MovieClipLoader to load images from URL

[Bankler]

I need portraits of my players showing up in my gui. These portraits need to be dynamically loaded from internet. When I develop my gui in Flash, I got dynamically loaded images to work perfectly by using the MovieClipLoader.

portraitMCL.loadClip("http://www.myWorkingImageURL.jpg", _root.myPortraitMovieClip);
(where portraitMCL is a MovieClipLoader).

The image, which is located somewhere on internet, loads just fine when I run my swf in Flash Player.

Dumb and naive as I am, I developed it all before even confirming that this is supported in Scaleform. So when I export my swf and import it in UDK and run it, the images are not loaded. It just gets blank.

Is this not supported in Scaleform? Or am I just doing something wrong? If it's not supported, is there another way around the problem?

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SMALL UPDATE:

I have tried reading from a file on my disk instead. No go. I replaced my current system with the CLIK component UILoader. Since this is Scaleform stuff, I figured it would work better. No luck though. It works great in FlashPlayer. But after I have imported it to UDK, it fails to load the image. Is what I'm trying to do possible at all? Or is Scaleform totally unable to read anything from outside? I have managed to push a texture from a UDK package to Flash earlier, but then I knew exactly what picture it was going to be. Going this approach would require me to get UDK to read a file and convert it to a texture. This seems wrong, and I'm not sure if it would be possible either?

[strangelet]

iirc -

scaleform content is imported with the movie to a UDK pack. any cross-movie image references are internal, and the only way i know of to load an image from a DIFFERENT udk pack - one thats not part of the gfx import, is to use the CLIK UIloader component.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Scale...Loading Images

i have never tried reading an image from a remote source :/ if i find anything out ill come back and post it

[Bankler]

Yeah, I have managed to load images as well. That was useful for things like having a screenshot of the level to show in the level-selection menu without having to have all those images baked into the gfx package (which means you can add levels without changing the menu .fla).

However, being able to load external images would be very useful. Otherwise I guess it would be impossible to show stuff like custom logos, player avatars (if not loaded from steam) and such. This is functionality that we have seen in games since the late 90's. Does Matt Doyle have any input on this subject? Is there some workaround we can do to achieive this?

[altodarknight]

You may be able to load the image in via unreal, store it as a texture in transient memory and load it in via the same method that you would normally load an image in via the same method you would normally use to load a texture from an unreal package. I think I have seen someone do this before, but I can't recall exactly how they did it from the unreal side. Potentially something to investigate though.

[sidstyler]

I have managed to push a texture from a UDK package to Flash earlier, but then I knew exactly what picture it was going to be. Going this approach would require me to get UDK to read a file and convert it to a texture. This seems wrong, and I'm not sure if it would be possible either?

Sorry for not contributing but I'm quite interested in how you got a texture from unreal to flash. I want to save my Unreal Texture2D to a Flash Bitmap, haven't really figured out how to do this though.

[altodarknight]

Sorry for not contributing but I'm quite interested in how you got a texture from unreal to flash. I want to save my Unreal Texture2D to a Flash Bitmap, haven't really figured out how to do this though.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Scale...ading%20Images

[ZeJudge]

Hmm, I'm wondering if this is possible to be done in the UDK also, any developments on this?

[Matt Doyle]

Scaleform has no support for loading content from web addresses. You'll have to do this using Unreal's networking support, then route those images to Scaleform.