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Jonathan Duran

Jonathan Duran

Adobe

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Basic use of the Deco tool
    and Spray Brush
  3. Using custom symbols
    and advanced options
  4. Interesting effects in less than
    five minutes
  5. More about the procedural
    modeling engine
Created:
2 February 2009
Products:
Flash

Deco tool and Spray Brush for creating complex, geometric patterns in Flash

Two new decorative drawing tools in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional use the procedural modeling engine built into Creative Suite 4 to draw shapes. This article discusses the Deco tool and Spray Brush tool, and showcases some interesting examples of each.

The procedural modeling engine is a library in Flash that processes algorithms using the Flash JavaScript API (JSAPI). The algorithms are built into structured files that the engine can interpret.

Requirements

To make the most of this article, you need the following software and files:

Flash CS4 Professional

Sample files:

Prerequisite knowledge

Basic working knowledge of the Flash interface, use of symbols, and basic Timeline animation. No ActionScript knowledge is required; the code samples included in the article can be pasted into your file, and the sample files include the completed FLA files. If you are already familiar with the basic functions of the Deco tool, you may want to skip the first section on its basic use.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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About the author

Jonathan Duran has been working at Adobe for more than six years and is currently a Senior QE Engineer for Flash authoring. Prior to that, Jonathan supported the developer community in a range of positions including Developer Relations for Mobile and Devices, Flash technical support, Developer Center Editor, and Developer Relations for Macromedia Central. Jonathan loves building mobile applications and doing development in Flash, but he often prefers backpacking in the Yosemite wilderness, composing electronica, playing Canasta, and feeding catnip to his cat, Mingatsu Takahashi.