FILTERS ARE ANOTHER great way to create realistic smoke or, in this example, steam. Since the image we are working with is an actual photograph, the animation needs to be just as convincing. Without the presence of steam, this cup of tea looks cold and somewhat unappealing. Not only can you use filters to blur objects in Flash, but you can also animate these filters.
1 Start off by drawing some simple shapes with the Brush tool. They should be random and abstract.
2 Select this shape (or shapes) and convert it to a Movie Clip symbol. With this symbol still selected, convert it to a movie clip once again so you end up with two movie clips, one nested inside the other.
3 Double-click the Movie Clip symbol on the main timeline to edit it. Insert a second keyframe a few frames down the timeline and scale the original Movie Clip symbol as shown above.
4 Insert a third keyframe down the timeline and scale the movie clip even wider and position it a little higher.
5 Go back to the first keyframe and apply a Blur filter using the Filters panel (Window > Properties > Filters).
6 Select the Movie Clip instance in the second keyframe and apply another Blur filter. Increase the amount of blurring so it is slightly more than the blurring in the first keyframe.
7 Select the Movie Clip instance in the third keyframe and apply another Blur filter. Increase the amount of blurring even more than you applied in the second keyframe.
8 Apply motion tweens to all keyframes. Play back your animation and make adjustments as necessary. You may want to adjust the amount of blurring, alpha or transforming to your animation. You can also create a second steam animation by creating a new layer and drawing more shapes, convert them to a Movie Clip symbol and repeat steps 1–7. Then select and drag the entire range of keyframes and frames down the timeline so they start after the original animation. This will help eliminate the repetition of one single looping steam effect.
Hot Tip
Filters can only be applied to Movie Clip symbols and you must publish Flash Player version 8 or 9. Animated effects involving filters can be very processor intensive. Use them sparingly and test often to make sure playback performance remains acceptable.
