Hi all,
Got another couple of questions. They will be endless I now assume.
I'm working on getting the spinning blades of death thing working as an experiment. For the blades I've created four instances of the blades in different rotation and then just sequenced them up.
Here's my two questions:
1> As I've created this object as a graphic, I find that when I create a motion tween things look fine. However, when I decided that portions of the motion were too slow and so then cut out frames to speed things up, the resulting tween was skipping frames of the graphic. Example: if i take my 4 frame graphic and motion tween it across 4 frames and then cut frame three of the tween, frame three of the graphic is removed as well. This results in a jump between frame 3 and 1 making the animation choppy also. I know that I could change the graphic to a movie clip but I've been told to stick with graphics ( I'm not really sure why. I can't find any good info on why to use one verses the other). Is there a way to tell flash not to do that? Or to resequence the graphic? I added a layer with frame numbers to the graphic. so that the jumping was obvious.
2> The spinning blades thing is a little weak. I'd originally only had the original four frames. I've since added a couple of other layers which show the previous two frames in reduced alpha, like an image ghosting. It helps but the blades still look kinda stiff and I'd love some suggestions on how to make them seem menacingly fast.
The fla can be found here: http://www.senator.org/~mparker/animations/inc1.fla
Thanks for any help.
-Mark
I haven't looked at your FLA yet, so I can't address your specific issues. I CAN tell you when to use Graphic symbols over Movie Clips symbols though.
Movie clip symbols are intended to be called by Actionscript in an interactive environment like the web. If you're creating a straight-ahead animated short, they cause problems. They don't output well for transfer to video. Graphic symbols play straight ahead without any of the output issues inherent in movie clips.
If you have the need to change from one symbol type to the other, it's as easy as changing the symbol type for the given symbol in the library. Remember, though, that any symbols on the stage will retain their type once they're there. You'll have to change any symbol on stage by hand once it's there (also simple using the info palette).
I've had a look at your FLA. Here's a couple of ideas:
Try curving your blade edges instead of leaving them straight. Curves imply motion, and a straight edge in a situation like this distracts from it.
Instead of a full solid on the blades, try using a gradient fill that goes from full fill at the leading edge to transparent alpha at the trailing edge. It'll give you the motion blur effect you're looking for.
I'd lose the oval encompassing the blades, unless it's part of the blade structure when it's not moving. Having it as a constant takes away from your motion. You can leave a small bit trailing off the outside edge of the blade, but it definitely needs a break before the next blade comes along.
As to your dropped frame issues, sometimes this happens with nested graphic symbols if the amount of time on the main timeline given to the symbol doesn't match the animation loop on the symbol itself. When it hits a key on the main timeline, playback for the symbol jumps back to the first frame of the symbol animation.
Flash will drop frames in order to stream and match animation to the sound file, contrary to what some "butt" heads say. If your computer isn't top of the line and you have other things open drawing on the cpu, it will drop frames. That's how the program was designed, if you don't want to deal with that export it and output to an avi, mov or some other format.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
DSB and Phacker are right with what they said.
I was playing with your FLA a bit. If you want to make the blades look faster, on top of what DSB said, you can probably take out frames 2 and 4 from the cycle. It'll make it a 2 frame cycle, but it'll make it look way faster.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
I made the following mods: Dropped the frames on the whirling blades graphic to 2, curved the blade edges, applied a tweaked radial gradiant to the blades and placed a faint radial gradient under the blades to assist in the blur. It's much better.
And as for the dropped frames, it's not that the player is dropping the frames, the frames get dropped from the timeline itself. I was able to go in and clean things up using swap symbol to put the correct instance of the graphic where I wanted it. Not fatal, just annoying.
What's really interesting to me is that taking the object and trying to show it in different placements makes for crappy animation. I'm enjoying getting out of the engineer mentality and more into the creative thought of 'what will made this thing look like it's moving' even though a still shot may not convey reality at all. After going through this process, I'm remembering old 50s toons with airplanes in them and the spinning prop has almost no individual blades showing. It's mostly blurry stuff and some well placed lines. I'm going to have to go through my collection again and find examples of that.
Thanks so much for all of your help.
The result, if you care, is in the same place.
-Mark
Yeah Mark, that looks much better.
I'm still not sure what you mean about the tween thing and it dropping frames. I re-read your post several times now, and I'm not sure what you mean. To me, this is what it sounds like you are saying:
You make your graphic with 4 key frames inside the symbol and then set it to loop. Then on the main time line you made two key frames, one at frame 1 and another at frame 4, and then made a motion tween between the two. Now on the main time line you deleted frame 3 to make the tween quicker, so now there is only a tween from frame 1 to frame 3. But now when you double click into your blade symbol, frame 3 is also missing? Is that what's happening?
Thats how I read your first post. This shouldn't happen. If it does, there is something seriously wrong with your copy of Flash, and you should return it and get a new copy.
What you do on the time line shouldn't affect what happens inside the symbol, but if you alter something inside the symbol it will change it everytime that symbol is on the stage.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Well Ape, you understood what I was saying. Although, I think I figured out what was going on. There were some spots where I wanted to frame by frame it. So instead of modifying the existing tween, I just added some keyframes by pressing F6 to extend the current keyframe (the end or beginning of a tween) with an instance of the symbol already in it. The sequence is ordered at that point. I then went in and pulled some keyframes out of the middle and since they weren't part of a tween, they got pulled too. Makes some sense I guess. Or as I tell my users sometimes 'working as designed'.
Thanks again for the feedback.
-Mark
Not sure if this has been said already but.
When you convert a gfx tween to frames each frame is assigned a digit in the properties tab. Select the symbol on the stage and make sure that the Frame: digit in the properties tab is the frame you where intending to use.
Hope that helps :).
(if that fails try breaking apart each frame so it's no longer a symbol).
He's motion tweening they graphic symbol as it plays, so he can't break it apart. It has to be a symbol so he can motion tween it.
Convert the tween to keys Select the keys and in the properties tab under motion select none. Then break the keys apart individualy and from there just take out the frames you don't want.