Portal-Studios Flash Blog

AS3 Flash: Low CPU Clouds Animation

AS3 Flash: Low CPU Clouds Animation – Perfect for Mobile

In our our recent tutorial on clouds effect via BitmapData.perlinNoise and ColorMatrixFilter, we presented a nice clouds animation but very CPU intensive and not suitable for larger images or for mobile devices. Here we present a version that is extremely CPU efficient, runs very well on Android 2.2, and can be used to generate large images. In the two examples linked below we generate 500 by 380 animations. Click each screen shot or the corresponding text link to open a Flash movie.

Simpler and highly optimized animation:
An interesting two-layered effect:

Click here to find out more…

Posted by Dave in Flash |

Simple Flash Trace Debug Mode

I thought I would share a little snippet I use from time to time to allow me to turn on and off the trace function in my Flash work.

Basically instead of typing “trace(‘hello world’);” you type “debug(‘hello world’);”.

Then once you are done developing the swf you just change the debugMode variable to false and turn off all your trace functions to save a good bit of processing in the final product. It’s quite handy.

Here is the code I use:

var debugMode:Boolean = true;

function debug(STRING:String){
     if(debugMode){
          trace(STRING);
     }
}

Posted by Dave in AS3 |

Primary Flash game


Primary is an action platformer puzzle game where you control Roy. A HUEman super soldier who must climb to the top of Prizim tower to stop an invasion of color eating monsters who want to lay waste to his planet.
Click here to find out more…

Posted by Dave in Flash, Flash Games |

Flash Special Effects: Smoke

Hey in my travels around the internet I stumble across some really neat things. Case in point is a great tutorial for animators about how to animate smoke. It’s really worth checking out if you are an animator like myself.
Here is a link.

Posted by Dave in Flash |

Lip Syncing in Flash

Hey I found a really nice tutorial on Lip syncing animated characters in flash. I already use most of these tips but the order that the phonims are added was something I never thought of. Here is a link.

Posted by Dave in Flash |