Particle Effect - Energy Cloud - Loopable

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 8:01 am

Is there a way to make this particle effect loop seamlessly? I tried importing it into Flash to make smoke for my volcano and it looks pretty good except for that jump. Short of manually dragging around all the symbols created in Flash for a few frames to make a transition it seems hard.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:54 am

Well, here's how I would do it. Import the volcano particles into the Flash library, which inserts them into a symbol automatically. Usually this symbol is a movieclip -- change it to a graphic symbol by right-clicking on it and selecting "properties" from the drop-down menu. Make a note of how many frames the symbol has -- let's call it X, while we're being schoolmarmy...! Drag the symbol onto the stage, and make enough extra frames on the timeline to show the graphic. Make one more frame at X+1, and make this an empty keyframe (F7). Next you are going to make a cross-dissolve with this symbol; if you know how to do this, skip the next two paragraphs!

Choose a point about two thirds along the timeline -- call it Y. Make keyframe. Make another keyframe at the end (X). Now select the graphic, and change its Alpha property to 1. Select Y on the timeline. Under "Tween" in the properties panel, select Motion Tween. Volcano effect should now fade to invisible.

Make another layer. Go to Y on the timeline, and add enough frames to show the volcano effect in full from that point. Drag the volcano effect onto the stage again in this layer. Now fade this volcano effect up from zero visibility to full visibilty in the same space that the original clip faded down. You've now made your cross-dissolve.

Hope this helps.

J

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:45 pm

Thanks! Have to tweak it a bit but already looks better. Now I have to see if there is a Flask component that can break apart symbols on multiple keyframes at once -the animation ran much faster after I broke up the resultant 30+ symbols from the import.

I still think AS should spin off a particle system tool for Flash users - I bet for $19 dollars they'd sell a million of them.