by kirupa | 7 October
2005
Motion tweening seems pretty easy, and for the most part,
it really is the easiest way to animate a couple of objects
as you may have found out from the
previous pages. When I was starting out with Flash a
long time ago, I often ran into problems creating anything
beyond a simple motion tween.
The following is a list of tips based on mistakes I made
when using tweens, and hopefully by confessing my mistakes,
you would be less inclined to make them yourself:
Do Not Tween Multiple Objects in
the Same Layer
When you create a motion tween, you can have multiple
objects on the same layer. The multiple objects, though,
will be grouped into one big object, so you will not be
able to animate each object individually.In order to tween each object individually, you will
need to place your other objects into their own layers.
Changing Object Symbol Type in a
Tween
You can change the type of your object from a Graphic,
Movie Clip, or Symbol at any keyframe in your tween, but
you must take into account the
registration point.
Your animation will work fine as long as you keep the
registration point of each of your objects the same.If the registration point of your tweened objects vary
in the same tween sequence, Flash animates them
erratically if you make any modifications to the
object's position, scale, and rotation.
Do Not Replace Tweened Objects
The object you start your motion tween with must be the
same object that you end your motion tween with. While
you have full freedom to modify your object throughout
your tween, you cannot delete the object and place
another object in its place. The motion tween simply
will not work.You can morph your object into another
object, but you cannot accomplish that with a motion
tween. You will need to use a shape tween.
Inserting Keyframes in the Middle
of a Tween
When you create a motion tween between two or more
keyframes, you are not forbidden from inserting more
keyframes into the middle of your tween. Since you
insert a keyframe in the middle of a tween, whatever
state your object is in at that point of the tween, that
is the state your object will be in the keyframe.For example, in our example, inserting a keyframe at
Frame 12 would result in an object that is larger than
itself on the first keyframe but smaller than it would
be on Frame 25. When you playback the animation, the
extra keyframe will not cause any variation in how your
animation looks had it been played back without that
extra keyframe.
Reversing a Tween (by .soulty)
To reverse a tween, copy the tween's frames to a
location on your timeline where you want the reverse to
take place. Select all of the frames you just pasted,
right click, and select Reverse frames from the menu
that appears.
There are more tips that can be found in the following
thread:
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=195103
I have provided the source file for the animation you
have been working on. You can download it by clicking on the
Download FLA button below:
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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash8/tween3.htm