The Back Button

Filters in Flash are great, but I do have one big problem when working with them. As I’ve stated many times in my blog, I’m quite the ActionScript purist and I hardly touch the Flash IDE or FLA files. Thus visualizing a filter purely in code can be quite a pain. So sometimes, I’ll open up the Flash IDE and work on creating the filter settings with the help of the nice GUI controls. The problem is then converting all of my filter settings back into reusable ActionScript code.

To make this process a little easier, I took two minutes out to create an ActionScript class that accepts a display object as an argument, and then traces the ActionScript code needed in order to recreate the filter to the output console.

Check it out …

Zip File | Source

See the example below

Usage:

import com.thebackbutton.utils.FilterCodeUtil;
FilterCodeUtil.generateCode(myFilterDisplayObject);

Output:

import flash.filters.BlurFilter
import flash.filters.BevelFilter
import flash.filters.GlowFilter
import flash.filters.GradientBevelFilter
import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter
import flash.filters.ColorMatrixFilter

protected function getFilter():Array {
	var f0:GlowFilter = new GlowFilter()
	with (f0) {
		quality = 1;
		color = 16711680;
		inner = false;
		alpha = 1;
		blurX = 12;
		blurY = 12;
		strength = 1;
		knockout = false;
	}
	var f1:ColorMatrixFilter = new ColorMatrixFilter()
	with (f1) {
		matrix = [0.5599547624588013,-0.06101406738162041,0.3310593068599701,0,27.395000457763672,0.12372776120901108,0.7790034413337708,-0.07273124903440475,0,27.394996643066406,-0.18636742234230042,0.41579893231391907,0.6005684733390808,0,27.394996643066406,0,0,0,1,0];
	}
	var f2:BevelFilter = new BevelFilter()
	with (f2) {
		highlightColor = 16777215;
		quality = 1;
		highlightAlpha = 1;
		type = 'inner';
		shadowColor = 0;
		shadowAlpha = 1;
		blurX = 5;
		blurY = 5;
		distance = 5;
		strength = 1;
		angle = 44.999253346524966;
		knockout = false;
	}
	var f3:GradientBevelFilter = new GradientBevelFilter()
	with (f3) {
		quality = 1;
		type = 'inner';
		colors = [16777215,16711680,0];
		blurX = 5;
		alphas = [1,0,1];
		ratios = [0,128,255];
		blurY = 5;
		distance = 5;
		strength = 1;
		angle = 44.999253346524966;
		knockout = false;
	}
	var f4:GradientBevelFilter = new GradientBevelFilter()
	with (f4) {
		quality = 1;
		type = 'inner';
		colors = [16777215,16711680,0];
		blurX = 5;
		alphas = [1,0,1];
		ratios = [0,128,255];
		blurY = 5;
		distance = 5;
		strength = 1;
		angle = 44.999253346524966;
		knockout = false;
	}
	var f5:GlowFilter = new GlowFilter()
	with (f5) {
		quality = 1;
		color = 16711680;
		inner = false;
		alpha = 1;
		blurX = 5;
		blurY = 5;
		strength = 1;
		knockout = false;
	}
	var f6:DropShadowFilter = new DropShadowFilter()
	with (f6) {
		quality = 1;
		color = 0;
		inner = false;
		alpha = 1;
		blurX = 5;
		blurY = 5;
		distance = 5;
		hideObject = false;
		strength = 1;
		angle = 44.999253346524966;
		knockout = false;
	}
	var f7:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter()
	with (f7) {
		quality = 1;
		blurY = 5;
		blurX = 5;
	}

	return [f0,f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6,f7];
}