Irregular Shaped Rollover Using Bitmap

[RandyS]

Hi,

Hope I'm in the right forum. This should be easy but for some reason I have a brain cramp on this. I have one that works properly and one that doesn't and I can't figure out why. I'm sure there is a rule of thumb for all this but its eluding me.

Enought of my incompetent rambling ...

I want to use an irregularly shaped bitmap (PNG) from Fireworks for a button but the rollover responds to the bounding rectangle, and not the shape of the bitmap. ??

TIA,
Randy

[Barn]

You're going to have to create a separate vector object in Flash for the hit area, because a bitmap, even one with an alpha channel mask, is a rectangular object.

[RandyS]

Hi,

You know, I understand exactly what you are talking about.

Yet somehow in the process of importing a bunch of artwork from a clients PNG files and Illiustrator files I have managed to somehow import one that is listed as a bitmap in the library and that when broken apart, is now a shape. I converted it to a movieclip and threw on a on(rollover) event etc. and the rollover triggers to the irregular shape and not the bounding rectangle. I did not add a vector shape to it ??

So I'm trying to figure out how this happened because it would handy if I didn't have to add vector shapes to all these images just for the hitareas.

Cheers,
Randy

[Barn]

That's perhaps the difference -- when you break a bitmap apart, it becomes a vector shape that is using the bitmap as a fill pattern. You can then remove parts of the bitmap with the eraser, in Flash (though you're really just removing part of a vector shape).