Understanding Frames and Graphical Objects

A flash animation is composed of a series of frames. Each frame is displayed and then promptly replaced another frame to create the illusion of movement. This same technique is used to create television shows, motion pictures, and traditional cell animation.

Users are allowed to add and remove graphical objects to frames. There are many graphical objects defined in Flash for .NET, including FLine, FRectangle, FCircle, FOval, FArc, FText, FEditText, FPolygon, FBeziers, and FPath. Each object represents a basic graphical element or shape that can be outlined or filled.

When a graphical object is added to one frame, it will be displayed in this frame and all of the following frames until it is removed. For example, to make a rotating animation, the graphical object must be added to a frame, then removed in the next frame, rotated, and added again to the new frame.

Frame 0	Frame 1	Frame 2	Frame 3

Create a FOval object, add it to Frame 0	Remove the object from Frame 1, rotate 45 degrees, and add it to Frame 1	Remove the object from Frame 2, rotate 90 degrees, and add it to Frame 2	Remove the object from Frame 3, rotate 135 degrees, and add it to Frame 3

Each graphical object needs to be assigned a depth value. The depth determines the stacking order of the object. Objects with lower depth values are displayed underneath objects with higher depth values. An object with a depth value of 1 is displayed at the bottom of the stack. An object may appear more than once in the frame but at different depths. There can be only one object at any given depth.

You do not need to create a frame; it will be created automatically when you access the frame index.

Note: C1FlashMovie uses twip as its coordinate measurement, which is the coordinate used by the Adobe SWF specification. In the SWF format, a twip is 1/20th of a logical pixel. A logical pixel is the same as a screen pixel when the movie is played at 100%—that is, without scaling.