Beth Cataldo, January 30, 2007


Programming Layered Menus in DVDSP

Layered menus have their problems -- specifically they are slow, and you can't add sound or motion images to them. However, you should know how to do them just in case your project requires a certain look and feel.

Defining the Background
1. Once you've added a layered menu to your outline view, you're going to assign layers to the background and then to the different button states.

2. You can use the inspector to assign an asset to the background by going to background and choosing a specific asset.

3. You will then see the layers in that document. You can choose which layers you want to display for the background of your menu.

 

Assigning Button States

1. Before you can assign your button states, you must first set the button hotspots on your menu.

2. Once you've created your hotspot, you will select it and go under the inspector for that button.

3. Then you will go into the layers tab, which will display the three button states (from left to right: normal, selected, activated) and all of the layers in your Photoshop doc.

4. Select specific layers by checking off the boxes to the left of the layer that you want to turn on.



Previewing Button States:
If you want to preview your button states without going through the whole simluation, go back to the menu editor. Select a button, and press W to step through each button state. Or you can go to View>Button State>Selected (or Activated) to see if you've programmed the correct layers for each button.

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