01.13.06 Director Project 101

 

Today's activities:

1 Get to know the Director software interface.
2 Make some sprites.
3 Add some behaviors to the sprites.
4 Export your project to projector or as a .dcr to be displayed in a webpage

 

First exercise: Make Some Sprites

  • Open the paint window, make a bitmap castmember.
  • Open the text window, make a text castmember.(If you want to make your text look good in both windows and mac, import the font. Go to "Insert" -> "Media element " -> Font)

    • Importing other stuff:
    Import an image (or other media file)
    go to "File" -> "Import" -> Select Image -> for small files choose "standard import", for large files choose "link to external file"

    Drag the cast members onto the stage. They are now sprites. A sprite is a representation of a cast member.

     

    Second exercise: Add interactivity.

    To make the movie loop we need to put a little script in the last frame:

    on exitFrame me
      go to the frame
    end

    To add interactivity to our sprites today, we are using the "Code Library" it has some premade behavior scripts inside. Drag the behavior to your cast window, then drag it onto the sprite.

     

    Third exercise: export everything

    We want you to make a art project intended for a larger audience (not just your classmates).
    So part of the project is the decision how you want to package the project. Should it be a standalone app, or should it be part of a website or an installation or ???
    The whole handling of the project should also be intended for somebody who is not familiar with it.

    you can take a .dir file and play it in the webbrowser, this way, it is not compressed. to compress it, use the "Publish" command in the "File" menu.

     

    Macromedia's Technotes on exporting http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/dmovies.html