Flash 8 Cookbook

1.28. Applying a Fill Across Multiple Elements

Problem

You want multiple elements on the stage to share a single gradient or bitmap fill.

Solution

Toggle the Paint Bucket or Brush tool Lock Fill modifier on while filling (Paint Bucket tool) or creating (Brush tool) multiple shapes.

Discussion

By default, each shape that contains a fill has its own fill. For fill styles such as gradients and bitmaps, this means that each shape has its own gradient or its own bitmap.

You might, however, want to make a given fill, such as a gradient or bitmap fill, span from one side of the stage to the other, appearing in multiple shapes. You can cause Flash to share a fill across multiple elements in different ways. If you have already drawn a series of shapes or closed lines and you want to fill them with a shared fill, the easiest approach is to set a gradient or bitmap as the active fill, Shift-select or drag-select all of the elements, and click in any one of them with the Paint Bucket tool. This procedure fills the elements with the same locked fill, regardless of the toggle state of the Lock Fill modifier. Using this method, the fill spans from the left edge of the left-most element to the right edge of the right-most element.

Alternatively, after the elements are drawn, you can click each one individually with the Paint Bucket tool and the Options tray’s Lock Fill modifier toggled on. This approach also applies a shared fill across the elements, but it sometimes has an unexpected result. It creates ...