October 6th, 2009
by Jen deHaan
A “FAQ” about new motion tweens is how to scale the entire animation after you have created it. New motion tweens “auto-keyframe”. This can be very helpful when animating, because it saves you a step – you can just make your changes and everything tweens nicely. However, it also means that you need to think about things when you need to revise the entire animation. You don’t use “Edit multiple keyframes”, since you really only have one keyframe at the beginning of the animation. So I’ll go over a few of the things you may encounter.
1. Moving an entire animation with a motion path.
If you have a motion path, this is easy – you select the motion path (click it, or marquee-select over your instance), and then drag it to a new location on the stage or use the X-Y hot text for the path.
2. Moving an entire animation without a motion path.
If you do not have a motion path and do not want a motion path, you need to make sure your playhead is at frame 1 of the tween span, and then move the instance to a new location. Make sure you haven’t accidentily placed any position keyframes. If you do have a path, delete it or go to the Motion Editor and right-click the X and Y motion paths and choose “Reset Property” (or click the Reset button for Basic motion if you don’t have rotation applied).
3. Scaling an entire animation that doesn’t have Scale X or Scale Y animated.
You can scale the tween with the motion path. Just go to the first frame of the tween, and select the instance and path using the Free Transform Tool (hold Shift to multi-select), or use the Transform panel for each selection. Scale it as you do any path or instance, and because you’re at the first frame the changes will apply across the entire tween.
4. Scaling an entire animation that does have Scale X or Scale Y animated.
If you have previously scaled anything in the tween, doing this is applied to the first keyframe and the tween would animate to the earlier scaling (the auto-keyframing feature can be a detriment in this situation, especially when it comes to scaling due to the percentages being reset – for this reason Motion Presets also won’t help). In this situation, I recommend scaling using the Motion editor:
1. Go to the Scale X and Y properties in the Motion Editor.
2. Press the Alt key while dragging the curve in each graph up and down. This scales the entire scale animation at the same time (same as edit multiple keyframes).
3. If you need to proportionally scale the motion path for the tween as well, select the path on the Stage and use Free Transform or enter a new value in the Transform panel.
Posted in Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: new features, Migration, Motion Editor, animation, motion path, motion tween, new stuff, symbols, timeline, transform, tweens | 17 Comments »
May 5th, 2009
by Jen deHaan
Justin Putney at Ajar Productions has created some amazing extensions that you can use with Flash CS4 and the new motion model to help with your tweens or create them. Justin’s extensions are not only useful, but well implemented and documented on his blog.
For some helpful detailed info about the extension creation, check out this post on the Ajar Productions site.
For information/download for the MotionSketch extension, which records/creates a tween based on you drawing in Flash (!), see this post.
For the Motion Blur extension, which analyzes the movement of your tween and then creates a motion blur. see this post.
Many thanks to Justin for your hard work, and excellent extensions.
Posted in Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, JSFL, animation, downloads, motion tween, new stuff | 3 Comments »
May 5th, 2009
by Jen deHaan
We wrote an article to help you migrate your skills and tweens from old to new in Flash CS4. It accompanys a new Animation Learning Guide on the Developer Center (they go hand in hand, lots of cross links) – and since it is now out, so is the migration article.
Check them out here:
* Motion Migration Guide for Flash CS4
* Animation Learning Guide
Let us know what you think!
Posted in FLA files, Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: new features, Migration, Motion Editor, animation, articles, motion tween, new stuff, tweens | 2 Comments »
May 5th, 2009
by Jen deHaan
It took awhile to produce this due to its length (over 80 pages in word I think), but the Animation Learning Guide for new motion (introduced in Flash CS4 last fall) is finally out:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/learning_guide/animation/
It is divided into a bunch of sections based on topic, so click from this page to the topic you want to learn about. Also note that there is a FLA download of samples to help you out.
For more information on whatever, let us know. If you’re upgrading from classic tweens to new tweens, check this other article out too.
Posted in FLA files, Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: motion runtime, Flash CS4: new features, Migration, Motion Editor, Motion Presets, Motion runtime, Tween instance, animation, articles, masking, masks, motion tween, tweens | 7 Comments »
January 9th, 2009
by Jen deHaan
If you’ve created motion tweens in versions of Flash Past, chances are you’ve pressed F6 a few times in order to insert new keyframes. Doing so has probably become very familiar to you as well – you want to change something for an animation, then you press F6. Automatically. It’s a habit.
You can still use F6 to insert static keyframes on the Timeline (that you might turn into a motion tween), and you can even use them to insert property keyframes within a tween span too. However, within a tween span pressing F6 will insert a property keyframe on every single property currently associated with the target instance. This is usually way more keyframes than you actually need at that frame, so using F6 on a tween span is usually not the best thing to do for your animation – especially if you intend to continue modifying it. You’ll likely end up with unexpected things happening in your animation. So in Flash CS4, you might want to work at breaking the F6 habit.
Instead of pressing F6, you can insert keyframes other ways:
- Simply change the instance. Most of the time, this is all you need to do to insert a keyframe at the playhead’s position. If you need to tween to a new location, move the instance there. If you need it to scale or skew, use the Free Transform tool. If you need the instance to blur, change the value in the Property inspector or Motion Editor.
- Right-click the tween span and choose Insert Keyframe > Type. This adds keyframe(s) for the category you select at the current playhead, which reduces the number of keyframes inserted. For example, if you choose Insert Keyframe > Filter it adds a keyframe on all filter properties. To further reduce the number of inappropriate keyframes, use the Motion Editor.
- Use the Motion Editor. You can use the Add Keyframe button (yellow or gray diamond), graph context menu, or Ctrl/Cmd key over the graph to insert a keyframe on individual properties.
Posted in Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: new features, Migration, animation, motion tween, tweens | 19 Comments »
December 10th, 2008
by Jen deHaan
In the previous blog entry, I linked to a new JSFL that automatically gives instance names to selected instances in a smart way. You can go read about and download the JSFL from this page. This entry shows you how to use this command along with some of the new features in Flash CS4.
read more »
Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Commands, Easing, FLA files, Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: motion runtime, Flash CS4: new features, General, JSFL, Migration, Motion Editor, Motion runtime, Tween instance, animation, downloads, instances, motion tween, new stuff, tweens | 6 Comments »
November 24th, 2008
by Jen deHaan
That’s right – do you want to do more “stuff” with your tweens? Often you have to know what keyboard modifiers to use, because functionality is not revealed in any other way. These modifiers are all documented, but I thought I would put them down in a handy list you could reference or print out (or whatever you want to do).
MOTION EDITOR
- Add a control point: Ctrl-click (Windows) or Cmd-click (Mac) on the curve or dashed line on the graph.
- Remove a control point: Ctrl-click (Windows) or Cmd-click (Mac) a control point.
- Select multiple control points on a graph: Hold Shift and click each control point.
- Convert a control point between smooth and corner: Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac) the control point to extend or pull in the handles of a control point. This works on all control points except on the X, Y, and Z (spatial) properties.
- Move a curve up and down on a graph without changing the keyframes time values: Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac) the curve between any two control points.
- Separate handles on a control point: Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac) a handle. This makes the handle move independently. Release the Alt key and drag the opposite handle past 180 degrees to make both move together again.
- Move a control point to a different frame and retain its value: Make sure the control point is DESELECTED, and then hold Shift and drag it to a new frame. Or select the control point and don’t release the mouse button, then hold Shift and drag it to a new location.
- Change values by steps of 10: Hold Shift while scrolling the hot text.
- Change values by steps of 0.1: Hold Ctrl while scrolling the hot text.
(Also note that you can do basic math in the hot text as well – to enter 25, you can enter 20+5.)
TWEEN SPANS (in Timeline)
- Select a single frame in a tween span: Ctrl-click (Windows) or Cmd-click (Mac) a frame in the tween span.
- Select multiple frames in a tween span: Ctrl-drag (Windows) or Cmd-drag (Mac) frames in the tween span.
- Extend the length of a tween span without stretching the animation: Shift-drag the end of the tween span to the right.
- Make the tween span shorter without stretching the animation: Shift-drag the end of the tween span to the left (removes keyframes you drag over).
- Duplicate a span: Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac) the span to a new location on a timeline.
- Duplicate tween frames: Select frame(s) within a span (Ctrl/Cmd-click or drag) and then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac) the frames to a new location on a timeline.
- Insert empty frames between two adjacent tween spans: Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) while dragging the breakline between the spans.
Posted in Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: new features, Motion Editor, animation, motion tween, new stuff, tweens | 13 Comments »
November 5th, 2008
by Jen deHaan
If you want to learn about new motion tweens in Flash, and you’re going to be at Adobe MAX, you’re in luck. I’ll be giving a short presentation as part of the QE team session, and we’ll be at the Flash birds of a feather session. This isn’t in the MAX session guide so I thought I’d blog about it so the two of you out there interested can read all about it.
More fascinating info after the jump.
read more »
Posted in Adobe MAX, Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: new features, General, animation, motion tween, presentations, tweens | 1 Comment »
November 4th, 2008
by John Mayhew
Hi everyone. John Mayhew from Flash authoring here. This is my first blog entry here and I wanted to take some time to describe the XML schema we use to store motion presets in Flash CS4. First I’d like to give you some background. The new animation model in Flash CS4 was built from the ground up over the last several years. It started as an idea I pitched at the end of our Flash 8 cycle at Macromedia. We assembled a team and started development in Flash 9 and continued through into Flash 10 and eventually shipped it as part of CS4. It was the culmination of tons of hard work by many, many people including our very own Jen DeHaan! We are all very proud of the feature and hope our users find that it does indeed "kick ass" as Jen likes to put it.
read more »
Posted in Easing, Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: motion runtime, Flash CS4: new features, Migration, Motion XML, Motion runtime, Scripted animation, animation, motion tween, tweens | 4 Comments »
October 12th, 2008
by Jen deHaan
Yesterday at FlashCamp, I gave a presentation on using the new motion model in Flash CS4. The files are linked on this post. This is a general synopsis of what I covered, and I’ll detail how I did a few things in the presentation. Please comment with any questions you have.
More after the jump.
read more »
Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Easing, FLA files, Flash CS4, Flash CS4: motion, Flash CS4: motion runtime, Flash CS4: new features, Migration, Motion Editor, Motion Presets, Motion runtime, Tween instance, animation, motion tween, presentations, symbols | 10 Comments »