In today's tutorial, you'll learn how to use Flash CS4's new 3D Rotation tool in order to transform the stroke of a circle into easy-to-edit planet rings.

Click here for more comprehensive Flash video training

In this tutorial, you'll learn all about the new 3D features included with Flash CS4. The latest release of Flash supports the ability to rotate and move flat objects (movie clips) around in 3D space. In the tutorial, you'll also learn how to animate the 3D rotation of an object using ActionScript's new rotationX, rotationY, and rotationZ properties.

Here is the code for this tutorial:

addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, rotate3D);
 
function rotate3D(e:Event):void
{
   sof_mc.rotationX += 4;
   sof_mc.rotationY += 4;
}

Click here for more comprehensive Flash video training

For the most part, the button symbol has gone the way of the dodo for many Flash developers. Because movie clip symbols are so much more flexible than button symbols, most developers have completely stopped using button symbols. Instead, they opt to use movie clip symbols AS buttons.

But What About the Hit State?

Read the rest of this entry »

I just wanted to apologize for the long wait between posts. Things have been crazy in the Campbell household lately. We've got a kid on the way, we're in the process of looking for a new house, we just found out that my wife has gestational diabetes, and we recently got back from a week-long vacation in Pagosa Springs, Colorado (during which I learned how to fix some delicious fried chicken).

Hopefully, now that things have calmed down a little bit, I'll be able to post some more tutorials soon. In the meantime, here's a picture of the view from the back porch of the cabin where we stayed in Colorado. (Photography is one of my many passions.)

In this tutorial, we're going to create a menu with a bar underneath it that moves left and right based on which button the user is hovering over. This tutorial is created with Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3. Here's what it will look like when you're done:

Read the rest of this entry »