Rotate and animate dynamic text fields in Flash

February 19th, 2008

Embed font in Flash to allow for rotation and animationBy now you’ve seen the Dylan Messaging viral campaign. It’s a pretty hip use of Flash. I was pretty sure I knew how the effect was done, so I was running some Flash experiments to test out my theory. Everything was just as I expected until I hit a snag. How do you rotate or otherwise animate a dynamic text field in Flash?

If you’ve ever tried this, you have probably discovered that containing the dynamic text field in a movie clip will work with default font settings, but only for X and Y animation. In order to be able to rotate, skew, or add effects, the font must be embedded. Now you know.

  • I have found that if you have Anti-aliasing on, make sure it is set to Anti-alias for Animation rather than Anti-alias for Readability. Anti-alias for Readability doesn't skew for some reason.
  • Karen
    Thank you :D This is one piece of information most tutorials leave out.
  • Noro
    i embedded the font, but still dessapears, actually when i embedded the font, it dessapears even if i dont rotate or move it... T_T
  • This came up again today. If you want a movieclip containing dynamic text fields to respond to actionscript coded tweens, say for _alpha fading, make sure you embed the fonts.

    Haven't checked this for timeline based tweens, but I assume it's the same.
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