Getting the best performance from flash, using curves???

[nickpolet]

Hi,

I've been working on simple animation for a client, which you can see __here__.

I have a few issues with performance. I have popped a fps counter at the top left and it seems to only run at around 30 fps on my laptop, I need it up to 60 though.

i was just wondering if anyone had any tips about getting the best performance from flash.

I have used Shape instead of Sprite on the curves, which gave a slight improvement. Surprisingly I didnt notice any change in performance when I dont use the blur filter on the curves, which was odd to me.

Anyways, anyone got any tips for improving performance at all. I have had a quick search on google and got a few results, but nothing outstanding.


Cheers

[justkevin]

It's very pretty, but without knowing how you've currently got it coded, it's hard to offer specific recommendations.

What operations are you executing every frame?

[nickpolet]

Basically, Ive got a curve class which 'dies' after 3 secs and Ijust create a new curve class with a timer in random positions. The positions are controlled by 3 bouncing balls which control the points of where to plot the curve. Theres nothing too difficult in my implementation, I wanted to keep it simple.

Its in a puremvc project so I have just hacked out the basic bits.

This is where I am creating the curves,

var b1:Ball = balls[0];
var b2:Ball = balls[1];
var b3:Ball = balls[2];

var curve:DyingCurve=new DyingCurve(b1.x,b1.y,300,300,b3.x,b3.y);

and the DyingCurve class is just a basic curve with some tweens on the alpha and it removes itself with

this.parent.removeChild(this);

is removeChild the best garbage collection in flash?

[justkevin]

So each individual curve, once drawn, doesn't move at all? If so, I think what you want to do is draw one curve per frame and then render it to a bitmap and apply a colortransform to the bitmapData. That should get you over 100fps easily.

[justkevin]

The code for that would looks something like:

In your setup, create a bitmap and a colortransform object. Something like:

var bmpData:BitmapData = new BitmapData(800,800,true,0x00000000);
myBitmap = new Bitmap(bmpData);
myColortransform = new ColorTransform(1,1,1,1,5,5,1,-4); 

Each frame, after you've drawn a curve to your shape (clear the shape.graphics first):

// Assume shape has your curve drawn to it:
myBitmap.bitmapData.draw(myShape)
myBitmap.bitmapData.colorTransform(myColortransform) 

[nickpolet]

Yea i tried this method but it was rendering strangley. It seemed as though flash was having an issue sorting the images properly because there was so many of them. I think I have found a quicker solution to getting this effect. Some pixel bender magic