David Stiller’s blog

One of the facts of life in working with Flash is the way in which it displays semi-transparent nested symbols — which wasn’t what I expected, the first time I saw it.  To my thinking, the most fitting description is “the x-ray effect.”  Consider the following graphic symbol (the Quip mascot), at 100% opacity.

Here it is again at 30% opacity.

As you can see, its “bones” are showing!  All of the inner symbols inherit the alpha property of their parent, so the inner symbols are themselves semi-transparent.  Where they overlap, those areas show up as darker or more solid.  It makes sense, and might be a neat effect under certain circumstances, but I wish it wasn’t simply “the way it is.”

Fade-ins and -outs only last a short while, generally speaking, but I don’t care for the idea that viewers can see how I composed my nested symbols.  It makes me feel as if I’m tipping my hand, somehow.  And then, what if my nested symbol was, say, a ghost character, semi-transparent most of the time?

Is there a way to avoid the x-ray effect?

There is, though it only works under certain circumstances.  Rather using Alpha in the Color Styles portion of the Property inspector, use Tint and set the tint color to the same color as the background, then reverse your percentage.  30% alpha on a white background becomes 70% white tint.

In cases where your background is a solid color, problem solved.  Tint can be tweened just like Alpha can.

Update!  Thanks to Rodrigo (see comments below) for an even simpler tip.  In cases where Flash Player 8 or higher is your destination platform, you may continue to use Alpha … just make sure to apply a Layer blend mode to the layer that contains the artwork.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Flash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.