Flash Extension: Convert Bitmaps to Symbols
A while back I worked on a project that required the conversion of about 100 images to one-frame movieclip symbols. No way was I going to do it by hand, so a friend and I developed this nifty little extension to avoid doing the monotonous task ourselves. I have seen a few similarly capable extensions out there but I think ours offers a few features the others didn’t.
From the source: Allows you to convert selected bitmaps from your library to a symbol type of your choice. Other features include: slicing leading/trailing characters of the symbol names, adding a prefix and/or suffix to the symbol names, adding the symbols to a folder, and setting the registration point of the symbols.
Anyhow, if you find it useful post a comment and let us know. Zip includes MXP file and source.
Enjoy!
on October 5th, 2006 at 6:37 am
o snap.
your extension is handy, and i’ve seen the other extension to perform this batch process as well, but what about when you import a vector (eps &/or swf) drawing from illustrator with multiple shapes, (or multiple groups, with shapes grouped inside each group) and… blah blah blah.
goal:
can you help me re-script this to convert multiple shapes (or multiple groups) on STAGE, into symbols, renamed sequentially _01, _02… etc and imported into the Library?
thanks!
on November 16th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
you will hear absolutely no complaints from me on this wicked little time saving command - absolutely wicked! Consider me both impressed and damn happy!!!
on December 17th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Thanks so much. You just save me hours and hours of work. Thanks again. cheers. Jenny
on December 18th, 2006 at 12:06 am
Hehe, glad you found it useful. I haven’t needed to use it since creating it so I am glad others have benefited.
on March 21st, 2007 at 7:33 am
Thank you!
Boy, this is really neat.
on April 15th, 2007 at 10:57 am
yup, so helpful. thanks a lot.
on November 12th, 2007 at 12:12 am
This is great but is there any way to tell it NOT to create linkage? I get errors when that info is created.
Thanks!
on February 19th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Excellent script. Thanks for making it available.
Quick Question…
The problem is the symbols that are created do not show up when i “select unused items” from the library.
After I convert all of the images (i usually have about 40 - 50), i notice there is a im_sym symbol created with all the bitmaps in it (i presume this is how the bitmaps are coverted to symbol). I deleted this just in case, but still no avail. I have not added any of the created symbols to the main timeline or anything…
Is there another symbol or something that i need to delete in order to get the unused symbols to select?
I use this feature to quite a bit while making our e-learning topics to make sure i didn’t miss something or to find additional elements that are availble because they haven’t been placed on the main timeline yet.
many thanks for all your help.
and thanks again for making this available!
Enjoy!
Kevin
on February 19th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
my bad… I notice the comment right above my last one was referring to it creating the linkage… i presume there’s not a way to get around this since it wasn’t posted.
At any rate, thanks again.
Happy Coding!
Enjoy!
Kevin
on February 19th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Hi Kevin,
If you comment out/remove the following lines and regenerate the MXP or make a command with the resulting code it should create the symbols without the linkage name.
obj_lib.setItemProperty(”linkageExportForAS”, true);
obj_lib.setItemProperty(”linkageExportInFirstFrame”, true);
obj_lib.setItemProperty(”linkageIdentifier”, str_symbolName);
HTH,
Ben
on February 20th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Gotcha.
I took a look at the jsfl file and found the lines.
Now, I guess I just need to learn how to make an mxi file from that. (I’ve never created an extension before.) Should be fun, and useful, to learn how.
Many thanks.
Enjoy!
Kevin
on August 29th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hi,
This is Really Awesome,so helpful. thanks a lot
yaqqoo