dropshadow effect crashes flash plugin

  • Hi, trying to add a dropshadow on a distorted hotspot to simulate a picture on the wall.
    the effect works great, but the movement gets really slow when starting and stoping displaying the hotspot, and it crashes the flash player very often.
    is this effect too greedy to use it on distorted hotspots ?

    Thanx !

  • Ok, found a workaround with the new bgshadow param for container layers

    Code
    <layer name="shadow2" type="container" bgshadow="5 5 8 0x000000 0.6" parent="hotspot[photo2]" width="800" height="400" bgcolor="0xffffff" bgalpha="0"></layer>
    <hotspot name="photo2" url="%SWFPATH%/photos/orsay.jpg" 
    	         ath="111.102985" atv="-1.337515" distorted="true" rx="-0.75" ry="-3.0" rz="-0.752144" width="800" height="400" scale="0.41538" 
    	         />

    Works perfect in HTML5 but the shadow layer isn't displayed in flash ?
    It is displayed if not set to parent, so I guess it's a parent problem between layer and hotspot in flash ?
    Is my syntax wrong ?

    thanx !

  • Hi,

    is this effect too greedy to use it on distorted hotspots ?

    Yes, that depends how the Flashplayer works - when applying a filter like dropshadow(), the Flashplayer will create a full-sized bitmap image for that element and applies the filter to that element and once this is done it will draw it on the screen. 'Full-size' means here the bitmap will be that large to cover the whole distorted hotspot element, when the parts that are out of the screen and a distorted hotspot can become very large, especially when using larger field of view values.

    And this process is pretty inefficient - a lot of memory need to be created and destroy each frame and a lot of pixel calculated unnecessarily.

    Therefore such filter effects should be only applied to static elements that don't change very often.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • Thanx Klaus, so there is no good solution to add a drop shadow to a distorted hotspot to simulate an exhibition ?
    Here is an example with a layer with dropshadow parent to a distorted hotspot : http://www.360images.fr/shadow/
    Dropshadow quality is perfect and the navigation stays smooth, but strangely if you rotate out the "blue" photo the it is displayed in the topleft of the screen ???

    And this solution doesn't work for flash...

  • You could build it yourself then.

    Photoshop drop shadow, crop the shadowout, crop it to just a few pixels and stretch it underneath to fit. Should only be a few k.
    Make two hotspots, one for underneath and one for the right side..

    Or just be lazy and cut out your image and save it complete and fullsize and layer under the hotspot with the same hotspot settings as the image.
    To recap:
    So you have two hotspots, the image and the drop shadow itself as a transparent png. Or get fancy and just use a few pixels stretch since its just a repeating anyway, but then you have to get your settings perfect.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!