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Embedding Fonts in Flash CS3

Ok, I just need to write up a quick post about this issue because I haven’t yet run into it (and I’m not exactly sure how that’s possible at this point but I digress). Here at Real Art we use software called Extensis Suitcase to manage a very large collection of fonts. I am working on a project which requires a specific font to be embedded into the swf. I do not have this font stored locally on my machine, but I can still use it because the Suitcase is sharing the font with me. So, the font is stored on some server somewhere, and not on my machine.

This is where my problem comes in. I need to embed this font into my swf so that no matter what computer you view it at, you will still see the exact same fonts. And since the font is not technically stored on my computer, trying to embed the font proves unsuccessful. This must have something to do with the fact that Flash isn’t smart enough to know where the actual font is stored.

My solution was simply to find the source font (which was pretty easy to do from within the Suitcase), delete the shortcut that Suitcase created, and reinstall it on my local machine. Voila, it worked.

Damn you, Flash!

Oldie but goodie… vCam

So I know this has been around for a while, but this blog hasn’t and I have to say this really saved me on a recent project.

I’ve been working on an animation that involves a lot of timeline tweens. The client decided that they want to add a camera zoom effect. This, of course, meant that not only was I going to have hundreds of tweens everywhere, but I’d have to add a ton more. There’s maybe 50 movie clips on the stage and I’m sorry, but I am just too lazy to deal with all of that.

So, I remembered back to this flash file that my classmates and I used for our final graduation project. It’s basically a flash file with a movie clip in it that acts exactly like a camera - tween it wherever you want, and everything on the stage is cropped to whatever is inside this movie clip. You can zoom in and out by tweening this one movieclip, and even add color and fade effects.

The project is called vCam and its available in Actionscript 2 and Actionscript 3 flavors. There is also an interactive version which allows you to still have interactive elements in your movie like buttons and whatnot.

I have found a few flaws in it, but overall its an amazing and incredibly helpful little tool. The biggest issue I had was:

It doesnt matter if there are objects above the vCam’s layer in your timeline, they will still be resized or cropped out based on the vCam’s position and size. This is frustrating because if you are using bitmap objects, then you’ll need to resize them appropriately so that there’s no pixelation.

Either way, go try it out. You’ll be happy you did.