Flash CS3 Graphics help..Transparent Buttons.

[KEVINS]

I am new to Flash and I have read and played with a lot of tutorials and I understand Flash enough to make a basic button at this time. But I am having problems make a specific button for a website.

1. I want the button to be light grey and rectangular with a beveled edge. (300 x 90) to match my current background image.
2. I want the button to be 80% transparent in the UP stage except for the text which will be black.
3. I want the button to be the true color (non-transparent grey) in the OVER, DOWN, and HIT stage.

The problems I'm having is the Bevel comand doesn't give me the same results in Flash as in Photoshop. The beveled edges look really goofy no matter what settings I used. I tried to make my image in PS and bring the image in but I can't get the transparency to work b/c the transparency in the first stage caries over through all the stages. I can't set the transparency independently for each stage.

If Flash would create the beveled edge like I want this wouldn't be an issue but it's looks goofy when Flash does the bevel command.

Can someone help?
THNX
ks

 

[KEVINS]

TTT
More info:
I tried making the button that I want in photoshop but when I bring it into Flash as a GIF or PNG I can't seem to change the transparency of it at all. Should I be able to? It seems that this would be a no-brainer to do but I can't get it to work.

KS

 

[Junior Samples]

Kevin

you can custom make the beveled button in flash as large as you want after all its vector so if you make a button thats
600 x 300 and save as a symbl you resize it any way you like and the file size will never change, All its saving are a few vector lines so even if the button is 600 x 300 during the design stage then resize it, the file size will only be like 1K..lol

Now if you add bitmap to button then it changes the rules

but you can design your button as big as you wish to get more detail in

hope this helps

Also if you get stuck you can always email me the flash file at mcasteel2112@yahoo
just lemme know what your looking for

 

[KEVINS]

Thanks for the input. My drawing skills in flash suck - actually they are non-existant, but that's what I'm trying now and I think that's what will work in the long run. Vector drawings are sooooo different than CADD drawings..LOL..

ks

 

[Junior Samples]

Kevin,

take one of the supplied buttons in the programs library, pull it on stage then resize it huge, now even if you took the hugh version and exported it...its still the same file size as when its a reg size button...Anyway right click on it and keep going to edit untill its broken down completely, take note of how its layered and each part of button is saved as its own symbl

 

[Junior Samples]

Once you get to a point where you got your basic design to where you like it...of course that only lasts so long before your bored with it.. but anyway you can add whats called Event handlers where you assign somthing to happen when you mouse over the button such as playing a small movie clip off to the side or a tween within the button like maybe a little dot that spins around the button.

you can also design an animation/tween and save it as either a graf or a movie clip then when your putting your button together you drag the movie clip onto your button stage for the OVER.

So when you mouse over the button, somthing spins or waves or whatever, if you save as movie clip you can only test by exporting movie, if you save as a grafic then you will see it on main timeline

just work on your layout for right now and post back

 

[KEVINS]

I GOT IT!
What a pita, tho.
I drew in the button in Flash with the 4 edges beveled and this uses 2 different colors for the edges and a different color for the face of the button. In order to create the transparency for the entire button I had to set the transparency for each color separately while in the UP stage. So I highlighted the darker edges first and set their trans to 65, then the lighter edges to 65 then the face to 65. This worked great and the rest of the stages have 100% opacity as I wanted..

I was trying to do the entire image with all 3 colors at the same time but it kept giving me stupid results..
WHEW!
KS

 

[Junior Samples]

Good job now get creative with it and make up a movie clip for the over stage