How To: Liquid Effect

[iamkoa]

Hey guys,

I'm trying to create a liquid-like effect for use in a preloader - something like green, bubbling liquid sloshing around in a testube & increasing in amount as the percentage increases. I've seen such effects on the net, though right now I'm having trouble finding examples.

How is such an effect made in Flash? Any examples would be awesome.

Thanks!

[Ricod]

Welcome to the forums !

My first guess would be, that it's probably animated manually. Are you familair with the basics of animation, how to work with keyframes, tweening the in-betweens etc ?

[iamkoa]

Thanks for the welcome!

I'm somewhat familiar with flash at the moment, but I'm trying to learn ActionScript. I figured out how to make a simple liquid effect (mannually) but now I'm wondering if I could add bubbles using AS... possible?

[Ricod]

Yes, definitely. You could have a bubble mc being randomly spawned and moved using AS and make a 'bubble popping' animation and have it initialized when it reaches the top of your liquid, also using AS.

You need to be able to do the following :
- Attaching mcs from the library or dublicating mcs already on the stage and how to remove them;
- Work with random();
- Replacing mcs on the fly or, which is easier, have the full bubble as the 1st frame of your bubble popping animation and just play from frame 2 onwards once the top of your liquid has been reached (assuming the bubbles will go from bottom to top of course);
- Checking and adjusting properties of mcs, specifically the _y and maybe the _x properties;

Experiment around with these or look them up using search. When you get stuck, let us know.

[Neil Davidson]

For your water there is also a moderately advanced tutorial on using actionscript to play with Flash's drawing API.

Masking with the Drawing API

Personally I found it to be a great example of effect, but it is very poorly notated in the source files. It does give something to aspire to, though. Using the concept that is shown it would simply be a matter of manipulating the lines to give the random effect of water rising.

Thought you might find it interesting.

[iamkoa]

Originally Posted by Ricod

Yes, definitely. You could have a bubble mc being randomly spawned and moved using AS and make a 'bubble popping' animation and have it initialized when it reaches the top of your liquid, also using AS.

You need to be able to do the following :
- Attaching mcs from the library or dublicating mcs already on the stage and how to remove them;
- Work with random();
- Replacing mcs on the fly or, which is easier, have the full bubble as the 1st frame of your bubble popping animation and just play from frame 2 onwards once the top of your liquid has been reached (assuming the bubbles will go from bottom to top of course);
- Checking and adjusting properties of mcs, specifically the _y and maybe the _x properties;

Experiment around with these or look them up using search. When you get stuck, let us know.

Anybody actually willing to start me on this? I'm so new to AS, I don't have a clue where to begin...

[Ricod]

Well, I'd start by looking up each one in the help file. They always come with an example, so you know the syntax.

You then might want to read a tutorial or dissect a sample movie (like :http://www.actionscript.org/showMovie.php?id=1118), where you will find your recently acquired knowledge usefull to quickly find out what exactly does what.