This article provides step-by-step instructions that illustrate how work produced in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional can be integrated into Adobe After Effects CS4 (and vice versa) to achieve some stunning motion graphic results.

I first discovered the motion graphics powerhouse of combining Flash and After Effects when I wrote Foundation Flash 8 Video for Friends of Ed in 2006. The deadline for the book was less than a week out. I was using the Flash 8 beta and I had encountered a huge problem: The last chapter was supposed to cover a feature in the beta version of Flash, but I heard that it might not be included in the final release. As I was pondering what to do, a copy of After Effects was dropped off at my office and I started playing with it—as more of a distraction from the book than anything else. I asked myself, "I wonder how this After Effects stuff might work in Flash?" and I realized rather quickly the answer was, "Really well, thank you."

This resulted in my decision to devote the final chapter to the integration of After Effects and Flash. Once the book was finished, I turned my attention back to these two tools and realized there was a lot more going on than the topics I had covered in a single chapter. At this point, Friends of Ed contracted a new book, From Flash to After Effects: Poetry in Motion Graphics, which I coauthored with Tiago Dias. Since then I have spoken at countless user group meetings, conferences, and post-production houses where I have discussed how well Flash and After Effects can be combined.

Many Flash designers and After Effects producers have told me that if they would combine their knowledge and expertise, amazing things could happen.

The release of Flash CS4 Professional and After Effects CS4 makes those amazing things even easier to achieve. The simple fact that an XFL file created in After Effects CS4 can be opened in Flash CS4 is a huge step forward. I also suspect a lot of Flash designers who checked out the new Motion Editor in Flash CS4 couldn't help but notice the influence of the After Effects feature set.

In this article you will do the following:

• Move a Flash animation into After Effects
• Insert a one-frame, code-driven Flash file into After Effects
• Create an XFL file in After Effects CS4 and open it in Flash
• Embed an After Effects effect into the Timeline in Flash

Let's start integrating!

Requirements

To follow along with this article, you'll need the following software and files:

Flash CS4 Professional

• Try
• Buy

After Effects CS4

• Try
• Buy

Sample files:

• integrating_fl_ae.zip (ZIP, 92 MB)

Prerequisite knowledge

This article assumes you have a basic familiarity with both Flash CS4 Professional and After Effects CS4 and prior experience exporting files from both applications.

Note: I want to give special thanks to Chris Georgenes for permission to use his character "Grotto" in this article. Although Grotto made an appearance in Foundation Flash CS4 for Designers (Friends of Ed, 2008), coauthored with David Stiller, I deeply appreciate the fact that Chris, a master of the craft of Flash animation, allowed him show up in this article as well.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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