BASIC CONCEPTS
You could conceivably make dozens of different incarnations of one cast member, each for example a different
size or place on the stage, each with its own score channel. these incarnations are called
sprites, and they're the basic building blocks of Director animation. Understanding
the role of sprites (and their potential) is a key step in working with Director.
You'll create a sense of animation either by changing the sprite position from cell to cell or by switching one
sprite for another. Sprites are usually refered to by the number of the channel they occupy. Changes to the sprite
don't affect its source cast member, but changes made to that cast member will be reflected in all sprites derived
from it.
When you place a sprite on the Stage by dragging a cast member to the Score, that sprite appears centered on the
Stage. To achieve that nice balanced effect, Director has to calculate the physical center of the sprite as well as
of the Stage. that is why every graphic cast member has a registration point, which
you can see in the Paint window.
If you push the registration point button, crosshairs appear to indicate where the registration point is. Just
drag the crosshairs to a desired point. This point will be the center of the cast member.
Alway remember when you're working on the Cast level, keep in mind that your changes here affect all sprites!
Keyframing makes it easy to designate any point in a sprite segment as a keyframe. Auto-tweening enables
Director to automatically "tween" (as in 'in between') the cells between keyframes to show any movement that
should occur. In other words, with auto-tweening you can lengthen or shorten a sprite segment, and the motion of
sprites within that segment will be compressed or extended accordingly.
With Space to Time you place all the necessary sprites in a single Score frame, arranging them in the form of the
action. Once you're satisfied with the flow of the sequence, a single command converts the arrangement into a segment
suitable for playback.
The reverse sequence command will retain all of our sprite placement information but will simply flip the order
within the segment.
Reverse sequence is a good tool for orchestrating exits: you can animate a cast member's entrance onto the Stage, use
In-between to keep the cast member steady for any duration, and then paste the entrance animation and select
Reverse Sequence to make the exit.
You can switch cast members corresponding to any sprite while retaining that sprite's placement information. Applying
such a substitution to a segment of sprites effectively gives you the power to save the motion while changing the
image.
Exchange Cast Members is an especially powerful tool, as it can allow you to build your movie first and then refine
the graphic elements later.
We've already established that each sprite is an individual copy of a cast member. Well, ink effects can change the
nature of that copy by dictating how it's drawn on the screen. The various "inks" are actually modes of
display; some change the sprite's appearance radically, while others make subtle changes that show up only when one
sprite interacts with another.
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