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Macromedia Director
Levels: Introductory : Intermediate : Advanced

Introductory Top of Page

Duration: 1 Day

Take your online entertainment, interactive product demonstrations and online learning applications to the next level. Use Director Shockwave Studio to incorporate or Alias/Wavefront Maya 3D assets, Macromedia Flash elements or even RealMedia streams into dazzling destination Web content.

Essentials

  • What is multimedia.
  • Types of presentation
  • Director's role in multimedia
  • The scope of the program
  • Director: a frame-based program
  • Stage, control, panel, cast and score
  • Creating and importing cast members
  • Placing cast members in the score
  • What is a sprite
  • Layers and inks
  • Playing a presentation
  • Setting the tempo
  • Creating cast members in a graphics package
  • Creating cast members in Director
Animation
  • Summary of animation techniques
  • Using Director's automatic animation features
  • Text effects and zoom text
  • Animating with copy and paste
  • Linear sprite tweening
  • Customised sprite tweening
  • Creating and using film loops
  • Creating circular motion
  • Real time recording
  • Leaving trails

Input and Output

  • How Director handles video
  • Importing Video clips
  • Ways of placing digital video in the score
  • Superimposing titles etc
  • Importing audio clips
  • Adding audio to the score
  • Creating a Projector file
Basics of interactivity
  • What is interactivity
  • Using behaviours
  • The power of the go to command
  • Labelling frames with markers
  • Responding to user actions

Intermediate Top of Page

Duration: 1 Day

Animation & Special Effects
  • Revision of animation techniques
  • Paste Relative
  • Reverse Sequence
  • Improving animation speed and efficiency
  • Film loops compared to QuickTime movie creation
  • Colour cycling and palette transitions
  • Creating and editing palettes
  • Animation sprite blend
  • Creating and using masks
  • Creating text masks
  • Using Onion Skin
Director Techniques
  • Transforming paint cast members
  • The importance of cast member colour depth
  • Bitmapped versus quickdraw text
  • Text and field differences
  • Customising the airbrush
  • Creating gradients
  • Mastering ink settings
  • Naming, arranging, retrieving and sorting cast members
  • Working with multiple casts
  • Score window skills
  • Compositing sprites
  • Sound quality and file size
  • Using looped sounds
  • Digital video options
  • Creating digital video
Interactivity
  • Customising behaviours
  • Getting help on Lingo
  • Attaching scripts to cast members
  • Creating movie scripts
  • Creating score scripts
  • Allowing user input
  • Hidden buttons, auto hilite and rollover
  • Using If and Repeat statements

 

Advanced Top of Page

Duration: 1 Day

Production Skills
  • Planning projects
  • Storyboarding and flowcharting
  • Designing a user interface
  • Planning for different machines
  • Font mapping
  • The importance of Save and Compact
  • Protecting movies
  • Projector options
  • Customising a projector
  • Preparing a project for output to CD
Director Techniques
  • Optimising performance: cast members
  • Optimising performance: sprites
  • Optimising performance: freezing playback speeds
  • Playing sounds from disk
  • Using virtual sound channels
  • Looping sounds from disk
  • Navigating through digital video
  • The idiosyncrasies of Direct To Stage
Scripting
  • Different types of script
  • Different types of handler
  • Different types of event
  • Using global and local variables
  • Passing arguments to a handler
  • Handlers that return a value
  • Typical initialisation routines
  • Reducing the number of frames a movie requires
  • Creating a reusable code
  • Switching cast members linked with sprite
  • Switching file linked with cast member
  • Creating conditional structures
  • Creating Loop structures
  • Adding members to your interface
  • Overview of using Director Xtras
  • Using the pop-menu extra
  • Overview of debugging techniques
  • Debugging with alert messages and text fields
  • Using breakpoints
  • Using the debugger

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