attitude? Why do you think I came to the animations forum? This is the best Flash forum so I figured you guys would know. Anyway, this does have to do with scripting - I need a movieclip containing a perfect parabola as a motion guide so I can change the _xscale and _yscale parameters of it, thus easily changing the trajectory of an object without modifying a quadratic equation.

[senocular]

if you have any kind of graphic calculator programs, you can graph it and snag a screen shot easily enough. If you dont have one, Im sure you can find one.

Otherwise, if you have Fireworks, you can script it in Javascript and plot it to a bitmap that way - or even plot it out in Flash with Actionscript and snag a screen grab of that.

[cyscholar]

But I need it to be a motion guide for an object. Can you convert a screen grab to a motion guide?

[senocular]

if scripted in fireworks you can import it into flash as vector and use as a motion guide, but if you're moving something to a parabola, its best to do it in actionscript because you ARE basing it off of a specific mathematical equation y=x^2 and not some arbitrarily drawn line.

[vulcanpimp]

sorry about the attitude.

I'm not sure how you use motion guides as I don't use them . Do they use the vector tool?

either way just place the screen grab of this parabola on your screen (just ctrl+v will paste it in) then just trace along it manually with mouse clicks.

[Mister Fisto]

Hi, do you have freehand?

I had a play around, and managed to come up with a fairly exact y=x^2 parabola.

Firstly I created a grid with 10mm spaced guides (I dislike the grid in freehand, always make my own with guides), then created a set of axes.

I then drew an ellipse and sliced it with the knife tool so I got half an ellipse.

I placed this half-ellipse over the axes and played with the point handles until I got the parabola shape. I slid the handles of the arms of the parabola right up to their points, then slid the handles of the vertex along the x-axis until the parabola shape was formed.

Tada! Vector parabola that can be cut'n'pasted into Flash!