Fundamentals of Adobe Director MX 2004

Objectives

This Adobe authorised course is designed to equip delegates with a working knowledge of multimedia authoring using Director, and the ability to produce self-running or interactive presentations. This introductory course does not address Lingo in any depth, Director's scripting language. However, basic techniques are introduced, after which attendees should be able to determine whether a further course in Lingo scripting is appropriate.


Pre-requisites:

None other than a working knowledge of Windows or the Macintosh, or previous attendance on the Introduction to Windows or Introduction to Macintosh course.


Course Includes:

A comprehensive set of reference notes covering course topics, follow-up telephone support and, for training on Transmedia premises, lunch and refreshments.


Course Outline


Basic concepts


· Overview of Multimedia; working with the Cast, Stage, Score and Property Inspector
· Controlling playback; Sprite concepts and Sprite labels


Basic animation


· Simple movement and automatic "Tweening"; Sprite paths
· Inserting key frames, editing sequences in the score and locking sprites
· Sprite rotation and skewing by tweening and specifying degrees


Creating and editing cast members


· Using the Paint window to create bitmapped cast members; adding text
· QuickDraw cast members, colourising and exchanging cast members
· Using the Tools palette and the grid
· Transparency; using 32-bit images with alpha channels
· Using bezier curves - the bezier pen tool and the vector shape window
· Importing Flash & FreeHand elements


Multimedia content


· File formats, colour depth and resolution issues
· Importing images and sound; using Cue Points to control sound playback
· QuickTime digital video; incorporating content from other applications
· Importing sound e.g. WAV, AIF, MP3 and SND files






Using the score


· Using frames and Frame transitions; setting tempo changes and delays
· Colour palettes channel; Ink effects
· Editable sprites and movable sprites


Basic interactivity


· Scripting basics; introducing score markers; designing simple navigation
· Scriptless authoring using "behaviors"; using the behaviour library for easy manipulation of sprites
· Returning to the same frame; creating animated colour cursors
· Working with Javascript


General and other topics


· Planning movies for the "delivery" machine; cross-platform issues
· Using multiple casts
· "Standalone" projectors; linking movies
· Embedding compressed fonts for better control of text
· Previewing a movie in a browser


Using Shockwave


· Shockwave movie size issues; saving movies in Shockwave format for web
· SWA compression
· Creating hyperlinks to other websites
· Scalable Shockwave playback


Importing 3D from other 3D applications

Making 3D scenes interactive by using inbuilt behaviours