XP Tutorial 4 Special Animations

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Special Layers for Animation Animation Using a Motion Guide Layer When a guide layer is used together with a motion tween it is called a motion guide layer. A motion guide layer provides a path for an object in the guided layer to follow throughout the motion tween. To create a motion guide layer for a motion tweened animation, you create first the motion tween on the layer. Select the layer and insert a motion guide layer above it by selection the Motion Guide command from the Timeline submenu on the Insert menu. On the motion guide layer, draw a path for the animated object to follow using the Pencil, Pen, Line, or Brush tool.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Animation Using a Motion Guide Layer Motion guide layer Guided layer Add Motion guide button Orient to path option selected

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Testing the Motion Guide Layer Press the Enter key to test the motion guide tween. Click the first frame of the animated layer and then click the Orient to path check box in the Property inspector, to check it. Click the last frame of the animated layer and then click the Orient to path check box in the Property inspector, to check it. Move the playhead to the first frame and press the Enter key to test the animation again.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Animation Using a Mask Layer Create the object that will be masked on one layer, and add a new layer above it that will contain the mask. Right-click the top layer and select Mask from the context menu. Mask layer Masked layer indented below the mask layer

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Animation Using a Mask Layer

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Mask Layer Animation Mask layer Masked layer Mask object

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Animating Text Blocks Text can be animated in many ways to create special effects. Text blocks can be animated using frame-by- frame or tweened animations. To create a motion tween with a text block, you need to first convert the text block to a symbol. This process is the same as you follow to create motion tweens for other symbols.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Sample Shape Tween

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Animating Individual Letters Animating individual letters in a word or phrase makes it possible to create interesting text effects. To create most effects, you first need to break a word into its individual letters and then animate each letter separately. The easiest way to animate letters is by using motion tweens.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Animating Individual Letters

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Distribute to Layers The Distribute to Layers command will take a group of selected objects and place each individual object onto its own layer. Each new layer is named based on its new content. The layer that originally contained the grouped objects will be empty after you apply the Distribute to Layers command. This command is located in the Timeline submenu of the Modify menu.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Motion Tweens for Each Layer

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Individual Letters Animation

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Creating and Testing Animations Using Onion Skinning Onion skinning displays more than one frame at one time on the Stage. This is especially helpful when creating frame-by- frame animation. Flash will display the current frame plus two or more frames on the Stage at once.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Creating and Testing Animations Using Onion Skinning Onion Skin Outlines button Onion Skin button Edit Multiple Frames button Modify Onion Marker’s button Onion Skin markers Several frames visible on the Stage at once

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Complex Animation with Nested Symbols You can create complex animation effects just by adding more layers to the document’s main Timeline. To animate multiple parts of an object at the same time, you can use nested symbols, which contains instances of other symbols within its Timeline. The nested movie clip instances are referred to as the child movie clips and the movie clip they are nested within is referred to as the parent movie clip.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Example of Nested Movie Clip

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Using the Movie Explorer The Movie Explorer is a panel that displays all of a document’s elements in a hierarchical view allowing you to manage and easily locate any of the individual elements. To open the Movie Explorer you click the Movie Explorer command from the Other Panels submenu, which is located on the Window menu.

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Using the Movie Explorer Show Video, Sounds and Bitmaps button Show Frames and Layers button Customize which Items to Show button Show Action Scripts button Display of selected elements Search for specific elements Show Text button Show Buttons, Movie Clips and Graphics button

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Movie Explorer Elements

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX Other Movie Explorer Options Go to Location – moves the playhead to the keyframe the selected instance resides in Find in Library – displays the selected symbol in the Library panel Show Movie Elements – displays the document’s elements such as its layers, frames, and symbol instances Show Symbol Definitions – displays the symbols used in the document; also displays the elements of the symbols Show All Scenes – displays the elements and symbols for all scenes in the document not just the current scene Print – prints a list of the contents of the Movie Explorer; only those elements displayed in the Movie Explorer are printed

XP New Perspectives on Macromedia Flash MX The Movie Explorer Movie Explorer panel displaying text blocks