adding transparent sprite over another sprite - actionscript-3

I need to place a transparent sprite over another sprite. The overlaying sprite will acept some mouse events. When a user move mouse over upper sprite a curve will be drawn. After it'll be processed it will be drawn on the base sprite (and erased on upper).
The idea I have now is to place the sprite, draw a rectange of size equal to sizes of sprite and set alpha to 0.
The question is a bit dump: maybe the proposed solution is not the best. Is there a better way to set width and height (as far a I understand Sprite.width = w; will not help)?
Thank you in advance!

You can't set dimensions directly, while you can draw over that Sprite. So you can do like this:
graphics.beginFill(0,0); // zero alpha fill
graphics.lineStyle(0,0,0); // invisible lines
graphics.drawRect(0,0,width,height);
graphics.endFill();
This way your Sprite can have its alpha remaining at 1, to not hide anything that's its child. Then, whatever curve you would decide to draw in that Sprite, you can draw within a child Shape object, via graphics.moveTo and graphics.lineTo.
UPDATE: According to comments below, setting alpha to 0 won't work with newer Flash player versions, so alpha should be set to a nonzero amount for the events to register on the overlapping sprite.
graphics.beginFill(0x808080,0.01); // almost zero alpha fill

Related

Scale, Position & Rotate Parent object to make child object take up entire stage

Using the first photo below, let's say:
The red outline is the stage bounds
The gray box is a Sprite on the stage.
The green box is a child of the gray box and has a rotation set.
both display object are anchored at the top-left corner (0,0).
I'd like to rotate, scale, and position the gray box, so the green box fills the stage bounds (the green box and stage have the same aspect ratio).
I can negate the rotation easily enough
parent.rotation = -child.rotation
But the scale and position are proving tricky (because of the rotation). I could use some assistance with the Math involved to calculate the scale and position.
This is what I had tried but didn't produce the results I expected:
gray.scaleX = stage.stageWidth / green.width;
gray.scaleY = gray.scaleX;
gray.x = -green.x;
gray.y = -green.y;
gray.rotation = -green.rotation;
I'm not terribly experienced with Transformation matrices but assume I will need to go that route.
Here is an .fla sample what I'm working with:
SampleFile
You can use this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15789937/1627055 to get some basics. First, you are in need to rotate around the top left corner of the green rectangle, so you use green.x and green.y as center point coordinates. But in between you also need to scale the gray rectangle so that the green rectangle's dimensions get equal to stage. With uniform scaling you don't have to worry about distortion, because if a gray rectangle is scaled uniformly, then a green rectangle will remain a rectangle. If the green rectangle's aspect ratio will be different than what you want it to be, you'd better scale the green rectangle prior to performing this trick. So, you need to first transpose the matrix to offset the center point, then you need to add rotation and scale, then you need to transpose it away. Try this set of code:
var green:Sprite; // your green rect. The code is executed within gray rect
var gr:Number=green.rotation*Math.PI/180; // radians
var gs:Number=stage.stageWidth/green.width; // get scale ratio
var alreadyTurned:Boolean; // if we have already applied the rotation+scale
function turn():void {
if (alreadyTurned) return;
var mat:flash.geom.Matrix=this.transform.matrix;
mat.scale(gs,gs);
mat.translate(-gs*green.x,-gs*green.y);
mat.rotate(-1*gr);
this.transform.matrix=mat;
alreadyTurned=true;
}
Sorry, didn't have time to test, so errors might exist. If yes, try swapping scale, translate and rotate, you pretty much need this set of operations to make it work.
For posterity, here is what I ended up using. I create a sprite/movieClip inside the child (green) box and gave it an instance name of "innerObj" (making it the actually content).
var tmpRectangle:Rectangle = new Rectangle(greenChild.x, greenChild.y, greenChild.innerObj.width * greenChild.scaleX, greenChild.innerObj.height * greenChild.scaleY);
//temporary reset
grayParent.transform.matrix = new Matrix();
var gs:Number=stage.stageHeight/(tmpRectangle.height); // get scale ratio
var mat:Matrix=grayParent.transform.matrix;
mat.scale(gs,gs);
mat.translate(-gs * tmpRectangle.x, -gs * tmpRectangle.y);
mat.rotate( -greenChild.rotation * Math.PI / 180);
grayParent.transform.matrix = mat;
If the registration point of the green box is at one of it's corners (let's say top left), and in order to be displayed this way it has a rotation increased, then the solution is very simple: apply this rotation with negative sign to the parent (if it's 56, add -56 to parent's). This way the child will be with rotation 0 and parent -> -56;
But if there is no rotation applied to the green box, there is almost no solution to your problem, because of wrong registration point. There is no true way to actually determine if the box is somehow rotated or not. And this is why - imagine you have rotated the green box at 90 degrees, but changed it's registration point and thus it has no property for rotation. How could the script understand that this is not it's normal position, but it's flipped? Even if you get the bounds, you will see that it's a regular rectangle, but nobody know which side is it's regular positioned one.
So the short answer is - make the registration point properly, and use rotation in order to display it like in the first image. Then add negative rotation to the parent, and its all good :)
Edit:
I'm uploading an image so I can explain my idea better:
 
As you can see, I've created a green object inside the grey one, and the graphics INSIDE are rotated. The green object itself, has rotation of 0, and origin point - top left.
#Vesper - I don't think that the matrix will fix anything in this situation (remember that the green object has rotation of 0).
Otherwise I agree, that the matrix will do a pretty job, but there are many ways to do it :)

actionscript: creating a soft mask using vector shape

I have an hourglass like vector shape and I'd like to use it to mask an image. I'd like to feather the edges - have a soft falloff in transparency that follows the contours of the hour glass. Any ideas how I can do this?
I tried using a gradient fill on a closed shape (using beginGradientFill() and curveTo() functions) but that falloff doesn't follow the contour of the vector shape, it can only go one direction.
Maybe there is a better solution but until somebody comes up with it... I assume you could do the following:
Draw whatever shape you want to use as mask into a transparent bitmap.
Scale a bit the bitmap down (or use a matrix while drawing its bitmapdata).
Apply a blur filter to it.
Put the bitmap's center to the masked clip's center so they are aligned.
Set the masked clip's cacheAsBitmap property to true.

As3 sprite rotationX and rotationY

I have a bit problem with rotationX and rotationY.
It's cool if i just do a roationX and rotaionY below
_eventParent.rotationY =_differentX;
_eventParent.rotationX =_differentY;
However once i have assign a mouse move to the _eventParent. The roationX and roationY change perspectively while the mouse is moving. so instead the item remain the same size. it increase and decrease size prospectively. any idea why is it doing this? is there a possibility to stop this behavior?
Thanks
Please find the image below.
Perspective allows part of your shape to look closer to you than other parts. The problem is that perspective has a center, or "vanishing point" and by default, it is fixed. As you move your shape farther away from the vanishing point, the perspective changes, causing your shape to widen or narrow.
You can fix this by updating the vanishing point so that it is always at the same coordinates as your shape. Since the shape will always be at the vanishing point, the perspective shouldn't change.
To do this, create a perspectiveProjection for your shape:
_eventParent.transform.perspectiveProjection = new PerspectiveProjection();
PerspectiveProjection is located in the flash.geom package, so don't forget to import it.
Then whenever you update your shape's position, update it's vanishing point:
_eventParent.transform.perspectiveProjection.projectionCenter =
new Point(_eventParent.x, _eventParent.y);
You might need to offset the vanishing point by a set number of pixels to get the perspective looking the way you want it to.
Correct me if I misunderstood your question. Your question is that if you apply rotation to the movieClip object, then why does the size appear to be changing?
For simplification, Let's not apply rotation on both X and Y axis. Let's take a rectangular movie clip and onMouseMove we do ++myMovieClip.rotationX;
Now, this statement is going to apply rotation on the object about the X-axis and one would get a perspective of the movie clip flipping across X -axis and this flipping will show as change in size of the object.
The same applies to rotating across y-axis.

Actionscript 3.0 drawRect works weird

I have a BitmapData object named myBitmapData. It was loaded of PNG of size 104x104. This PNG represents a red circle on the transparent background.
There is also a Sprite object named myBackground. I want render that red circle into myBackground.
myBackground.graphics.beginBitmapFill(myBitmapData);
myBackground.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, myBitmapData.width, myBitmapData.height);
myBackground.graphics.endFill();
addChild(myBackground);
Everything is fine. I see a red circle in the left top of myBackground.
But when I change the third line to
myBackground.graphics.drawRect(0, 52, myBitmapData.width, myBitmapData.height);
and expect my circle to be translated 52 pixels down, I actually obtain something strange (for me :)): there are two red half-circles (they form like hourglass).
So, the question is: how do I render myBitmapData into the random position of myBackground?
P.S.
In the case of
myBackground.graphics.drawRect(0, 104, myBitmapData.width, myBitmapData.height);
it is circle again :)
This is caused by beginBitmapFill's default repeat = true parameter. There's an example in the docs. Disabling the repetition won't work though, you'd just get a half circle then.
There are several ways to fix this:
Use a Matrix with a translation (displacement) as argument in beginBitmapFill.
Draw the rectangle at 0,0 on another Sprite, and move that sprite to where you want it on the background.
Don't draw directly to the background, but to another bitmap using copyPixels. Then fill the background with that bitmap.

Pygame how to change size of a surface?

How do you change the size of a surface in pygame that has an image (not scaling). When I load an image in pygame the surface becomes the size of the image. I need to change the size of the surface to be the size of a frame (sprite sheet).
Here is code I used to solve issue (thanks to Chris Dennett):
self.surface = pygame.Surface((20, 20))
self.surface.blit(pygame.image.load(imageName).convert_alpha(), (0,0), (0, 0, frameWidth, frameHeight))
For sprite sheets, you have 2 good options.
1) Load spritesheet as one Surface.
When blitting, use the source rect argument. This will blit just one frame, from the sheet.
2) Use subsurfaces.
Load spritesheet as one Surface.
Load a subsurface, of each frame you want : http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/surface.html#Surface.subsurface
As far as you are concerned, the subsurface is a 'new' surface, with the width and height of the cell. But, it's not duplicate memory. It's linked.
From the docs:
Returns a new Surface that shares its pixels with its new parent. The
new Surface is considered a child of the original. Modifications to
either Surface pixels will effect each other. Surface information like
clipping area and color keys are unique to each Surface.
Create a new surface, passing in the desired width and height as arguments (i.e., how big the sprite is). Then use newsurf.blit(spritesheet, (0, 0), (posX, posY, newsurf.getWidth(), newsurf.getHeight())). Should work. Then you can use newsurf as your sprite. posX and posY should be the x and y you want to blit from in your sprite sheet respectively.