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Jen deHaan
Adobe
flashthusiast.com
John Mayhew
Adobe
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Why use the Motion Editor?
- Adding or removing color effects, filters, and eases
- Modifying keyframes in graphs
- Motion Editor control shortcuts
Animation Learning Guide for Flash: Motion Editor
You have already made some minor edits to animations, if you've followed the learning guide in a linear fashion until you arrived at this section. For example, you have changed the position of a tweened instance to create a position tween, and then edited its motion path. You may have changed the scale or alpha transparency of the tweened instance to make it fade in and out or grow/shrink in size.
The following sections explore how you can make other kinds of edits to customize your animation in other ways—most notably, with the Motion Editor. To open the Motion Editor, select Window > Motion Editor.
The Motion Editor is a large panel that may cover a hefty percentage of your screen real estate. This may not be an issue if you have a dual-monitor setup or can function with an insane resolution, but could be an issue if you're working with one monitor or on a laptop. The following workspace options may help your animation workflow when space is a concern.
- Assign a keyboard shortcut to the Motion Editor, such as Pause or Home (Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts or Flash > Keyboard Shortcuts). Create a new set and then assign the custom shortcut. Resize the Editor so it fills the workspace and leave the motion editor floating. Open and close it when necessary using this shortcut.
- Create a Motion Editor workspace (Edit > Workspace > New) and a Timeline/Stage workspace, where each view is optimized for each area of the workspace. Assign Keyboard Shortcuts to each workspace, and toggle between workspaces as needed.
- Buy a second monitor. Just kidding!
Requirements
To make this most of this learning guide, you need to install the following software and files:
Flash CS4 Professional
Sample files:
- motion-is-awesomer.zip (ZIP, 16 MB)
Prerequisite knowledge
A basic knowledge of the Flash workspace.
About the authors
Jen deHaan was raised by wolves in the deep woods of the Canadian north. Later in life, Jen worked with Flash as a deseloper, then wrote about Flash for five versions, and then worked on stuff that didn't include much Flash. She came to her senses in 2007 by rejoining the fabled Flash team at Adobe as a QE, focusing on the good stuff—Motion (on timelines). Jen enjoys long walks in the rain pondering how many times she can use the word Flash in a bio, and admits that after numerous years in California she is no longer addicted to Tim Horton's coffee.
John Mayhew is a hopeless software developer, and has been for a very long time, but he still loves it. John likes being able to launch an app, demo a feature, and show people exactly what he creates for a living. Along the way he has worked for several small companies and consulted for many years. Among the more notable companies John worked for are Micrografx (ABC FlowCharter and their Graphics Suite offering) and Macromedia (mobile authoring tools), which eventually led him to the Flash authoring team. He has focused for the last few years on creating a simple, yet more powerful animation system in the Flash authoring tool. Achieving both of those goals has proven to be quite a challenge. You can see if John and his colleagues achieved those lofty ambitions in Flash CS4 Professional.
