Panning Large Images

[jessicuh webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a project where the client wants to pan very large images left to right across the screen. This is easy enough to do but they aren't happy with the motion of the pan. The crux of the problem is two-fold:

#1 - The images are close to 3000 pixels wide and the stage is 800 x 600. So the moving the image that far in less than 7 seconds and achieving absolutey smooth motion is pretty hard.

#2 - Since the image is SO LARGE it seems to be very draining on processor speed and gets real chunky.

The only thing that I can come up with to "trick" Director into performing this is to cut in image into 3 (1000 px wide) images, pan each image in it's own channel and adjust the transparencies of them to make it look like it's one seamless image.

Does anyone know of a better idea? This client has sat in on Director demos and seen how beautiful the motion can be but I"m sure they weren't looking at images this size! Is there a resource anywhere that deals with using large images?

Thanks so much!
jessicuh

[Charles Parcell webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Well, I personally would use imaging lingo to complete this. To do this look up 'copyPixels'

Another way (one I have personally never done) is to cut your image up into small parts (much like you did but even smaller). I would guess 200x200 squares are ok perhaps 400x400. What ever you chose. Set your Stage to the large image WxH (so 3000x3000). Place all your pieces so they look like the one big image. Now this is the key, make a flim loop out of all those sprites. Delete your setup sprite tiles and just use the Film Loop.

The benefits here:
1) Imaging Lingo not required for those non programmer types
2) All you have to move around is the film loop rather than 100 or so sprites.
3) Director only has to keep 9 or so 200x200 images in memory and push them around rather than a single 3000x3000 image. Director unloads any of the tiles that are not visible on Stage so it does a lot of memory management for you.

Hope this helps


Charles Parcell
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Director MX
----
Web Forums
----
Feature Request & Bug Form

[Charles Parcell webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

oh and set your stage back to 800x600 of course :P


Charles Parcell
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Director MX
----
Web Forums
----
Feature Request & Bug Form