Macromedia Director 8.5

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• Director originated from a team of developers who
  were from an animation background
• Director uses metaphors from the movie and
  theatre industries
• By adopting these familiar metaphors, director
  allows animators and graphics artists to create
  multimedia with little or no programming
  experience

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• A director file is called a Movie
• It plays back on the Stage
• The actors which populate the movie are stored
  in the Cast
• Information which controls how the movie plays is
  stored in the Score

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• The Director 8.5 Interface
• Menu bars and toolbars
• The menus contain common Microsoft functions as
  well as those found specifically in Director
• The toolbar provides an easy way to access the
  many different windows in Director as well as
  saying and exporting your Movie, publish your
  finished Movie and control the playback of the
  movie
• Saving and exporting icons
• Window icons

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• Director Windows
• Director has 6 primary windows (these can be
  shown/hidden using the Window menu)
• STAGE displays your movie visually. Here you
  determine the positioning of the media elements
  in your Movie
• CONTROL PANEL controls for playing, stopping,
  rewinding the movie etc
• CAST holds the media elements, which have been
  added to the movie
• Cast members are the assets you use in your
  score and some (scripts are not visible) appear
  visually on the stage
• You can create cast members in Director or you
  can import external media files into your cast

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• SCORE the backbone of the movies. It holds what
  is shown visually on the Stage
• The score window consists of rows called
  Channels and columns called Frames
• The small rectangular areas created by the
  interaction of channels and frames are called
  Cells
• The red rectangle above the visual channels is
  the Playback Head it indicated which frame is
  being displayed on the stage at any particular
  point in time

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• PROPERTY INSPECTOR - Director uses a convenient
  way to view and change the attributes of any
  selected object
• Once an object(cast member or sprite) is
  selected, the relevant tabs for it appear on the
  Property Inspector
• TOOL PALETTE uses icons to represent the
  function of each button
• These buttons represent all the media types you
  can create within Director and some other
  functions to help position sprites on the stage

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• CREATING SPRITES
• You create sprites by placing cast members on
  the Stage or in the Score
• Each time you drag a cast member onto the stage
  you are in fact creating a sprite an instance
  or copy of the cast member which you can
  manipulate (change its shape, size etc.) without
  affecting the cast member from which it is
  derived
• Cast members therefore act as templates
  allowing you to create multiple sprites from the
  same cast member

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• Each sprite can have its own properties and most
  changes do not affect the Cast Member
• Most changes to the Cast member, however, will
  change sprites created from that cast member

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• SIMPLE ANIMATION
• Animation is the appearance of an image changing
  over time. The most common type of animation
  involves moving a sprite on the Stage called
  tweening animation
• Tweening is a traditional animation term that
  describes the process in which an animator draws
  the animation frames where major changes take
  place, called keyframes
• The Program Director 8.5 draws the in-between
  frames

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Macromedia Director 8.5

• LINGO
• Is Directors scripting language
• Permits direct control of items in director such
  as sprites, images, movies and sound
• Allows control that is not possible with the
  score alone
• Permits navigation through the score
• Behaviours are implemented using lingo
• Permits the use of MIAW (Movie in a Window)