Fireworks make three-dimensional rotating Earth

Rotating animation is the specialty of fireworks, especially the combination of mask will produce a lot of unexpected effects, the following rotation of the Earth is made with fireworks MX (other versions of fireworks can also be made), quite lifelike!

This example uses the circular mask motion plane world map to simulate the Earth's rotation, the key technology involved is only mask, but to achieve the earth to rotate continuously smooth still need a little skill, hope the following tutorial can give you a little gain.

The reader should have the basic operational capabilities of fireworks, especially familiar with the Layers panel and select menu operations.


　　 Step1:First open a picture of the world map, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

　　 Step2:Click on the button in the toolbar, use the Magic Wand tool to click on the white area of the map, the white in the picture into the selection area, can be carefully observed, some small area or not selected, then execute menu command " Select/select Similar"All white is included in the selection area, as shown in Figure 2. When using the Magic Wand tool, setting the appropriate tolerance parameters makes the selection more accurate.

Figure 2

　　 Step3:Press the DELETE key to remove all white in the picture, and use the Eraser tool to erase the extra parts of the selection area, and the rest is the outline of the entire world map. Of course you can easily change your favorite color to the map, just execute the menu command. select/select Inverseor shortcut key "Ctrl+shift+i", you can get the selection area of the map, and then select the Paint Bucket tool on the toolbar to fill in the color you like.

Then clone a world map, group them, two maps of the location of the relationship as shown in Figure 3. Note that both maps must maintain the same y-axis parameters.

Figure 3
　　 Step4:Creates a new file with the background color selected as black. Copy and paste the world map from the previous step into a new file, then select the World map and execute menu commands. Modify/symbol/convert to Symbol..” (shortcut key F8) and converts it to a symbol.

Create a new layer in the layers panel, using the Circle tool to draw a positive circle with a borderless (hold down the SHIFT key while drawing), as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

　　 Step5:Select Symbol World map, execute menu command " modify/animation/animate Selection ...(shortcut "Alt+shift+f8"), the dialog box appears in Figure 5, and the frames parameter is set to 15. The setting of this parameter has certain principle, if too small, the earth turns will not be fluent; If the parameters are too large, although the animation effect is smoother, but the size of the file will be relatively large, so everyone better according to the purpose of the work and environment set this parameter.

Figure 5

　　 STEP6:Now we've created a 15-frame animation, dragging the middle red control point horizontally to the right, resulting in 15 dots representing 15 frames, where green represents the first frame (the first frame) and red for frame 15th (last frame). The key of this animation is to make the world map uninterrupted and smooth rotation, the industry is to make the last frame of the world map State and the first frame of the world map completely overlapping state. To achieve this effect, we need to make a small mark on the world map: Select symbol in the Lirbary panel and enter the edit status of the symbol, which we have here on the Greenland East Coast in the upper right corner of the world map, as shown in Figure 6

Figure 6

　　 STEP7:Exit the symbol edit state, in the active drawing file, drag the green point (first frame) with the mouse, so that the circle and map position as shown in Figure 7. Then click on the red point (last frame) with the mouse, and keep dragging horizontally to make it position as shown in Figure 8. Using the appropriate guides and magnifying the view will enable you to complete this step better, this step is very important and troublesome, must have patience, as long as can adjust their position accurately, can ensure the smooth animation.

Figure 7

Figure 8
　　 STEP8:In the shared layer Layer2 Select a circle, copy (Ctrl + C), and then click the animation layer Layer1, paste (Ctrl + V). Then select both the positive and the animated component map in the Layer1 and execute the menu command
"Modify/mask/group as Mask" to achieve MaskThe effect is as shown in Figure 9, where the rounded fill is white, and if the reader is using Fireworks 4.0, change the fill color to black.

Select the last frame in the frame panel, set its playback time to 0, click the Play button in the lower left corner to preview the animation effect, if not too smooth, return to the previous step to continue adjusting, if fluent on the deletion of symbol in symbol. At this point, the layers panel is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 9 Figure 10

　　 STEP9:At this time the rotation of the earth has been done, but obviously there is no three-dimensional sense of the following we have to modify. Select the positive circle in the shared layer Layer2, use radial padding in the property panel, and specify the parameter settings as shown in Figure 9. The left side uses a transparent fill, which is a new feature of fireworks MX, and users with fireworks 4.0 can use a simple mask to do the same.

Figure 11

　　 STEP10:Feel the effect is not too good, then select the effect of the property panel, using the "Inner Glow" effect, the specific parameter settings as shown in Figure 11, after the effect of the finished Figure 12. At this point, the edge of the preview will have edges, just in the property panel, the positive circle width and height of 2 pixels, and then use the arrow keys to the left to move up one pixel, you can resolve.

Figure 12 Figure 13

　　 STEP11:It feels good now, but in order to make the earth more realistic, we turn the Earth's background color blue. Create a new shared layer Layer3, drag it to the bottom, copy (Ctrl + C) The positive circle on the Layer2 layer, and paste it on the LAYER3 layer. The Layer1 and Layer2 layers are not visible so that the positive circles on the LAYER3 layer are displayed, the "Inner Glow" effect of the positive circle is deleted, and the fill color is changed to a blue solid fill, as shown in Figure 14. The edges of the preview may not be very neat at this point, and the solution is just the opposite of the previous one. Now all completed, the final level of the board as shown below.

Figure 14 Figure 15

　　 STEP12:Finally, in the output, select the animated Gif format. There will be a short pause in the position section when previewing, and my solution is to adjust the frame time appropriately: Set the first frame to a shorter time, set it to 7, set the 2-14 frame a bit longer, set to 15, the last frame is set to 0。 Now click Export to export the animation. A rotating earth with three-dimensional sense is done. If you are interested, you can also use Flash to make one in the same way.

　　 Summary:The difficulty of this example is how to achieve the smooth rotation of the earth without pause. The tutorial is a relatively successful solution to this problem. That is, follow the characteristics of the Loop animation (the last frame played back to the first frame to continue to play), so the same as the end of two frames, the last frame of the playback time set to 0, you can achieve smooth movement. Making a small mark in symbol during the production process is a little skill that plays a very good supporting role.