Adobe 65036570 - Director - PC Operation instructions

CREATE A BASIC MOVIE IN DIRECTOR

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Create a basic movie
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Building Your First Basic Movie
This tutorial takes you through the steps of creating your first movie in Director®. If you are new to using Director,
follow this tutorial to learn hands-on how to create a simple interactive movie with animation, sound, and video. The
movie is designed to suggest what is possible with Director rather than simulate a fully developed Director project.
What you will learn
This tutorial introduces you to the basic skills needed to build a Director movie. These include the following:
•Setting movie properties
•Importing cast members into Director
•Placing cast members on the Stage and in the Score to create sprites, which are copies of cast members
•Animating sprites
•Creating buttons
•Scripting in Lingo to create user interactivity
•Controlling digital video and audio
•Publishing a movie on the Internet
Preparing to build the movie scenes
Before you begin to build scenes, you will get familiar with how the completed movie should look, and you will
prepare the Stage.
View the completed movie
Start by viewing a completed version of the tutorial movie to become familiar with how your finished movie should
look.
1Start Director.
2Select File > Open.
3Within your Director application folder, browse to Tutorials/Basics/Finished and double-click the
Basic_finished.dir file.
4If windows obscure the Stage, drag them out of the way.
5To play the movie, click the Play button at the bottom of the Stage.
6Use the buttons in the movie to navigate from one scene to another and control the playback of the video clip.
Volume
Play
Stop
Rewind

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The movie consists of three scenes. The first is a title scene that contains buttons for navigating to the other two
scenes. The second scene is an animation of a tire bouncing. The third scene contains a digital video and buttons
that control it. Each of these scenes also contain navigation buttons.
7When you finish viewing the movie, click the Stop button at the bottom of the Stage.
Open the movie
To begin the tutorial, open a partially completed Director file.
1Select File > Open.
2Within your Director application folder, browse to Tutorials/Basics/Start and double-click the Basic_start.dir
file.
Note: When you open this file, Director closes the Basic_finished.dir file. If you made any changes to that file, do not
save them.
3Select File > Save As.
4Name the file My_Basic_start. Save the movie in the Start folder.
By making a copy of the file, you or another user can complete this tutorial again with the Basic_start.dir file.
Set up the movie
You can now arrange your workspace and set properties for your movie, such as the Stage size and color and the
number of channels in your Score. During the authoring process, you view Director movies on the Stage. You can
set up the size and color of the Stage window.
1Select Window > Panel Sets > Default to display the default workspace.
2If the Property inspector is not already displayed, select Window > Property Inspector.
3In the Property inspector, click the Movie tab.
If the Property inspector is not in graphical view, as shown in the following illustration, click the List View Mode
button to switch to the graphical view.
To see the names of buttons (like the List View Mode button), place your mouse pointer over the button. The name
of the button appears in a floating box next to the button until you move the mouse.
4Click the Stage Size arrow, and select 500 x 330.
5The size of the Stage increases.
6If the Score is not open, select Window > Score.
List View Mode
Stage Size arrow

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7In the Property inspector, type 50 in the Channels text box and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh),
and then click OK in the dialog box that appears.
The number of channels in the Score decreases from 150 to 50, making the movie’s file size smaller.
Note: In Windows, the Enter key on the numeric keypad plays the movie. Be sure to use Enter on the alphanumeric
section of the keyboard when entering information in Director.
8In the Property inspector, click the Color button, and select dark gray from the color picker.
9Select File > Save.
Note: As you complete the tutorial, remember to save your work frequently.
View your cast members
To create a Director movie, you need cast members. Cast members are the objects that appear on the Stage and in
the Score. Some of these elements might be text, graphics, sound, video, or scripting behaviors.
The movie you create in this tutorial consists of three scenes. Some cast members appear in more than one scene,
and some appear in one scene only. First, use the Cast window to view your current set of media. Next, you will begin
adding new cast members. You add cast members to a Director movie by creating them in Director or by importing
files made in other applications.
1If the Cast window is not already open, select Window > Cast.
You can view the Cast window in two views: List and Thumbnail. In List view, you can sort cast members by
name, number, date modified, type, and other criteria. Thumbnail view lets you see a thumbnail image of each
cast member. In Thumbnail view, cast members are always shown in numerical order. For this tutorial, you will
use the Thumbnail view. If your Cast window is in List view, you need to switch to Thumbnail view.
Color button

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2To toggle from List view to Thumbnail view, click the Cast View Style button in the upper left corner of the Cast
window.
The Cast window contains cast members that you can use in your movie. The first is a text cast member. It contains
the text “Trio Motor Company.” The text cast member thumbnail image that appears in the Cast window contains a
small Aicon in the lower right corner. This is the cast member type icon, and the Aindicates that it is a text cast
member.
The second cast member is a button. Button cast members have special functionality built into them, such as
changing color when clicked, so that they behave in the way most users expect buttons to behave. This button
contains the text “Go to Animation.” Its cast member type icon is a small square button shape.
The third cast slot is empty. You will add a cast member to that slot later. The fourth cast member is a bitmap image.
Its cast member type icon is a paintbrush.
The ninth, tenth, and eleventh cast slots contain bitmaps that you will use as custom buttons. Using a bitmap image
lets you control the appearance of the button, but it does not provide the built-in functions of the Director button
cast member type. However, you can add these functions with script, using either the Director scripting language
called Lingo or JavaScript syntax. In this tutorial, you will use Lingo to add these functions.
Building the first scene with text and an image
Building a scene in Director requires creating or importing the cast members for the scene and placing sprites on the
Stage. Sprites are objects that control when, where, and how cast members appear in a movie. You create sprites by
placing cast members on the Stage or in the Score. To build the first scene of the movie, you will place sprites of the
TitleText cast member and two buttons on the Stage. One of the buttons is already in the cast, and you will create the
other button.
Edit a text cast member
The first cast member you will use in your movie is the text cast member containing the words “Trio Motor
Company.” You will edit the text to give it a more appealing graphic design.
1In the Cast window, double-click the text cast member in cast slot 1.
Cast View Style button

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The Text window opens.
You use the Text window to edit text cast members. You will find that most Director cast member types have
associated windows that you can use to view and edit the cast member.
Note: While completing the tutorial, you might find it useful to undo a change that you made. To undo, select
Edit > Undo. Conversely, you can redo what you have undone by selecting Edit > Repeat.
2Select Edit > Select All. The entire text block is selected.
3Click the Bold button and the Italic button. The style of the selected text changes from plain to bold and italic.
4Give the text cast member a name. Click the Cast Member Name text box at the top of the window. Then type
TitleText, and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh).
5Close the Text window, and save your movie.
Cast Member Name
Size
Italic
Bold

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Add sprites to the Stage
To begin building the scene, you drag the TitleText cast member, button cast member, and bitmap cast member from
the Cast window to the Stage or Score. Because the first scene should occur at the beginning of the movie, you put the
cast members at the beginning of the Score. The Score is discussed in detail later in this tutorial.
1Click the Rewind button at the bottom of the Stage. This ensures that the cast members you place on the Stage
are in the first frame of the Score, the beginning of your movie.
2In the Cast window, click the TitleText cast member and drag it anywhere on the Stage to create a sprite from the
TitleText cast member.
3The background of the new text sprite is white.
4Click the new text sprite on the Stage to select it.
5On the Sprite tab in the Property inspector, do the following:
aIn the Ink box, select Background Transparent.
Inks control the way a sprite color appears on the Stage. Background Transparent ink makes the white
background of the sprite appear transparent.
bClick the Forecolor color picker, and select white.

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cIn the X text box, type 15. In the Y text box, type 15, and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh). The
text is placed at precise coordinates on the Stage.
Add sprites to the Score
When you place a cast member on the Stage, the sprite is added to both the Stage and the Score. You can also place
cast members on the Score. When you place a cast member on the Score, the sprite is added to the Stage as well.
1Click the Trio cast member in cast slot 6.
2Drag the Trio cast member to the Score window so that it fills channel 2, just below the TitleText sprite. Make
sure that the sprite begins in frame 1 of the Score.
Dragging a cast member to the Score centers the sprite on the Stage.
Add an existing button to the Stage
In addition to the title text, the first scene of your movie will contain two buttons. You will add the first button to the
Stage. Then you will create a new button on the Stage to complete the scene.
You begin by naming the button cast member in cast slot 2 of the Cast window. Earlier, you named the TitleText cast
member by entering a name in the Text window. You can also give cast members names directly in the Cast window.
1Click the button cast member in cast slot 2.
2Click the Cast Member Name text box at the top of the Cast window, and type Animation. Press Enter
(Windows) or Return (Macintosh).
Cast Member Name text box

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3Drag the Animation button cast member from the Cast window to the Stage. Place it on the lower right side of
the Stage.
4Select the button sprite on the Stage.
5On the Sprite tab of the Property inspector, do the following: In the X text box, type 375. In the Y text box, type
300, and then press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh).
The button sprite is now placed at precise coordinates.
Create a new button cast member
Now you are ready to create the second button.
Remember that button cast members contain special functionality to automatically highlight when clicked. Creating
button cast members in Director is different from creating most other cast members. Cast members are often created
in separate windows and then dragged from the Cast window to the Stage. You create a button cast member directly
on the Stage, using the Tool palette. You will use the Button tool to create a new button.
1If the Tool palette is not displayed, select Window > Tool Palette.

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2Make sure that the Tool palette is in Classic view. At the top of the Tool palette, display the list of views and select
Classic.
3On the Tool palette, click the Button tool.
4Drag a horizontal rectangle toward the right side of the Stage, as shown in the following illustration:
5When you release the mouse button, the rectangle you created becomes an editable text box in which you enter
the text that you want to appear on your button. Type Go to Sound and Video in the text box.
Note: If the text is too long for your button, you can enlarge the button. Click the button with the Arrow tool selected,
and then drag the sizing handle on the right edge of the button to the right.
6On the Sprite tab of the Property inspector, do the following: In the X text box, type 200. In the Y text box, type
300, and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh).
7Click the Stage outside the button.
Button tool
Classic view