The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room Page 10
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You might have noticed that the filled text on the Text frame doesn't do much of anything when you play the movie. We'll add transparency to the text so it magically appears as the radar sweep passes over it.

Right click in frame 20, Text layer, and select Add Keyframe from the pop up menu. Add another keyframe in frame 23, and one more in frame 25 as shown. Notice that the tweening arrows automatically appear between the frames.

Click inside frame 1, Text layer to select the frame.

In the Effect tabbed section (next to the Frame tabbed section), select Alpha (transparency) from the drop down list. (Or Modify > Instance in pre-5 versions of Flash).

Drag the slider to 0% or key in 0 in the text entry box. Select frame 20 and make the Alpha setting for this frame 0% as well. Select frame 23 and make the Alpha setting 50%. Make the Alpha setting for frame 25 80%. Finally make the Alpha setting for frame 30 0%. Press Enter to see the results. As the sweep passes over the the Xara Xone text, the text will appear to light up and then fade.

NOTE: You can export a .swf object with Flat, Mix transparency from Xara and it will import into Flash with the transparency intact. Flash only supports Xara's Flat, Mix transparency. Linear or other fountain transparencies will be lost. Same goes for filled objects. Flash supports solid fills and 2-color Linear and Circular fills only.

I was about to tell you that Flash only supports Linear and Circular fills, but I am wrong as Wayne, a.k.a. IVCA reminded me. Click here to see Wayn'e mini-tutorial for creating an elliptical fill.

If we add a Sonar beep sound effect to our movie we can enhance the feeling of a radar scope.

Click Here to download the file sonar_ping.wav . Save it into the folder with your other Flash files.

Import (File > Import > All Sound Files) the sonar_ping.wav file. (You won't see it anywhere except the Library where you can test the sound before you insert it).

Right click on frame 21 on the Sound layer and select Insert Keyframe from the pop up menu.

Select the Sound tabbed section and select sonar_ping.wav from the drop down list of sounds. (Or Modify > Instance > Sound from pre-5 versions of Flash. Press Enter on your computer keyboard to preview your movie.


 

In Flash you can do some minor editing of your sound files. Press Edit... in the Sound tabbed section. From the Effect: drop down list, select Fade Left to Right. Press OK to apply the change.

All that remains is to name and save your movie. Select File > Export Movie. Use the default settings and press Save.

You can also Publish your movie which creates an HTML document with your movie embedded. You can Copy and Paste this HTML code into another Web document. Refer to the Help files for instructions.

So what does the final movie look like? Meet me on the next page and I'll project it for you.