alpha - drain on CPU?

[plankd]

I'm having trouble getting animations to play simultaneously - they're just too choppy.

The case in point involved several lines of text fading in (using alpha) whilst a vector shape rotates in the background ( the shape is itself set to 20% alpha)

It occurred to me that maybe using the alpha might be the problem - I'm just not sure

Any ideas?

[img]null[/img]

[plankd]

I'm having trouble getting animations to play simultaneously - they're just too choppy.

The case in point involved several lines of text fading in (using alpha) whilst a vector shape rotates in the background ( the shape is itself set to 20% alpha)

It occurred to me that maybe using the alpha might be the problem - I'm just not sure

Any ideas?

[img]null[/img]

[Mark (theKeeper)]

Actually your guess is mostly correct, Alpha effects can create not only larger file sizes of a scene or movie, but can also be a cause for choppy playback, depending on the power of your machine. And over the Web, the user's CPU and their connection speed will come into play as well. Both things to consider.

A solution to this (mostly) would be to use a tint or brightness colour effect instead of the Alpha effect. Fade you text/object into your background colour, instead of making it "transparent".

Also... text effects in general can be somewhat tasking on the system. Macromedia's Help Files explain this in more detail, but basically put, it comes down to Flash's method of rendering a scene/movie - ala ever time the contents of the canvas changes, Flash "redraws/refreshes" the entire area. And text itself is very complex to begin with (line wise). Just something else to take note of. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

PS: someone please correct me if i'm wrong here...?

Hope this helps.
Mark (aka theKeeper)...

[pknair]

Another issue, to add on to all the things which Mark noted, is the fact that text is often broken apart and treated as if each character were an individual object or symbol. This means more objects being tweened, and I'm sure you've all noticed that the more objects being tweened at once, the more tasking this is on the rendering engine. That's why a lot of Flash animations are so simple, and have no more than maybe 6 or 7 objects tweened at any one time (although even that can be pushing it, depending on the size/complexity of the objects).


hth,
Deep (just a guy)

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