Hi Jim, I see no reason why Flex can't be used for interactive artwork. The Canvas component in Flex is derived from Sprite, so anything that you would do in a Sprite can be done in a Canvas.
We've been using FlexBuilder 3 for development of everything at www.sonoport.com. (I haven't upgraded to Flash Builder 4 yet). While we don't do generative visual art, some of what we do is pretty CPU-intensive, e.g. our time-stretcher/pitch-shifting (http://labs.sonoport.com/audiostretch/). We build a lot of the core audio processing stuff that's common across many of projects as SWCs ("Flex Library Project") in FlexBuilder. We then use use those SWCs either in "Flex Projects" or "ActionScript Projects". Either way, we get a SWF, and the performance of all the audio stuff is the same. In our case, the choice of whether to use the "Flex Project" or "ActionScript Project" option is mainly dependent on whether we want to use all the controls that Flex provides, along with the convenience of the "Design" mode that makes it super-easy to specify the layout of those controls. There is a bit of extra size overhead if you go with Flex. A new "Flex Project" with no additional controls results in a 176KB swf (when you export a release build) , whereas an "ActionScript Project" is just 4KB. Cheers, -Gerry The overhead On 2010-06-11 , at 03:46 , Jim Andrews wrote: > I'm a bit confused as to how to proceed with Flash. I've been using Director > for the last 11 years. > > You can see the sort of (Director Shockwave) apps I like to create at > http://vispo.com/dbcinema/sw/sw.htm and http://vispo.com/jig/arteroids/exe . > These apps contain menus, spin controls, drop-down menus, and similar types > of controls, and generally lots of them. But they also contain, in the case > of http://vispo.com/dbcinema/sw/sw.htm , high-performance generative art. > They're both very 'interactive interface' oriented and also very > high-performance-art-oriented. Windowing, menuing, dialog boxes, and > interactive controls are important to them. But so is lots of room for the > art. > > I don't really care about filesize being bulked up by Flex. High speed access > is common, these days. But if Flex is slow in performance, that's the more > important thing, to me. Is it? How is it in terms of speed? > > How would you approach making the above sorts of apps in Flash? Would you > create them as ActionScript projects or would you use Flex? > > ja > http://vispo.com > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jer Brand" <[email protected]> > To: "Flash Coders List" <[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 12:03 PM > Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] Flex generative art??? > > >> Flex is for RIA's and helps you with layouts and common controls and doesn't >> really provide anything useful for generating art with either vectors or >> drawing to a sprite. With the framework itself bulking up the size of your >> swf and consuming additional resources, it's not really a good thing. >> >> The generative art I typically use straight ActionScript with a library of >> choice -- Hype (http://www.hypeframework.org/) being particularly awesome >> for that kinda thing. >> >> There's nothing stopping you from using Flex / Flash Builder as your editor >> though. Just create an "ActionScript" or "Flash Professional" project. >> >> If you're just looking for ActionScript generative art, I'm fairly partial >> to http://levitated.net/ > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > [email protected] > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list [email protected] http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
