Illustrator to Flash Gradient Conversion Madness

Question

I can't figure this out. Occasionally Flash converts
gradients imported from Illustrator into bitmaps no matter what I
seem to do. It's funky because there will be the exact same
gradients on different shapes that will be converted to a drawing
object instead (which I like). I've tried exporting as a swf, and
just copy and pasting right into CS4.
There doesn't seem to be any logical reason why this is
happening. Does anyone else have any experience with this and an
answer to this problem?

Answer 1

Thanks for all of your replies. _E_ , what I was referring to
was not drop shadows but actual color gradients within the shape. I
actually found the solution several minutes ago. I need to be able
to create the gradients in Illustrator because I am creating
characters and scenes for animation and it's just more efficient to
do it that way. Especially if I need the vector versions of the
characters for other purposes such as print. Bringing vector
characters or objects into Illustrator from Flash isn't a very
clean process and I like my stuff as clean as possible.
Here's what caused the problem:
(Note: I'm using Adobe CS4)
In Illustrator CS4 Adobe has greatly improved what you can do
with the gradients. When you select a shape that has a gradient you
can modify the gradient right from within the shape, a lot like
Flash. You can ALSO offset the center of a radial gradient by
pulling on a little dot just off from the center of the gradient.
THIS is what Flash didn't like. Other radial gradients of the same
shape and color were imported into Flash perfectly just by pasting
them in from Illustrator. But it converted these offset radial
gradients to bitmaps, probably because Flash cannot do that
particular calculation. So anyway, this is something to be aware of
for sure.
quote:
I've had numerous instances if gradients exporting to SWFs
poorly.
Me too, but it seems that Illustrator has really improved in
this regard with CS4.
quote:
You could always create your gradients in actionscript:
http://snipplr.com/view/7050/as3-creating-a-gradient-rectangle/
Would that help?
That's really cool, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for
in this particular case.
quote:
Personally, I always use as much as Flash can provide for
drawn elements--very low weight on the file-size side of things.
But to each his own... (I've never been fond of any of Adobe's
graphic software offerings--the non-Macromedia ones).
I do a lot of illustration - more illustration than
animation. Illustrator, for me, is a superior tool for creating
some of the highly complex, precision illustration work that I do.
There are a lot of specific tools that I absolutely need that
Illustrator offers, plus, much of my stuff also goes to print, and
Flash is not designed for what Illustrator can do. But like you
said, to each his own, we all have different types of workflow and
it's great that there are so many tools we can use exclusively or
interchange at will.
Well, everything looks like it's working fine, but I don't
know if I'm out of the woods yet! I still have a lot more scenes to
get into Flash! Thank you all for your help and insights!