How to Change Day to Night in Flash
Not only can you animate motion in Flash, you can also change the time of day. You don't need any complicated overlays or light sources (although you could add them for realism). You can use the properties of the clips on stage to change day to night in Flash.
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Instructions
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1
Open your Flash document. Create at least two layers, one for your environment and one for your foreground objects. You can add additional layers for objects in motion (the principle works the same); we're just going to animate the scene itself.
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Draw your environment on the bottom layer. It can be as simple as a blue-to-white gradient for the sky, or you can add grass or mountains to establish a horizon line.
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Select the environment layer in the timeline and convert it to a symbol (F8). Save the symbol as a "Movie Clip."
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Add your stationary foreground object(s) on the layer above the background layer. They can be as simple as squares (if you just want to experiment with the technique), or you can add houses, buildings or trees. Select the layer in the timeline, and convert the foreground objects to a second movie clip.
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Select a frame further down the timeline in both layers (any frame will do so long as it is selected in both layers). Convert both frames to keyframes (F6). The new keyframes will have black circles in the frame preview and appear as separate boxes.
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Choose any point between the first and last frames and select both layers again. Choose "Create Motion Tween" from the Insert menu's Timeline submenu (you can also use the Properties palette). An arrow will connect the keyframes in both layers.
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Select your background movie clip in the last keyframe environment layer, and choose "Tint" from the Properties palette Color pull-down menu. Set the Tint to 90 percent to darken the clip. Set the tint of your foreground clip between 70 and 80 percent. When you play back your animation, you will see your scene darken as though night falls.
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Tips & Warnings
If you can't find the Color pull-down menu on the Properties palette, you have the layer selected and not the movie clip. Click directly on the movie clip to make it active, and the correct properties options will appear.
"Tween" the tint of any clip in your animation. The lightest tint should be the characters you want to be the focus. If you want to fade everything to black, set the tent on all clips to 100 percent.
