Creating Animation > About tweened animation |  |

About tweened animation

Flash can create two types of tweened animation, motion tweening and shape tweening.

| In motion tweening, you define properties such as position, size, and rotation for an instance, group, or text block at one point in time, and then you change those properties at another point in time. You can also apply a motion tween along a path. See Tweening instances, groups, and type and Tweening motion along a path.
| In shape tweening, you draw a shape at one point in time, and then you change that shape or draw another shape at another point in time. Flash interpolates the values or shapes for the frames in between, creating the animation. See Tweening shapes.

Tweened animation is an effective way to create movement and changes over time while minimizing file size. In tweened animation, Flash stores only the values for the changes between frames.

To quickly prepare elements in a document for tweened animation, distribute objects to layers. See Distributing objects to layers for tweened animation.

You can apply tweened animation to an object on a mask layer to create a dynamic mask. For information on mask layers, see Using mask layers.