Anti Aliased Text

Printable View

03-04-2002, 12:41 PM
jdura99

Does Flash MX allow you to unAnti Alias your text? IE for Bitmap fonts, etc... without turning it into a Dynamic Text Field? And if not, are we able to animate and/or mask the Dynamic Text Field now?

Josh Dura
03-04-2002, 01:26 PM
CNO

So far no one has brought up the pixel-snapping feature of Flash MX - by placing your pixel fonts on whole numbers, you can prevent them from anti-aliasing. Not as user-friendly as, say, Photoshop's different levels of aliasing for text (strong, crisp, etc.), but a nice addition nonetheless.
03-04-2002, 01:28 PM
Pope de Flash

The answer to all of these I am afraid is NO. They didnt make any changes to the way text is handeled except for the new vertical text as far as I have seen so far and the ability to break text into idividual letters and have them still remain font outlines. How ever as CNO has stated it does work if you use the snap to pixel setting. Now that great if you can leave it snaped but....
[Edited by Pope de Flash on 03-04-2002 at 12:32 PM]
03-04-2002, 01:52 PM
jeroen84

To make a note: This was already possible with Flash 5. You can place the text on a whole pixel by using the info panel.(X/Y coordinates)

-Jman
03-04-2002, 02:29 PM
Pope de Flash

of couse I think most people knew that since pixel fonts have been popular over the last year now, the point of course was that you could use the snap to pixel command. Again it only works if you leave it set on that spot. Now if you move it you lose it.
03-04-2002, 03:04 PM
CNO

Quote:

Originally posted by Pope de Flash
of couse I think most people knew that since pixel fonts have been popular over the last year now, the point of course was that you could use the snap to pixel command. Again it only works if you leave it set on that spot. Now if you move it you lose it.

Well, really now, how important is legibility if your text is flying across the screen? :D
03-04-2002, 03:48 PM
ultrarob

Torture!!!!!!!!!!!

Not being able to have aliased text without some kind of faff inducing workaround is ABSOLUTELY APPALLING!

Gutted...
03-04-2002, 03:56 PM
Kraken

"faff inducing"?
03-04-2002, 04:56 PM
FlashGuru

Text can be manipulated with code completley now and so you can anti-alias your text with code using simply:

Code:

textfield._x=Math.round(textfield._x) textfield._y=Math.round(textfield._y)
03-04-2002, 05:32 PM
jeroen84

Wow... looks kewl...

-Jman
03-04-2002, 05:36 PM
Pope de Flash

See I knew Guru would come in and correct me :) Thats why I said that I know of :D
03-04-2002, 09:51 PM
monkii

It's still a shame they didn't implement an 'antialias off' feature. The current workaround has potential to get very frustrating...
m
03-04-2002, 09:55 PM
jdura99

Thats what I meant, I was wondering if they had an AntiAlias off feature. I know of all the workarounds, they just get a bit annoying after a while, and now we are going to have to wait another 2 years until the next chance of them fixing it. Oh well, the other new features outway it, and I guess I am just being lazy :)

waiting for pope to call me a lazy BUM :D

Josh Dura
03-04-2002, 09:55 PM
ultrarob

Still torture...

This is "faff inducing":

"Text can be manipulated with code completley now and so you can anti-alias your text with code using simply:"

(see above post)

plus, you still have to use pixel fonts. Major drag. OK, it's not really torture but it's a bit rubbish.
03-05-2002, 12:23 AM
Sybersnake

Quote:

Originally posted by CNO

Quote:

Originally posted by Pope de Flash
of couse I think most people knew that since pixel fonts have been popular over the last year now, the point of course was that you could use the snap to pixel command. Again it only works if you leave it set on that spot. Now if you move it you lose it.

Well, really now, how important is legibility if your text is flying across the screen? :D

well, theres a lot more to it.. if you have pixel text that is in seperate text boxes.. and you turn them into a mc. Almost automatically something goes wrong and they become antialised! you will probably still have to go back and fix a few things like that.. But at least placing text will be much easier.

Lets not forget this could also be used to keep objects sharper!!
03-05-2002, 12:25 AM
Sybersnake

Quote:

Originally posted by FlashGuru
Text can be manipulated with code completley now and so you can anti-alias your text with code using simply:

Code:

textfield._x=Math.round(textfield._x) textfield._y=Math.round(textfield._y)

thats always what you have to do if you have a scrollbar with pixel fonts in it.. just keep on Math.round() the values every step of the script.
03-05-2002, 05:07 AM
Damir Secki

I hate the dynamic text not being antialiased (only static)

Is this corrected in FMX?
03-12-2002, 09:24 PM
grandmasterC

I'm very upset

Hi Everyone,

All the new features of FlashMX sound great, but the one feature I need still hasn't been fixed. Why can't we choose whether we want anti-aliasing on or off text?

This is so frustrating!! I have writen to Macromedia about this problem and I encourage everyone else to do so as well so hopefully it will be in the next version.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/em...shform/?6213=9

In the meantime does anyone know any practical solutions to this problem. I have looked at using pixle fonts, but even a lot of these look crap unless you publish in low quality mode, which of course makes every thing else look crap.

If anyone knows any cool pixel fonts that work well in flash when published in high quality mode please let me know.

Is the best solution when building a dynamic site to use the _sans font? This ok when you don't need to scale for different browsers and screen resolutions. But if you scale a movie with the _sans font it ends up looking crap.
Is there any other way than having to create a seperate movie for 800x600 and one for 1024x768??

I know I have a lot of questions, but I would be very greatful if someone can answer even one of them,

Cheers,

grandmasterC
03-12-2002, 10:39 PM
monkii

all pixel fonts can look fine in hi-quality. You just have to follow the rules - http://www.minml.com explains them quite well..
m
03-12-2002, 11:49 PM
grandmasterC

Hi,

Thanks for your response but the url you posted http://www.minml.com is just talking about JAVA and XML and parsers no fonts here or advice either.

Does anyone know any sites that have pixel fonts that work well in Flash when published in High Quality mode?

Is the best solution when building a dynamic site to use the _sans font? This ok when you don't need to scale for different browsers and screen resolutions. But if you scale a movie with the _sans font it ends up looking crap.
Is there any other way than having to create a seperate movie for 800x600 and one for 1024x768??

help me Obi1 your my only hope,

grandmasterC
03-13-2002, 02:42 AM
CRjr

FlashGuru,

With regard to the lack of MX addressing this, I was just wondering, could you make a smart clip or a function that would point that great code to whatever text you needed on the page (or all of it, I guess, since it would make the appearance so much better)?

Also, won't it JUST work on Dynamic text fields, since it has to be a named variable?
03-13-2002, 03:34 AM
Dufy

There are lots of great looking pixel fonts which give you everything you want, and very sharp if you know how to use them.

Not all the pixel fonts come from the miniml website. There are many good ons out there!
03-13-2002, 04:23 AM
Subway

There's a quality property now for textfields:

TextField._quality

But nothing for normal text. Just do no more normal text, place it on pixel and whoop, there it is! Ultrasharp!

Fredi

Btw., did anyone ever noticed that the Mac plug makes a much better atialiasing then the PC plug? I'm not sure why that is, but it really is a difference there.

Fredi
03-13-2002, 04:26 AM
moises

Here you have some urls that will help you...

http://www.flash-france.com/ff2001.php

http://www.miniml.com/flash/index.html

http://www.piregwan.com/ressources/r...reenfonts.php3

http://www.orgdot.com/aliasfonts/

http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdtypo3a.htm

Hope this help you. :)
03-13-2002, 07:38 AM
ultrarob

Quote:

Originally posted by grandmasterC

Hi,

Does anyone know any sites that have pixel fonts that work well in Flash when published in High Quality mode?

Is the best solution when building a dynamic site to use the _sans font? This ok when you don't need to scale for different browsers and screen resolutions. But if you scale a movie with the _sans font it ends up looking crap.
Is there any other way than having to create a seperate movie for 800x600 and one for 1024x768??

grandmasterC

Pixel fonts do not remain crisp if scaled or rotated but should work for static and dynamic text. They must be placed exactly on the pixel and, if in a movieclip, that movie clip must be dead on pixel too.

The _sans font won't work on Mac in the same way as on PC. It will still be anti-aliased and have a slightly different position on the page.

Rob
03-13-2002, 12:47 PM
TheForcer

Quote:

There's a quality property now for textfields:

TextField._quality

But nothing for normal text. Just do no more normal text, place it on pixel and whoop, there it is! Ultrasharp!

Hmm.. could you give a bit better explanation for that? Didn't quite understand it.. (I might be quite stupid tho, hehe)

Quote:

Btw., did anyone ever noticed that the Mac plug makes a much better atialiasing then the PC plug? I'm not sure why that is, but it really is a difference there.

If you are talking Mac OS X, then it might be the quartz engine at work.. which really looks nice.. I haven't noticed much of a difference tho..
03-13-2002, 12:54 PM
Subway

TextField._quality <-- Forged it, I heard that this is just the same property like _root._quality (The quality setting over the hole movie)

I really don't know why they added it to textfield, too.

Fredi
03-13-2002, 01:32 PM
Phil Pond

Isn't that what the _quality property does? Turn off anti-aliasing? The problem with the old _quality property is that it would work only for the whole movie, so it was either on or off. If we could turn it off (set quality to low) just for textfields and jpegs that would solve a lot of problems... Not to mention save host computer resourses.

Phil
03-13-2002, 11:40 PM
grandmasterC

Hi guys,

Thanks everyone for their help. Thanks Moises for the links I have found some cool pixel fonts so cheers for that.

Subway thankyou for the info on what can now be done with flashMX using the TextField._quality. As I don't have FlashMX...yet, but will do by friday. Could you please tell me exactly how I would set an individual text field quality to low while maintaining the rest of the movie is high quality mode?

would it be something like

textfield._quality=LOW;

And are you sure that it will leave the quality of the whole .swf in HIGH mode, because I thought ._quality was a global property and as such would change the appearance of everything in .swf???

Cheers :)

grandmasterC
03-13-2002, 11:50 PM
monkii

If that works, that would be great!
setting quality to low on the text field would effectively turn off antialiasing.. or is this just wishful thinking :)
grandmaster - sorry bout the typo before - it's http://www.miniml.com
03-14-2002, 04:17 AM
Subway

It will not work, the textField._quality is the same like the movie quality, so no change to set different qualitys for different objects. Sorry.

Fredi