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In Need Of Major Flash Help!

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In Need Of Major Flash Help!

I have a great big problem...everytime i think Flash(mx 2004) shoul d do something it doesn't.

I'm just practicing some simple running animations, which i'm just letting loop to make a little chase scene.

Now on to my scene.

First off, I assembled everything in illustrator, cause I don't like how flash's drawing works.

Then I imported and converted everything. Made a seperate still "model" on the main stage so I could put everything together right. Then I went into that and put all his parts on their own layers.

potential issue 1? i then deleted that "model"

Then I merrily went about animating. for the most part everything went great. I made 3 differen't leg poses and just swaped them.

potential issue 2? i couldn't motion tween the arm even though it was the only object on the layer...however, it is grouped as one shape with the rest of the arm(as in illustrator) but i made them one symbol in flash. Because in edit mode both shapes are still seperate, should i completely break them down?

Now on to animating the tassle on the fez. He has one hand holding the fez, which I just made one symbol. So I then went into the symbol. And I planned on merely using frame by frame on the tassle.

MY PROBLEM!!!!!! When I would move out of editing the fez and back into the character. The animation wouldn't show up when I would scrub the timeline.

QUESTION could the problem be that before animating the fez, i had already gone frame by frame through all the layers moving them up and down as the character runs? Why would that cause the animation inside the fez not to play? I thought that anything you did to/or inside a symbol would change every instance of it.

Would a potential remedy for this simply be to leave the frame by frame out of that "main layer" of the fez? that way there aren't key frames along the course of the animation to prevent the the animation inside the fez from playing?

QUESTOIN 2 If that is a fix. I would then have to go back inside the fez and animate it up and down the same number of pixels as all the other outside parts, right? to keep it in synch.

Semi-related question I tried basically the same thing with the head as well. Only going inside of it to make a blinking animation for the eyes. Only the blinking wouldn't play. Were those key frames from the frame by frame keeping the blinking from playing?

I know that's an awful lof to things to be askin' all at once but i'm completely stumped. And frustrated. Because every idea I get about how Flash should work, it won't.

I've got two more characters to add to the scene too.

DeadSquid's picture
Website http://dapper-dandy.com Cartoon Syndicate project http://cartoon-syndicate.com

Website http://dapper-dandy.com

Cartoon Syndicate project
http://cartoon-syndicate.com

...ok, i just did a quickie test....I did the exact same thing as above with just a couple of symbols...

So here's where I am [main stage]>[character(head layer)]>[*head*] Now I left some space between the keys just in case that was causing my problem with the animations not playing. Well i've got it blinking jsut fine. and I even went and keyed the blink on the same frame as the head moving down AND changed the eyebrows........

so I go up to try the fez.....NOTHING. I've completely broken the shapes down and made them one whole symbol. I key the motion i want on the tassle. NOTHING!

In fact when it was working...it was animating on frame 10 instead of 6...

I'M SO SICK OF THIS! Every time i figure something out, it stops working.

Why does the program seem to do whatever it wants despite anything you do?

granted i'm just starting out, but this can't just be me can it?

Website http://dapper-dandy.com

Cartoon Syndicate project
http://cartoon-syndicate.com

Hello Dead Squid and welcome to the AWN Forums.

Your explination was a bit confusing for me to understand so let me see if I got this right.

You are nesting animation inside a symbol. Lets say you have 20 frames of animation for a head in the main stage. Inside the symbol you have the eyes blink on frame 10. When you go back to the main stage and play the 20 frames of animation, the eyes don't blink. Is that about right?

There are two things that might be causing this.

One: you have the head symbol designated as a "Movie Clip" and not a "Graphic." If the symbol is a "Movie Clip," the animation won't play when your play the timeline or if you export your animation as a .avi file. The point of using "Movie Clips" is for website interactivity and it keeps the file size low. If you are just animating to animate, and aren't using action scrips that will referance your .swf file, make all your symbols "Graphics." This will save you tons of headaches down the road.

Two: the symbol is set to "single frame" and not "play once."

There could be other causes if you tweened the animation on the main stage.

Also don't group things. Groups don't motion tween well. Pluss if you need to change something like the color, you you will have to change every key frame of a group, but if it's a symbol, you change the symbol once and it will change it across the board. Way better to use symbols.

I hope that will fix the problems you are having.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

granted i'm just starting out, but this can't just be me can it?

With all due respect - yeah, it can.;)

Sounds like you need to take a step back and spend a little time figuring out how Flash does things - not how you'd like Flash to do things. It's not a typical piece of animation software, so some of the ways you have to work in it may seem counter-intuitive if you're familiar with another package.

Everything you're trying to do can be accomplished in Flash, but you have to do it in a way that the software can respond to. Take a few hours (or a day) to read up on how things work in the tool and apply it to your project. Every time I run into a problem in Flash, it always turns out that something is set incorrectly or I've made a mistake. There are very few instances of "bugs" in the software that cause problems, at least that I've found.

Well i still don't know what the problem was. So I started over. Aside from all the many many little things.(i have a tendency to go all out all at once) everything is working ok.

I messed up the timing a bit, but he's running ok, blinking, bouncing and the tassle on his fez is a swingin'.

I'll post it once I get more done. I still have to model and animate the sidekick and the mummy.

Website http://dapper-dandy.com

Cartoon Syndicate project
http://cartoon-syndicate.com

With all due respect - yeah, it can.;)

Sounds like you need to take a step back and spend a little time figuring out how Flash does things - not how you'd like Flash to do things. It's not a typical piece of animation software, so some of the ways you have to work in it may seem counter-intuitive if you're familiar with another package.

Everything you're trying to do can be accomplished in Flash, but you have to do it in a way that the software can respond to. Take a few hours (or a day) to read up on how things work in the tool and apply it to your project. Every time I run into a problem in Flash, it always turns out that something is set incorrectly or I've made a mistake. There are very few instances of "bugs" in the software that cause problems, at least that I've found.

Well said DSB, you could always trying doing the same thing in another program and see how far you get. You probably made more progress in Flash than you would in other software.

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with DeadSquid. Make sure to post it.

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

hehe, I will. still gonna be a good couple of days yet. I'm tweaking what I have working right now. just wish i could just get the music to loop right, to get rid of the annoying pause at the end of the animation.

Website http://dapper-dandy.com

Cartoon Syndicate project
http://cartoon-syndicate.com