sprites

[sabermast886]

can and how do i use sprites in the flash animations to make the sprites move? Yes i'm a newbie

[blanius]

No there is no support for sprites in 3dfa. The new flash 8 player does support it but 3dfa still exports flash 6

[sabermast886]

where do i get the new flash 8 player animator??

[ConnELITE]

Flash Mx 8 or watever can be found on the macromedia site. Just type it in on google. To warn you its 400 dollars. oh and wtf are sprites?

[cyber reaper]

I dont understand how anything the other guys answered you has to do with your question so i'll try and answere myself.
but first , i want to comment bouth bret and connElite on their replies.

a) Any flash player will support GIF ,JPG ,PNG ,BMP and even vector sprites... there is really no big difference between the versions but the way they displays them.

b) flash MX is refered to flash versions 7.0 and 7.2 ,Flash 8 is another title of flash having no connection to the MX title ,Macromedia Flash 8 is a tool for mostly professional and i must warn anyone who is willing to use it to lay off with the new filters ,they're sometimes just heavy of no resone so stick with photoshop for those.

and now ,as for your question.

3DFA as any other animating programe is supporting the standard graphic formats such as - JPG ,GIF ,PNG and BMP (and some more not worth mentioning).
to each format its own uses :

JPG - used for backgrounds and basicly any rectangular element with minimum file size.
GIF - a format used to make either still pictures or animations with low colour plates ,GIF files are usefull in sprites due to the fact they contain the transperasy option and so can be used for more advace shapes.
BMP - the best of the qualities for still photos with a very big filesize ,usally recomanded converting to JPG instead.
PNG - a formate combining BMP's quality and GIF's trasperasy option ,recomanded only for the best of sprites ,the PNG combination of a BMP and GIF return a respected filesize which is usally lower than the BMP however is still pretty high.

where to get the sprites from :
option A - websites (dont ask me , i have to clue)
option B - make them yourself.

what to do with them ? (in 3DFA) :

basicly when you're talking about sprites you're talking about an animation's frames ,the means all you need to do is to cut the parts you want ,then edit them in photoshop or any other programe or use the trasperasy option in 3DFA and then place them in an animation element in your movie ,each frame will have its own significant picture ,make sure the pictures combine well and form a smoth movement. to move the sprite around (imagine you've made an animation element of a running character).
your animation element will contain the character running in place then all you need to do is to creat the move to action from the actions panle.

your friendly neigburhood CyberReaper.

[blanius]

Fact is in programming parlance "SPRITES" usually means a sheet of images that you can 'pull' frames from for your animation squence. 3dfa and Flash MX do not support this.

AS2 as of Flash 8 does! Koolmoves which now can export flash 8 supports this as well as most of flash 8 features, not well documented yet but they are there.

as for using the filters and such in flash 8 you are wrong. The reason to use them is 1- they can be applied dyanamiclly for effects, 2- they work on vector objects and bitmaps. doing you stuff in PS then importing is going to make you file sizes much larger as flash has to store the bitmap.

[cyber reaper]

trust me , the filters are not something to mess with if you just started working with flash , people tend to use them too much and make the whole thing blow right in their face , thats why i adviced to lay off them ,at least until knowing the limits of flash on the viewer's computer.

i cant argue with you about what sprites are (basicly because we bouth have our share of flash ,each in his own business so we probebly bouth right about this one.).


In general ,flash 8 filters are great , yeah ,only when and if used currectly , seen too many people using it in such ways that it actually made their flash flunk.

sincerely ,Cyber Reaper.