Skip to main content
markerline
markerline
Inspiring
August 28, 2013
Question

center movie clips dynamically, as3.0

  • August 28, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 3065 views

Hi.  I have seen this discussed both on Adobe Forums and other sites but I can't seem to make sense of the code supplied by what I have seen thus far.

I am trying to center display objects that are added to the stage at runtime dynamically through a basic drawing application.

the code is something like this:

1. add an event listener for the drawing event.

2. add the path you want to draw to a container movie clip on the stage.

3. add an enter-frame event listener to change the scale of the path randomly .... and this is the moment i want to change the default top,left registration point to the center,center of the path.  each path has its own registration point as i can tell thus far but at this point the scale is happening from the top,left of the container rather than about the path's own self.  and if it were to happen about the path i would have to get the bounds of the path and do some averaging to center the registration point.

unfortunately i don't know what the code looks like to achieve what i'm trying to get.

any help is appreciated.  thanks in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

sinious
sinious
Brainiac
August 28, 2013

You're letting a user draw a path and then you're adding that to a container clip? If that's all you're doing (and each path has a container) then the x/y of the shape drawn should just be negated half the height and width in the container to be center registration.

Psuedo code e.g.

myContainer.addChild(myShapeDrawn);

myShapeDrawn.x -= myShapeDrawn.width / 2;

myShapeDrawn.y -= myShapeDrawn.height / 2;

Whatever you're bundling in the drawn object just needs to move itself half the width and height of itself inside the container to center itself in the container. Then you have center registration.

markerline
markerlineAuthor
Inspiring
August 28, 2013

Also, I realize that if I move my path object I won't be directly drawing on mouseX, mouseY.  I would be drawing on an offset which might pose usability issues.

sinious
sinious
Brainiac
August 29, 2013

Well if using the graphics.lineTo method is Bitmap data then that is what I'm using.  But each call to the shape that I'm drawing is a new Shape(); .  The second paragraph you wrote seems a bit daunting when viewing it in the abstract sense.  Your first reply was a bit more concrete but I guess the first response didn't account for everything being in one container.  Should I create a container2 Movie Clip and create that as a new box on a per-shape basis so that I have multiple container2 mc's in the following path:

container.container2.shape where i would be an index (such that i++) though the code wouldn't be written exactly that way. ?

(To store localX,Y positions in an array or vector shouldn't be too hard but I would need to try it several times before I get it right).


The graphics class draws a Shape. If you add that shape to a container the math is the same to center it but I'm assuming you don't really want to center every shape added to the container. There must be some relative positiion to the shape drawn in each container that you want to maintain to other shapes in the container, is that correct?

To be explicit, if I draw a vertical line and you center it in your container, then draw a second vertical line parallel to it, I won't expect you to center that as well because it will be moved over the previous vertical line I had drawn.

In that situation you need your centering logic to consider multiple objects which gets more complex but I need to verify that.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices