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AsterLUXman
Inspiring
June 27, 2012
Question

Modifying MovieClip filters breaks animations

Flash can be frustrating as hell, sometimes.  Here is my latest roadblock -- if you know how to fix this problem, please let me know.  Thank you!!!

1)  I create an animated character using CS5.5, and compile it into a swf.

2)  I load the character's swf into a new document (programmatically, via a Loader), and add it to the display list.  So far, no problems: the character is animating just fine.

3)  BUT, the character is too large for my current scene, so I scale its root container down (scaleX = scaleY = 0.3 -- something like that ).

4)  Wow!!  I realize filters on nested Sprites and MovieClips are not scaled along with the root container !!!  Undeterred, I write a little recursive function to navigate down the display tree of the character, and scale down all the filter properties that can be scaled.

5)  So far so good: the character and all its root & nested filters are now properly sized, BUT the nested MovieClips within the character whose filters got modified no longer play their animations!!!

6)  I try to force them to play programmatically to no avail (ex: myCharacterMc.headMc.gotoAndPlay( "eyes_blinking" ) ).  What gives???

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3 replies

toddr1
Participating Frequently
November 7, 2021

It is 9 years afdter this post and I just went through hell for 1 day because I added a filter to my movieclip.  It destroyed all of the an imation inside that I wired up with HTML5 code.  I am soooo pissed I lost all this time.  why in the world is this feature here if it breaks the movie animation?  This should be a big warning to tell you this.  Wow!  I am so frustrated.  i could have spent 5 hours of good work instead Im sitting on my hands in complete frustration.

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kglad
Community Expert
kgladCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 28, 2012

assigning a filter to a timeline animation will break the timeline animation (as you now know).  there is no work-around that i know of except, don't apply a filter.

and that gets back to your problem of unsized filters.  i am not aware of that being a problem.

what are you seeing that makes you think your filters are not scaling (4)?

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AsterLUXmanAuthor
Inspiring
June 29, 2012

Thank you kglad for confirming that applying filters break the timeline.

Scaling a parent container doesn't scale the filters of descendants, afik.  So, if you have a sprite which contains a shape, and the shape has a drop shadow extending 5 pixels, and if you scale down the Sprite, the drop shadow remains 5 pixels!  Not the what I was expecting.

If you want to scale the filters on descendants, then you have to have to write a recursive function to scale down the filter properties that are scalable.

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