MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX-USING DIRECTOR MX, Use Manual

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Chapter 2 58
View your cast members
To create a Director movie, you need cast members. Cast members are the objects that appear on
the Stage and in the Score. Some of these elements might be text, graphics, sound, video, or Lingo
scripting behaviors.
The movie you create in this tutorial consists of three scenes. Some cast members appear in more
than one scene, and some appear in one scene only. First, use the Cast window to view your
current set of media. Next, you’ll begin adding new cast members. You add cast members to a
Director movie by creating them in Director or by importing files made in other applications.
1
If the Cast window is not already open, select Window > Cast.
You can view the Cast window in two modes: List view and Thumbnail. In List view, you can
sort cast members by name, number, date modified, type, and other criteria. Thumbnail view
lets you see a thumbnail image of each cast member. In Thumbnail view, cast members are
always shown in numerical order. For this tutorial, you will use the Thumbnail view. If your
Cast window is in List view, you need to switch to Thumbnail view.
2
To toggle from List view to Thumbnail view, click the Cast View Style button in the upper left
corner of the Cast window.
The Cast window contains cast members that you can use in your movie. The first is a text cast
member. It contains the text “Director Basics.” The text cast member thumbnail image that
appears in the Cast window contains a small A icon in the lower right corner. This is the cast
member type icon and the A indicates that it is a text cast member.
The second cast member is a button. Button cast members have special functionality built into
them, such as changing color when clicked, so that they behave in the way most users expect
buttons to behave. This button contains the text “Go to Animation.” Its cast member type icon is
a small square button shape.
The third cast member slot is empty. You will add a cast member to that slot later. The fourth cast
member is a bitmap image of mountains. Its cast member type icon is a paintbrush.
The ninth, tenth, and eleventh cast member slots contain bitmaps that you’ll use as custom
buttons. Using a bitmap image lets you control the appearance of the button, but it does not
provide the built-in functions of the Director button cast member type. However, you can add
those functions with Lingo, the Director scripting language.
Cast View Style button