This is my first foray into the flex world, and I’ve chosen to take some baby steps by extending a component that was published by Narciso Jaramillo over at http://rictus.com/muchado/ . As I’ve never published code that I’ve “extended” before, if I’m doing this in a way that would contravene the GPL licence that is attached with the original component I’d really like to know.
[drum roll please....]
Behold, the live reflection component with blur effect slider. The example is published with source - which incidently is an absolutely brilliant way of getting to know Flex.
I think it would be more realistic if the blur started gradually and increased as it went away from the panel. Not sure how I’m going to do that though…
Now to come up with some brilliant visual effect ideas of my own ;-)
Hey Jason–this is very cool! The blur makes it look a lot more realistic, actually.
To make the blur gradate, you could render the full blur into a separate bitmap from the original faded bitmap, then combine it with the faded bitmap using a separate alpha gradient. Might start running into performance issues with that much bitmap manipulation, though…
As far as the GPL, as long as you publish the source of any modifications you make, you’re fine. The thing that makes GPL’ed code tricky is that you can’t use it in a larger product without also releasing the rest of the product under the GPL. In the future, I plan to use a less restrictive license, but since I started with some GPL’ed code I didn’t have a choice for this one.
By the way, welcome to the blogosphere! You should submit your blog to the MXNA blog aggregator if you haven’t already.
Sweet!
Looks fantastic! Where´s the download?
Just right click anywhere in the movie and choose “view source” at the top of the popup menu.
Love it! You’re view source isn’t working though. If you could email me the code I’d be a happy chap. Thanks…
Got it! View source works in IE ok, but not firefox. Polly my pop-up settings…
Hmmm, the view source works ok for me in Firefox 1.5.0.4, so it probably is a popups setting.
Looks like someone else is getting into the live flash reflection (with blur) as well ;-)
http://www.gofreesms.com/freesms.html
Now someone just has to make one that takes things like light source into account when dragging it around, haha. Great work, fun stuff… if only I knew something about Flash/Flex.
Thats really cool…
it’s 2008…does this work with flex 3 right outa da box? or does anyone know where to get a reflection component that work with flex 3
Is there a way to make reflection disappear when changing state? I apply reflection to two panels (panel_1 for state A and panel_2 for state B); when application goes from state A to B and then back to state A, the panel_2’s reflection remains visible on the stage. Is this a known problem, or just a mistake of mine?
@DeekBlock - yes I’ve imported my old Flex 2 projects into Flex Builder 3 and the LiveReflection source code still works fine.
@DeepVoid - Perhaps you can email me the code so i can try and help you out - info At Wrench dot com . au
(And what’s with all the “Deep” comments lately?!)
Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I used your code on this website that I’m building for my wife:
http://www.volantra.co.uk/
I’ve credited you by linking back to this entry via a right click.
Hope that’s OK.
Cheers.
Hey all, I took Narciso’s component and added a water ripple effect. Take a look here: http://www.kennydurost.com/sampleApps/reflector/
I am using this component and I have to say great job. I do have one issue. My users have the ability to change the canvans color. When they do this the reflection doesn’t update. Is there a way I can refresh the reflection when they do change the color?
Thanks!
Ed