are there possible ways to draw sprite or shape in flash

Question

I usually created a movieclip in flash and assign it to actionscript class(using export for actionscript method in its property panel) that exteds movieclip. but sometimes movieclip is just too heavy for that,is there any possible way to draw a sprite directly in flash(not by code),and control it in actionscript-3

Answer 1

Just change the base class to flash.display.Sprite instead of flash.display.MovieClip when converting the graphic to symbol or by right-click the object in the library . You'll notice how the icon in the library will change from the standard "blue" MC-icon to a "green" sprite icon. You can then control it in your code as you usually control a MC, with a couple of differences.

Basically Movie clips are sprites with a timeline and methods/properties to manipulate it. The HUGE difference is that MovieClip is a dynamic class and Sprite a static one

Answer 2

To my knowledge that is not possible. The overhead of Movieclip vs Sprite is minimal, though.

Answer 3

In AS3 the Shape class is quite minimalist and allows you to draw on its Graphics object. But you won't be able to add anything from Adobe Flash to it since it's not a container.

If you want to use something from a flash library, Sprite is the lighter since it does not include frame animations as MovieClip does.

Take a look at http://www.flashandmath.com/intermediate/children/display_api.jpg for other needs.

Answer 4

You can create a sprite in the flash IDE by changing the object base class to flash.display.Sprite I'm using Flash CS5. Here is a screen shot :

If you want to create a Shape, all you have to do is drawing a shape inside the stage. You can check with this code :

import flash.utils.describeType;

var k:int = numChildren;
while(k--){
    trace(describeType(getChildAt(k)));
}