Flashthusiast

10 Responses to “Galvan comments on Flash CS4 concerns”

1. ButtercupSaiyan
   January 25th, 2009 at 11:20 am

   

   Aside from some workflow-crippling bugs, it lacks almost everything: Spring-based bones; a visual cone for joint rotation constraints; a dedicated tool for reconnecting, readjusting, and transforming bones, strength and weight zones for the influence of joints; a real hierarchy without everything on one layer (hello, errors that just ruined an hour’s worth of work!); and the ability to bind multiple symbols to the same bone.

   On top of that, if you use it in a prolonged animation, the limbs will slowly shrink over the course of time. The arm will go from 100% to 92% in size. And if you try to readjust a bone in the middle of an animation, everything else will “itch” or “squirm” around even if it’s not really connected.

2. John
   February 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am

   

   I tried leaving this on Richards blog, but keeps getting a Movable Type error.

   Here’s a bug that keeps causing me grief.

   Mac Flash CS4 Actions Panel - Every now and again, the Actions panel ends up larger than the height of my screens (1920×1200) and I can’t resize it back down because the top of the Actions Panel doesnt’ allow me to resize the panel vertically. Flash CS3 didn’t have that top header on the panel so I could resize it. Either fix the panel so that it doesn’t resize itself on its own, or allow me to resize it vertically. Resetting my workspace sometimes fixes it, but that is anything but ideal.

3. Tom Anderson
   February 12th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

   

   Seems like they changed the options so that they don’t get deluged with bug reports. I don’t know why they don’t open up a more formal bug report system such as launchpad.net. I’m not going to post my bugs unless 1. they are visible publicly. And I’d like to see some followup about how Adobe addresses these bugs.

   I hope u don’t mind that I post my comment here.

   i. Flash played in the IDE plays at a different speed than in the Flash player.

   ii. CTRL-ENTER performs a different function. The first time you press it, it runs a flash file. The second time, it tests download speeds. So I’m forced to hit CTRL-ENTER twice to reload the file I’m testing. Not actually a bug, but a usability issue.

   iii. Some inexplicable crashes. I managed to isolate them to “network access only” but that wasn’t the only problem. I think there’s a problem using AS 2.0’s _global/_root with network access only that crashes the Flash 10 Player.

   iv. No integration with SVN, yet Version Cue has some bugs.

   v. The Actions panel bug mentioned by John isn’t cool. I work around it by redocking the Actions panel, then undocking it again.

   vi. CS4 came out too quickly after CS3. CS3 began shipping April 16, 2007, which is actually less than two years ago! These “Suites” are just not designed to last? And since they cost a lot (~US$1699), I’d suggest they be more open about how long they are to be supported, etc.

4. John
   February 19th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

   

   Editing static or dynamic text fields with white text that are anything by 100% alpha == FAIL. You can’t see the text while editing. 100% alpha you can see the text while editing, but even 99% alpha makes the text completely invisible while editing. I think this is a long standing issue with white text that has seen improvements but still causes issues. (Mac OSX 10.5 CS4)

5. Josh
   February 22nd, 2009 at 10:55 am

   

   Flash CS4 has one really major problem, from the perspective of animation: Graphic Symbols that are connected in an armature cannot be controlled (you can’t choose which static frame you want the symbol to be showing).
   This is crucial to any animating job, and as far as I can see, it makes the whole IK thing useless.
   No real character animation can be done with this technique, nothing expressive can be achieved.
   I wonder if animators (who still use Flash) were ever heard during the planning of Flash CS4.
   Cheers.

6. Steve Broome
   February 25th, 2009 at 4:54 pm

   

   I tried to work around the aggravations in CS4, thinking it would just be an adjustment period (And wanting to take advantage of the IK feature). The fact is though it’s just not very well done. The IK is extremely limited and poorly thought out in terms of manipulation ability, the program is buggy, and actionscript 3.0 is cumbersome. I’m saving up now to get toonBoom for my animation and will be going back to designing with CS3/2.0 now.

7. Gabriel Valles
   March 8th, 2009 at 6:22 pm

   

   The IK system has a lot of potential but is not yet solid enough to be considered a real feature. I’m trying to use it to animate bitmap symbols.

   The most frustrating bug is that the pivot points do not stay locked in place. If I move pivots on a different section of the model they change somewhere else. So you get into a cycle of constantly fixing pivots instead of moving on to animating.

   Also, the Movie Explorer should work within the nested symbols. This will allow you to select the symbols toward the back of the model. Otherwise, there is no way to select them without moving other symbols out of the way first.

8. BD
   March 20th, 2009 at 1:35 am

   

   The comment function on Richards site seems to be broken…
   I dont understand why Adobe does this in this way.

9. scont
   April 13th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

   

   im also a cs4 user for my animation project. in my experience it is really slow in animation part especially in parenting.. it takes a minute to by calling a frame inside. any idea on how to make it faster. i’ve got 2gig memory, 256 VC, pentium D. thnx

10. Flash designer
    April 16th, 2009 at 1:54 am

    

    The comment function on Richards site works fine now. Please check. But comments require moderation.