How to Fade Text In and Out

This easy tutorial will show you how to fade text in and out.

Open Flash MX and make a new movie.

1. Insert your text.

2. Right click on your text and select 'Convert to Symbol'.

A little box should pop-up:

Select 'Movie Clip' and give it a name of your choice, eg. Fade In.

3. Now goto a frame of your choice along the timeline - this will be the duration of the effects, so the further along the timeline you go; the longer the effect will last.

We will use 50 as the example.

4. Right click over your desired frame, in our case 50, and select 'Insert Keyframe'.

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Your timeline should now look something like this:

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5. Now go back to frame 1 on the timeline and click on the text you created.

You should get the following options in the 'properties' toolbox:

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Notice the red circle I made, the name you gave your symbol should appear there; in my case 'fadein'.

But we are now looking at the place where I put the red cross.....the dropdown menu called 'color'.

6. Make sure your still at frame 1, and have the text selected.

Click on the dropdown menu called 'color' and select 'Alpha' (Alpha is another word for transparency).

A little slider will now appear, allowing you to toggle the Alpha Value of your text:

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Slide it to 0%, so that your text is no longer visible.

7. Click anywhere on your timeline and you will see that the text is completely transparent, apart from frame 50, where we added the keyframe - that is still 100%.

Now we need to get these to 'merge' together.

8. Now goto roughly the middle of your timeline, in my case frame 25 would suffice.

You should see this in your properties toolbox:

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All you need to do is change the 'Tween' (The area surrounded by a red circle), to 'Motion' Using the drop down menu.

Now, as you are half way along your timeline, you text should appear semi-transparent, and the timeline should appear a blue kind of color:

All you need to do now is move the mouse along the timeline and see your text fade in!

*9. To make the text fade out, instead of in, simply:

Set the Alpha value of the text on the keyframe (frame 50) to 0% and the Alpha on frame 1 to 100%.

Have fun!