Flash Particle Effects with Actionscript 3.0
By Craig Campbell
Running
Time: 5 hour, 21 minutes
Overview
Learn how to create rain, snow, smoke, fire, and much more in this exciting video series on Flash particle effects. In essence, a particle effect involves taking a single particle movie clip and duplicating it, randomizing it, and animating it using ActionScript. In this videos series, Craig Campbell shows you how to build particle effects of your own using Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0.
Detailed Video Descriptions
1 - Introduction (Running Time - 2:24)
2 - Adding a Particle to the Stage (Running Time - 11:37)
In order to create a particle effect, you must first learn to add particles to the stage, and in this video, Craig will demonstrate how to do that.
3 - Creating the Particle Class (Running Time - 6:49)
In an effort to keep our code clean by following good object-oriented programming principles, Craig will show you how to create a separate ActionScript class for your particles.
4 - Randomizing Particles (Running Time - 10:48)
In this video, Craig will show you how to put multiple particles on the stage while randomizing their position, transparency, and size.
5 - Adding Movement (Running Time - 10:48)
Your particle effects are going to be boring if the particles just sit there on the stage, so in this video, Craig will show you how to create movement among your scattered particles.
6 - Randomizing Movement (Running Time - 8:19)
You might not always want all of your particles moving in the same direction and at the same speed, so in this video, Craig shows you how to randomize these two variables in order to create some eye-catching effects.
7 - Creating Snow (Running Time - 13:50)
In our first formalized effect, Craig will show you how to take everything you’ve learned so far in order to create a falling snow effect using ActionScript.
8 - Cleaning Up the ActionScript (Running Time - 11:36)
In this video, Craig will help you clean up your code by showing you how to set the x and y velocities within your FLA file instead of within the particle class itself. This allows the particle class to take care of only the things it really needs to take care of.
9 - Continuous Snowfall (Running Time - 8:17)
We’ve added some snow to the stage already, but once it falls, there’s no more snow. In this video, Craig adds a little more code to the FLA file in order to create continuous snowfall.
10 - Removing Snowflakes (Running Time - 6:44)
If we allow Flash to keeping adding more and more snowflakes, that’s just more and more that Flash will have to keep up with, and eventually, it will really slow down the computer. In order to keep things clean and running smoothly, Craig will show you in this video how to remove snowflakes from the stage once they pass out of view.
11 - Creating Rain (Running Time - 15:44)
As you can imagine, creating rain in ActionScript really isn’t all that different from creating snow. So, in this video, Craig will show you how to make the proper adjustments in order to create a rain particle effect.
12 - Introduction to Gravity (Running Time - 9:59)
So far, we’ve created particles that move in one general direction without changing course. But there may be some instances where we might want to add a little more realism to our movement, so in this video, we’ll throw a little bit of simple physics into the equation by talking about how to simulate gravity in ActionScript. (It’s simpler than you might think!)
13 - Bouncing Particles (Running Time - 12:06)
Now that we’ve added gravity to our environment, Craig shows you how to add a floor off of which the particles will bounce.
14 - Gravity Particle Effect 1 (Running Time - 14:35)
Using our discussion of particles and gravity, Craig creates a particle effect where numerous particles are affected by gravity.
15 - Gravity Particle Effect 2 (Running Time - 7:39)
In this gravity effect, Craig add walls and a floor in order to get the particles to bounce around on the stage.
16 - Gravity Particle Effect 3 (Running Time - 13:45)
In this video, Craig experiments with different settings for the gravity particle effect in order to achieve different results. He also shows how to make your particle effect react to mouse clicks.
17 - Debugging a Problem (Running Time - 6:46)
In our bouncing tutorial, there’s a slight bug with some of the particles getting stuck. In this video, Craig shows you how to debug this problem to improve the performance of the file.
18 - Sparkler Effect Part 1 (Running Time - 10:15)
Ready for some festive fireworks? In this video, Craig gets started with the creation of a sparkler effect in ActionScript.
19 - Sparkler Effect Part 2 (Running Time - 7:12)
In this video, Craig will show you how to remove old particles from the stage using an array.
20 - Sparkler Effect Part 3 (Running Time - 8:31)
In this video, Craig finishes up the sparkler effect by adding some rotation to the particles and playing around with a few of the settings.
21 - Smoke Effect Part 1 (Running Time - 8:33)
In this video, Craig will construct the ActionScript class for a smoke particle effect.
22 - Smoke Effect Part 2 (Running Time - 13:22)
In this video, Craig creates the smoke particle and fleshes out some of the ActionScript for the fla file.
23 - Smoke Effect Part 3 (Running Time - 10:06)
With the basics of the smoke effect in place, Craig makes some final tweaks to the settings in the ActionScript code in order to give our smoke its finished look.
24 - Fire Effect (Running Time - 12:25)
Surprisingly, we can transform our smoke effect into a fire effect simply by changing a few small things. In this video, Craig will show you how.
25 - BitmapData Part 1 (Running Time - 12:59)
The BitmapData class is a powerful addition to the ActionScript language that we’re going to play around with for some of our particle effects. In this video, Craig introduces you to the BitmapData class and shows you how you can use it to take a snapshot of the stage.
26 - BitmapData Part 2 (Running Time - 13:42)
After making a trail with the BitmapData class, Craig demonstrates how to enhance the effect by adding filters, and then he introduces us to the ColorMatrixFilter class.
27 - BitmapData Part 3 (Running Time - 9:39)
In this video, Craig completes his discussion of the ColorMatrixFilter class as he applies the filter to the bitmap trail that we’ve created.
28 - Fire Effect with Trails (Running Time - 16:12)
Now that we have a basic understanding of the BitmapData class and the ColorMatrixFilter class, we’re going to apply what we’ve learned in order to make a faint afterglow for our fire effect.
29 - Particle Attraction Part 1 (Running Time - 16:37)
In this video, we’ll get started creating an effect where our particles are attracted to the mouse cursor.
30 - Particle Attraction Part 2 (Running Time - 17:21)
In this video, Craig finishes up the particle attraction effect and experiments with the settings in order to get different results.
31 - Conclusion (Running Time - 1:30)

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This service is invaluable, because it can save you countless hours trying to solve a problem, not to mention the frustration we have all experienced trying to get Flash to work like it is suppose to. How many times have you been just 30 seconds away from putting your fist through the computer screen or tossing your keyboard across the room?
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