Unfortunately for some, Flash Professional is required to follow along with the examples. If you haven’t upgraded Flash to the Professional version yet, taking advantage of the Web service integration and data binding might just be a good enough reason to.

What Are Web Services?
A Web service is, more or less, a remote procedure call wrapped in an XML package and typically transmitted over HTTP. You make a request to the URL of the Web service, passing in any appropriate parameters, and are greeted with an XML packet containing the result of the function call. The standard XML format for Web service messages is SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol.

Web services can be inspected by requesting the WSDL – Web Services Description Language – of the service. The WSDL explains how to interact with the service, what methods are available, what their parameters are, etc. The WSDL format isn’t the easiest to read. Thankfully, Flash will help us out with WSDL interpretation, which we’ll see a little later.

What Is Data Binding?
Now that we have an idea what Web services are, data binding is next on the explanation hit-list. Data binding is… well, magic. Through data binding you can “glue” two separate pieces of a program together. Whenever one piece changes the other piece will automatically notice that change and update itself without any coding necessary. As an added bonus, data binding can be a one- or two-way street.

Data binding is remarkably simple to use and can be done without writing a single line of code. Because of this, it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. It eliminates the need for you to program what could be complex interactions, but the “magical” aspects of data binding can make it a maintenance nightmare.

In the coming examples, I’ll show you how to use it, how to avoid using it, and finally make some recommendations for when data binding is appropriate.

How to bind a Web Service with Flash?

1-  First make a simple web service that fetch data from data base like Sql Server 2005 and return data in objects like:-

pro[i] = new ProDetail();
pro[i].Pro_name = row[0].ToString();
pro[i].Pro_type = row[1].ToString();
pro[i].Pro_color = row[2].ToString();
pro[i].Price = row[3].ToString();
pro[i].Description = row[4].ToString();

2- Then open Flash Professional 8, and goto Window and select Components
3- then click on User interface and drop Text Area onto the stage.

4- Give Instance Name to the Text Area in Properties panel.
5- Now go to Window and click on Other Panels and select Web Services

6- Now click on Glob and give the WSDL address of web service which would be like this.

http://localhost/abc/Service.asmx?WSDL

7- After giving WSDL address of web service to Glob, Flash will have all the methods, your web service have.

8- the method you want to use just Right click on it and select Add Method Call (An instance of the Web Service Connector component would be added to the stage) as shown in fig:-

9- Name the Web Service Connector component from the “Properties” panel.

Bind Web Service Result to the UI Component:

10- In order to display the results returned from the web service, you need to bind the   result to  the Text Area component you placed on the stage. Go to Window > Development Panels > Component Inspector. Select the Text Area component on the stage  and go to the “Bindings” tab on the “Component Inspector” window. Click the “+” Add  Binding button. Select “text : String” from the list and click the OK  button.

11- Now click on Bound To in the Component Inspector, a window will open. Click on Web service Connector and at left side (Schema Location) select the object you want to bind with Text Area component and click OK.

12- And set Direction “In”.

13- Now bind the Web Service connector and set its Direction “out” and click on Bound To bind with Text Area in the Component Path.

14- Now create another layer and name it “Action’.

15- Now type the following action:-

green.trigger();

16- Now play your movie and see that what ever in your database, flash displays…

If you are facing same problem, you only need is to have adobe soundbooth or adobe audition. As for the specific series of post i will use the adobe soundbooth. You can convert these steps to any of the software you want to use.

So Lets get started!.

There are many possible ways in which you can make sound louder in soundbooth like using Normalize function, other is by using amplify, another technique use the hardlimiting.

Here in this tutorial i will use both the Normalize and Amplify to make the sound louder.

First lets see how this can be done using Normalize

First open the file in the soundbooth. In my example it a voice over and you can see how it has much lower waves graph. it really bad sound.

Open the file

Click the Louder button, which is by default in lower right hand side of your screen. What this button does is that it Normalize the sound to -3dB or in other words boost the sound by 3dB each time you click the button.

Click louder button

As you click the button you could see its effect in the waves graph. The waves are bigger now, that what you need.

Louder sound

In my case the file has been restored to sound level i want but if its not done in your case please click the lounder button again to nomalize to anther -3dB.

Now i use second way to make it louder that is throught amplification.

Open the file, and click and drag on the increase/decrease the amplitude value, its to the left side of the louder button. As you will do this you will see the changes in the wave graph, just that much simple amplify it to what ever limit you want

Click Amplitude button

You can also enter the value instead of click and drag just double click the value and put the desired value in the text box.Thats quite easy i think

What if you want to increast the volume of just a specific part of sound.

Simple! just select any part you want to increase the sound of by just click and drag on that part of sound in main edit panel, as you will select you can see a amplification contols on the top of selectio are appeared just do same click and drag or enter the value by your self,     you got what want

Amplification of specific part of sound

Thats all in this tutorial, next tutorial in this series would be to how we can level off the sound or clip the higher frequecies so that the sound plays smoother. Please be in touch.

3DS max hangs,closes with or without giving any error when loading the plugin mentalray.dlz

Why it Happens.. ?

It happens because some firewall or spyware remover installed on your system block TCP port 7000 that is required by the mental ray to perform some system checks.

Solution

Disable any firewall or spyware remover permanently means it should not automatically start on system restart, you may have to change some setting in that software when you are done restart your system, then run 3DS max again… does it work….. sometime it works but not all the time like in my case.

Why it happens like that i really dont know may be some other software blocked the port ..so i did some research on that and then i installed a demo version of port explorer on my pc from

http://www.diamondcs.com.au/portexplorer

When i installed it and restarted my system, checked for port 7000 in the software it was open. So i run the 3DS max and  woooooooo it fixed my problem.

I really dont know if it would work or not after the demo version expires but hope it does until i enable firewall again.

I hope this solves your problem but if not then i really cant do anything you must contact Autodesk abt this specific issue.

I think (I believe it really only needs port 7000, and Max needs a few) should allow MR to use the internal ports to do control checking on the system. But what to do when no firewall is installed in the system and mental ray hangs like in my system. May be some other software like spyware remover close some ports. In such a case I installed the demo version of Port Explorer (http://www.diamondcs.com.au/portexplorer) in my system and without doing anything in the software my max loading with mental ray infact after the demo expires. Looks strange but works.

Open the Photoshop document where you want to place the dotted line

Select the Brush tool, shortcut is ‘B’

Open the Brushes Palette( Window –> Brushes, or F5)

Click the Brush Presets and select the Brush with some hard edges. You can select the Square brushes or Rounded on the bases of your need.

Dotted Line - 1

After you selected the brush type Click the “Brush tip shape”, Now here you can can see spacing slider, Slide it a value greater than 100%, in example i set it to 200%. You can also set the diameter and hardness of the brush here. You can see the Preview of the brush at the bottom

Dotted Line -2

Now go to your document again and select the color of the line and then hold down the shift button and Click and drag to draw the dotted line. ( by holding down shift you can draw Straight lines)

If its not giving a desired look, Do it again and this time play with spacing, Hardness, Diameter and the shape of the brush to make a desired look..

There are also many other options available here under the Brushes palette..Do explore them.

Have a good day…

As most of you know photoshop is not a Vector Graphics tool, so sometime we get some weired problem like a draw a rectangle shape and its edges are not sharp as they should be.  Or you draw a shape and its got blurred edges.

The solution is that just do not use the shapes where they are not necessary..for example if you want to draw a rectangle as background dont use shape rather use the Marquee Tool and the fill it with the color on new layer.

Another solution is that if shapes really makes your work easier do Rasterize them in your design. A common problem could be that if made a shape by using pen toll and given a stroke to it. Some edges get distorted ….That could be solved by Just Hold down the Ctrl Key and Click the shape layer. The outer border of the shape should get selected. Now Make a new layer and go to Select—> Modify —> Contract, and do a contract it 1px. and now fill the design with the color you want.

In this way the shape edges are sharp rather to use it as the Vector mask.

Well i hope that suggestion is useful.

Thanks