Professional :: Alter Instances Of Animated Symbols?
May 28, 2010
I am stumped as to how to use an animated symbol repeatedly in a timeline while being able to alter its visual qualities without breaking the animation motion.I make a simple 3-layer animation of a body with two legs doing a walk cycle in place.I convert the completed animation as a new graphic symbol in the library.
I can then drag copies of that animated symbol to different timeline layers and alter their overall scales or give them each additional motions with a motion tween so various versions of it can move across the stage independently with tweens while keeping the walk cycle movements of the symbol.
I can change the colour properties of the added symbols but this only affects the whole image, so if the object had a body and legs in different colours, altering the properties changes all of the body parts to the same colour.Doing this does preserve the walk cycle motion, but the new object looks crude because it has become all one colour.I can then alter the visual properties of the components individually, but then it loses its animation motion.Whether I just group it again or convert it to a new symbol, it has lost the animation motion (the walk cycle of the legs) of the original. how to make such an animated symbol so that I can reuse it in the timeline while changing its visual properties (so it looks like a different character in the story) and yet keep its original animation motion.I have tried to duplicate the symbol and to copy and paste the motion but nothing seems to work.
FLASH CS5 using Windows XP. I have created an animation that I want to export to sequence of .png files. The file has Symbols that contain embedded animations.
For instance, I have a flashing light in one Symbol. That is embedded in a bouncing police car Symbol. The police car Symbol (with the embedded flashing light) is brought onto a flat bed truck at the "scene" level which is driving down a road. It all looks nice if I render an internal swf file. However, when I export the individual frames, all that is rendered is the flat bed moving down the road. The bouncing car and the flashing light are there but without the animation of each.
how to export an animated sequence that include the animations embedded in its Symbols?
I was wondering if anyone here had any advice on rendering large numbers of identicalanimated instances. The first step we undertook was to separate out the parts of the instance which are static and render flag them cache as bitmap. However I was wondering if there was a way of rendering the same object multiple times without the player having to recalculate the animations separately for each etc?
In my library I have:A Sprite named Emily of base-class "Character" with a sub-sprite labeled "head" of auto-generated Class "EmilyHead".A Sprite named Jess of base-class "Character" witha sub-sprite labeled "head" of auto-generated Class "JessHead".
Flash compiles with the following warning: Warning: All instances named 'head' will be automatically declared as JessHead in symbols that use Character as their base class. In symbols that are linked to user-defined base classes, instances with the same name must be of the same type. And then the runtime error:TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert EmilyHead@3a0d1e81 to JessHead. at flash.display::Sprite/constructChildren() at flash.display::Sprite()at Character() I can turn of auto-declare stage instances in the Actionscript 3 panel, but then I have to manually add a public var for all sub-child's, such as the head sprite. But then at least everything works as expected. This is more setup than I'd prefer to do, but everything else about this workflow is very fast & easy. What can I do to sidestep this error, while keeping the same workflow?
I'm looking to create an animation loop in Flash. The base character animation I have is 27 frames. However to have the background move at the correct speed, the entire animation is 432 frames.
Since I am making the animation so long anyway, I want the character to blink halfway through the animation loop. I went into the head symbol and extended its animation from a single frame to 432 frames. Halfway through that animation I swap out the image for one that is blinking (3 new images added for the blink).
So, now the symbols are nested like: 432 frames -> 27 frames -> 432 frames
But it doesn't seem like Flash is smart enough to animate it as I would expect. It only repeats the first 27 frames of the child symbol.
The next thing I tried was extending the 27 frame character animation out to 432 frames. I did this by copy-pasting the character animation 16 times. But this also does not work because copying the keyframes also copies the position of the child animation's playback. This causes the animation to constantly reset and never reach the blink.
I also tried using the copy motion option, but it didn't seem to do anything different than copying keyframes.Is there an easy way to make this animation work? I can't possibly need to manually position a total of 576 keyframes (there is actually another level to the nesting which does not use any tweens, just keyframes) could I?
I'm attempting to use CS4 (PC/Vista, if that matters) to create a SWF file that will basically act as a "library" of commonly used symbols. This SWF would be loaded at runtime by other SWFs, which could then use the symbols within it, including all art and code assets.
I am using CS3 / AS2 and was wondering if it was possible to load a movie into a symbol, not just an instance of that symbol, from the main timeline. I tried exporting the symbol for actionscript then using loadMovie but I suspect that is not the correct way to go about this.
PHP Code: symbol.loadMovie("urlToMovie");
Is it even possible to do this or do I have to change every instance of the symbol individually?
I have been tyring to export an animated banner, in animated.gif format. it's a simple animated text with no gradients. it should go on top of a graphic which has some gradients and is multi-coloured and with effects (the colours are similar to the one/i used in the page) as you can see here the text looks a bit funny.url...
Am I completely hallucinating or what ? That's several years I'm working with Flash, and today, i want to do the simplest animation ever, and it just doesn't work....I want to mask an animated clip with an animated mask (a shape animation), but every time the mask arrives at a keyframe, the clip restarts to the frame 1 !!I added a piece of code to see at which keyframe it is blocked, and at every mask keyframe, the code says 'TypeError: Error #1009: null property..
I'm trying to create a simple ripple effect made of circles created using the drawCircle() method. Afterwards I animate the circle by changing it's size and alpha value. The final radius of the circle and the position is random.
How do I create multiple circles/ripples?[code]...
I used this tut to create a menu. [URL] And my question is; Can I make the slider to move after a movie clip symbols instead of button symbols? That way my menu would be animated.
I'm working through a book called Foundation Game Design with Flash, and I'm finding the Flash IDE confusing. I've been programming for several years, so working with AS3 directly is far easier than trying to understand symbols and nested symbols and the difference between graphics and movie clips and scoping issues and all that -- when tied into the IDE.
How many of you who are making games in AS3 also use the Flash IDE? Can anyone recommend a resource that is AS3 heavy and Flash IDE light? I don't care how much time I may or may not save by using things like the timeline, I just want to understand what I'm using.
The animator said that he has created two symbols: one for the body, and another symbol inside the body symbol for the head.What I don't understand is how he translated the layers over into the head symbol. When I click on the head symbol, all of the layers disappear and I cannot edit an object individually within a layer.
In CS5, I want to create a simple series of still images that display in the Timeline for about 5 seconds each. Is there an easy way to do either of the following:
1. Change the Timeline to display in seconds instead of frames?
2. Specify how long something should appear prior to the next symbol showing up in the Timeline?
I have an .fla I created a while ago. In it is a movie clip in my library which I now want to use in a new .fla. This movie clip is reliant however on an image which is also in the library. I have tried selected both the image and movie clip, copy them, and paste them into my new library, but this doesnt work. I have tried cutting... I have tried duplicating and copying the duplicate. Nothing seems to work. Is there anyway of getting a symbol from one library into another?
i am using CS4 on a PC, and I have created my motion guide layers as I normally do, created a path, but when I scrub the playhead, the symbol just goes from point A to point B without follwing my guide. Also they are not snapping to the guide. I have not done a motion guide in a while, what am I missing here. Also where is the pallete to turn on object orienting?
I watched a tutorial where they added bones to a "Symbol" but when I try it it doesn't work.What I did was I imported a bitmap image and converted it to a "Symbol" but it wouldn't take the bone tool. How do I do this?
I have limited Flash experience in CS 3 and 4 but I got CS 5 and built an animated movie symbol and I tried everything I could think of but it would not play in the main timeline.To sum it up the animations and tweens work in the symbol but they do not appear in the main timeline.
I have few button symbols designed in my flash movie. My flash movie is displayed in 9 regional languages and hence I have used TLF text for Flash Movie which easily displays Unicode text.SWF displays text properly when i publish it. but once i view the same SWF in Internet Explorer or any other browser it does not display text in those buttons.
I've downloaded the Flash CS5 trial and am trying to use the software, but a lot of buttons and symbols are greyed out for me and I don't know why. Here's a typical use case for me:
- Open Flash CS 5 - Create a new Flash AS3 Project - Try to use the buttons on the right-hand toolbar, but they are greyed out
Also, I can import images to the stage or library, but I cannot click anything or edit their properties.See attached image for a screenshot of the buttons in their disabled, greyed-out state.I can even open an old project made in CS4, but again, I cannot edit any symbols that I've already made.Is there something I need to do to enable the buttons?
I'm having trouble with dynamic text. I have a symbol with dynamic text fields in it. In the action script file I want to change the text of these text fields like this: textFieldName.text = "new text"; But nothing happens. I cannot see any text when I play the movie. Also I tried adding a dynamic text field directly to stage and change the text with textFieldName.text = "new text"; I can see the new text when I play the movie. Then I added my symbol that has the dynamic texts in it, and the text of the text field that is directly on stage disappears. When I delete my symbol, the text is back there. I'm using Flash CS5 and ActionScript 3.0.
When I close the file (making sure to save) and reopen it. All the frame #'s attributed to the hand symbol revert back to frame 1.Meaning I have to redo every hand pose again and again and again. More importantly when the animation is approved and I send it off, when the client opens it the animation is incomplete.
I've made 3 different symbols of a running Super Mario -- the first one is his first running frame in the Super Mario Bros. video game, the second one is his second running frame, etc. I would like to create a motion tween of these 3 symbols, so it looks like he's running from one point of the screen to the other. I'm unsure of how I would go ahead to accomplish this.
