Chapter 4: Rendering Techniques

Overview

What well cover in this chapter:

• Colors in Flash

• The Drawing API

• Color transforms

• Filters

• Bitmap control

• Important formulas in this chapter

Up to now, most of the graphics youve added to the sample programs in the book have been pre-drawn. Youve put a circle, an arrow, or another shape on the stage, converted it to a movie clip symbol, and that was that.

In this chapter, Im going to dive into visual content creation in ActionScript. Specifically, Im going to go over color in Flash, the drawing API, and the Color object. Additionally, Ill cover three items available only in Flash 8: the ColorTransform object, filters, and the BitmapData object. So, if you are working in Flash MX 2004, you can skip those three sections.

Youll be working with a lot of colors in this chapter, so lets cover that subject first.