Codezwiz >> Forums >> Flash Help >> The step-by-step guide to the dreaded Glint in MX2004

As the last turorial was made with Flash 4, Those who used MX were a little confused, so here it is, step by step.

1. Turn on your Pc... no, just kidding

First, set the document properties in the Properties Panel.
Size 300x100, frame rate (I usually use 25) and set a background colour, even if you want the movie to be transparent, it will help to have a background colour other then white to see what you're doing.

Ok, theres only one layer at the moment, name it Text1. Select frame one, click on the the text tool, and type in the text you want. Try and pick a font that isn't too thin, the effect shows up better if the font is a bit more meaty. A silver/grey colour seems to work well.
Position the text where you want it, and then with it selected, right click on it and hit Convert to Symbol. The behavior should be Graphic. Give it a name if you want to.

Ok, so far we have one layer, with one symbol (your text) at keyframe 1.
Go to the timeline and select that keyframe, then right click and hit Copy Frames. Make a new layer and select frame one on it. Right click and select Paste Frames.

Ok, now we have two layers, both with one keyframe, and both with the same symbol (your text) on them.
Select layer 1, then create a new layer. This new layer should now be between the two with the symbols.

Open the Colour Mixer and select Linear. Add a Colour Proxy and put in in the center of the gradient scale.
Set this center one to white, with 100% Alpha. Set both the outside ones to White with 0% Alpha. You may need to drag the 2 outside ones in slightly to get the effect you need.

Select frame one of the middle layer, then use the Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangle that is about 3 times the height of the text, and has a width of around 2-3 characters. Make sure that the rectangle has no outline set!
Right click on the rectange and Convert it to a Symbol. Right Click again and select Free TRansform. By holding your mouse on the corner, you'll be able to rotate it to about 40 degrees.

Now drag the rectange to a position that is just before the text, but will cover the text as it moves across it.

Add a keyframe on the each layer at around frame 30. On the middle layer (rectangle) select frame 30 and then drag the rectangle to just to the right of the text. Select frame on of the same layer, right click it, and select Creat Motion Tween.

Select the top layer by clicking on it's name, and right click it. Select Mask.

That's it! Experiment with the rectangle width, the length of the animation and if you want a deleay between glints, just add 20 or 30 frames to each layer after the last keyframe.

Check it out man i done it cool and if i can do it anyone can do this seriously

Hitman_2oo4

wtg!

Originally posted by redhot_2oo3:

1. Turn on your Pc... no, just kidding

LoL hehehehehe...

*edited* sorry i just realized the title and my question feels stupid sorry lol

Check that you applied the mask, that's the crucial bit.

When you make the rectangle, turn off outline (stroke color) in the properties panel.

This sig was made with 3D Studio Max. The animation was then rendered to an avi file. Then it was converted to a swf file with a program called Vid2Flash, finally it was tweaked in Flash 4 to get the filesize down.

There are loads of Flash tutorials out there, just do a Google search on Flash Tutorials and you'll find a bunch.