Re: Director questions

by jdowdell(at)macromedia.com (John Dowdell)

 Date:  Thu, 24 Sep 1998 13:12:29 -0700
 To:  hwg-graphics(at)hwg.org
  todo: View Thread, Original
At 5:45 AM 9/24/98, Johan "Dagneg=C2rd" wrote:
>I have two questions about Macromedia Director 5.0

That version's about two-and-a-half years old... if you'll be designing for
upcoming operating systems then a more current version can help. (Microsoft
and Apple generally test new OSs against existing applications, but current
applications get more testing time than older applications.)

At minimum, the Director 5.01 updater on the Macromedia website can help
with some small issues revealed since original release.



>1: How do I make a projector that can be viewed on all PC:s and Mac:s?
>Is it possible? Are there some special things to think of, like using
>216 color palette etc?

Sorry, Macs run Mac applications, and PCs run PC applications. This means
you're looking at creating two separate applications: one for Mac, one for
PC.

Director *files* are cross-platform, but applications are not. Although
there are generic "stub" Projectors on the web that will run your movie
files (see http://www.updatestage.com/products.html, for instance), most
developers find it's faster and more economical to actually work on the
type of computer you'll be delivering on.

=46or instance, if you're creating both Mac and PC computer applications,
then it helps to work on both platforms yourself. If you "test early, test
often, test on all of your target machines" then you'll get feedback as you
go along, rather than have all the feedback bunched up at the end.

(And yes, Macs and PCs *do* offer different media support. Director makes
it as seamless as possible, but there are still differences. It's really
strongest to work on both platforms yourself, if you'll be creating
computer programs for both platforms.)



>2: Maybe a bit more complicated. Let=A5s say that I make an object with
>a halftransparent dropshadow in Photoshop (version 4.0.1/5.0) Now, can
>I import the graphic into Director and still have the shadow
>halftransparent? I mean without saving the Photoshop image as pict or
>something so that the transparent parts will still be transparent when
>imported into Director? It=A5s a bit hard to explain what I mean, but I
>hope you friends get it!

There are two ways you can make things look transparent in Photoshop: the
background can be *in* Photoshop, or *out* of Photoshop.

=46or instance, suppose you make a new PS document with transparent canvas,
then draw a red square, and draw a blue circle which partially overlaps the
square. Make the blue circle 50% opaque.

If you export this as transparent GIF to a browser, you'll see a few
things: (a) the red square will be full red; (b) where the translucent blue
circle overlays the red square, you'll see through the blue to the red; (c)
where the blue circle overlays the transparent background, you'll see solid
light blue instead of the browser background; and (d) any pure background
pixels in the GIF will drop out, and you'll see the browser background.

Same thing happens when you go from Photoshop to Director. You can see
transparency among objects in the graphic, and you can see transparency in
the background, but you won't normally have Photoshop objects be
transparent to other objects.

(That said, you can turn the Director "blend" on for the entire graphic
sprite, and it will blend to the new background in Director. This works
only for the entire graphic, though, just as opacity works for an entire
layer in Photoshop.)

If you want a semi-transparent dropshadow in Director, then the easiest way
is to do its as two sprites: one as the graphic itself, the other as a
duplicate for the shadow. The shadow sprite can be partially transparent.


Good...?

jd



John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US

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