CommandSim Transition (CS Transition)

Smoke and fire conditions can change due to many factors, including materials consumed, new fuel sources, and effects of water applied. CommandSim Effects ("CS Effects") lets you model each 'state' (condition) of a smoke or fire plume, but does not help you transition among the various states to achieve a realistic-looking lifetime of that effect. CommandSim Transition ("CS Transition") is a Flash extension that helps you control the timing and appearance of smoke and fire in your scenario, across different state changes.

One of the advantages of using the approach we do for CS Effects is that it enables us to smoothly change parameter values over time, thereby transitioning from an old to a new effect gradually, just as it would in real-life (try out the transition in the figure on the right). This provides for a much more realistic experience than suddenly changing the parameter values and producing a noticeable change from one effect to the next. What's more, you can use CS Transition to fade-in and fade-out/hide any movie clip, including CommandSim Fire Clips, so you can orchestrate all the elements in your scene to occur based on your set trigger (keystroke, mouse click, time sequence, etc.).

With the introduction of CSStateManager, described in the section on CS State Manager, you can now also group your transitions into "states" (fire conditions), and have the current state preserved across multiple Flash movies. See the section on CS State Manager for more information.

Overview of Use

To set a smooth transition from one effect to another, you simply

1. Place a CS Transition token from the Components Panel onto the Stage
2. Tell it which CS Effect or movie clip instance to modify
3. Give it the ending effect parameters you want to set
4. Indicate how the transition should be triggered, i.e., what action the user must take to initiate the transition, whether keystroke, mouse click, time sequence, or state change (for CommandSim Fire Department Edition).

Organization of Help

The following sections describe how to use CS Transition to sequence how your effects change over time. It is organized as follows:

1. Quick Start Guide. Make your first effect transition within 5 minutes
2. Using CS Transition. The variety of effect transitions you can produce and where to enter the settings on the user interface
• Start Effect Settings
• End Effect Settings
• Transition Parameters
3. Parameter Reference Guide. Guide to changing settings for a CS Transition programmatically (Advanced)