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Thread: A new and better way to animate?

  1. #1
    The White Flame JohnyT9760's Avatar
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    A new and better way to animate?

    So I'm a long time flash Dev and Design guy I do it all AS front end projectors XML feeds all that good stuff. But the one thing that almost all of my project have in common is that require animation is some from.

    I've been playing with CS4. And I got to say a few gimmicky tools aside I have to say its a BIG let down. crashes a lot (I have to save my work every 5 min - its like I'm in a time warp back with Flash5)

    Now I don't want to be the guy that speaks out of ingornace but I have to say the thing I'm most disturbed about and not liking in the new motion editor. Like all Abode release I'm very sure that in CS5 the normal tween will be phase out in a effort to make it "Easier" on the final user (Remember a little program named ImageReady) I can't get JACK done with this thing. I mean maybe I'm not up to speed with all it can do but I think its pretty much the AE time line hits flash...poorly. Lots of bugs using curve points in a NIGHTMARE and is it just me or is this thing a hog on screen space its like I have it open and about 1/3 of my flash screen is either gone or covered up. Once again this all come down to adobe bulding there updates in a silo. Dev Builds the program with nothing more then notes from Designers and Front and and then when it comes time to product test every last trick in the book is used to look the other way and explain thing are the way they are.

    I don't know I just had to rant a project that would have taken me about 30 min with the old tween system took me about 4 dealing with this thing.

    JT

  2. #2
    Bearded (M|G)od MyFriendIsATaco's Avatar
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    I seriously feel bad for anyone who has to use the Flash IDE. It is absolutely terrible. Luckily I'm a programmer and can stay out of it most of the time.

  3. #3
    Total Universe Mod jAQUAN's Avatar
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    Might be a rare case in your situation Johny. I only animate with code unless I'm syncing to a crucial bgm so I haven't had much time with the new (old AE) timeline... thankfully.
    My animator peers though seem to really like it.

    As far as screen real estate, dual monitors solves most clutter issues. They have yet to create a user-friendly library or properties panel. I really hoped Adobe would just delete the IDE source and start over with a modified Illustrator.

    Let's hear it for [Embed] !

  4. #4
    The White Flame JohnyT9760's Avatar
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    I guess I feel the code based animations is for lighter animation projects...

    I mean I consider my self pretty action script proficient. Not a master, but good enough. but the idea of creating a really animation heavy site/page/banner what ever makes my head spin.

    Do you guy do a lot of heavy animation work. I know there is like 7000 ways to use flash and every ones got there own why but, I guess in the light of your posts I almost always use the HUD to do animation via the time line (root) or with in a movieClip.

    Do you know any good tutorials for code based animation. That you could point me to. Like I know of GreenStock and the TweenMax/TweenLight engines but I mean it seems to me, and this is just me talking here that those are really only for projects that are lighter on the animation.

    So feel free to correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree or laboring under the wrong idea but I'm so far on the opposite side from you guys I guess I can't consider doing a animation project with code based animations. Most because I don't know how, not that I can't imagine doing it.

    I'm going to try to keep this thread healthy and hopefully some other people will weigh in.

    Peace

    JT

  5. #5
    Total Universe Mod jAQUAN's Avatar
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    Coming from an art an design background, my first few years with flash were nothing but timeline and I must admit I really enjoyed it and was pulling off some pretty sick sh*t thanks to swish and Maya's .swf export. But as the need for clean web pages rose, my use the timeline went down. It's all about managing that balance of filesize, playback reliability, speed and editability. TweenMax is sick, but you can't go crazy with it. Try gradually using it more often.

  6. #6
    The White Flame JohnyT9760's Avatar
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    I will say it does seem to be more about clean today...

    I have to say your right it seems less and less like I get a project in flash that I can really sink my teeth into (animation wise) the last one I did was about a year ago.
    It seems all about clean now a days. Heck even my HTML/CSS work has really shifted focus to more clean design. I guess I just kind of miss the late 90s/early 00s style a bit:

    http://v3.2a-archive.com/flashindex.htm

    Like this is the kind of stuff that I saw that and I was like holy sh*t this is the direction the web is heading for sure.

    That was some really good practical advice, just take it one step at a time. I guess I just hear about people using flash in such a different way then myself. I almost ways assume that there is something wrong or behind the times. But hey I can't be doing it all wrong my boss is happy and my freelance clients refer me to others. Still looking for a good IDE - Motion editor and AS3 code based animation tutorial if any one stumbles on this thread and knows one pleas consider this a thx u in advance for dropping a hyperlink.

    Note to jAQUAN:
    I love the Winston Wolf avatar very cool! I thought of that scene and this quote came to mind:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm2BpI6TCDE
    I'm super-fly TNT!
    Last edited by JohnyT9760; 06-21-2009 at 11:59 PM. Reason: Adding to the post...

  7. #7
    doItLikeThis
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    Flash 8 ftw
    -Aditya

  8. #8
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    Regarding the Motion Editor and new tweens in the original post. Yes, screen real estate is an issue, and is something we continue to work on for future releases. Going to a combined timeline (graph and timeline in one panel) isn't something that was possible due to the After Effects limitation of one-object per span (and also seriously upsetting a lot of existing workflows). We are working though at making the editor itself more streamlined, and ways to hook the two together to make workflows better.

    Lots of the tweening functionality though can be done in the main Timeline and stage, like old Tweens, the Motion Editor being used for things you could never do with classic tweens (easing individual properties, custom eases, and so on.)

    Could you elaborate on the bugs that you're seeing with the curve editor? We know of a few, but I can't say that we've run into many. Also details on what's taking way longer in the new tweens would be helpful, as most things I've animated have been quicker with the new ones, and I want to make sure that we don't miss a particular workflow.

    Regarding performance, please make sure that you have the 10.0.2 updater installed. Many performance and crash fixes are in there.

    Thanks,
    Jen.
    Flash team

    Jen
    Flash team tween blog: http://www.flashthusiast.com

  9. #9
    The White Flame JohnyT9760's Avatar
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    Post Some surface level suggestions:

    Just a few things that I have noticed:

    -Flash CS4 crashes A LOT! There haven’t been this many crash issues since it was under MacroMedia flag with Flash MX

    -The updates will not install correctly. I have reproduced this effect on 3 work stations in three different locations so this is not a anomaly its a trend.

    - In direct regards to the motion editor. I can't really explain it but....its cumbersome. I would site Maya the motion graph editor in that program is very helpful is that all of your motion lines sit on one graph (so there is like 12 to 15 lines overlapping and then very small along the side you select the property you would like to animation (X rotation for example) and now all the other graph lines drop to about 10 percent opacity so they are some what visible but not intrusive.

    Flash Motion editor visual: http://www.johncliffordtaylor.com/flashPic.jpg
    Maya Graph editor visual: http://www.johncliffordtaylor.com/mayaPic.jpg

    So to give your minds eye a snap shot instead of having 12 or so values each with there own graph shelf that is self contained that need to be expanded. When you select the item you are animating on the main time line and that it opens up to reveal your motion values then you select one either on screen by moving or by selection one from a small list from the side to manipulate one or more value at a time.

    Those are some surface level suggestion.

  10. #10
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    JohnyT9760,
    Would you please let me know what problems are you running into with the updates? The updates will not install correctly in what way? Do you install the updates using Help > Updates in Flash or the updater that you download from the support page?
    After running the Flash 10.0.2 updater, the Flash.exe (Win) or Adobe Flash CS4 bundle version should be 10.0.2.566. There are a lot of fixes in this version that address the crashes in Flash CS4.
    Thanks,
    San

  11. #11
    The White Flame JohnyT9760's Avatar
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    The problem is that I download the updates buy going to: Help > Find updates.
    They download and then it says "we need to restart windows for these updates to take effect" or somthing quite close to that. So I restart the CPU. When I boot up I get the message "we need to restart windows for these updates to take effect". Over and over I've restared with the hopes that it might actully need the restart for the updates to work about 15-25 times all together at verious point and stil no luck. I have to go in to Start>Run> and type in msconfig > go into the startup options and then turn off abobe updater to not get the "we need to restart windows for these updates to take effect" message to come up every time I power up the PC. I run Help > About Flash and see that I'm running ver: 10.00 so I guess in addition to leaving my pc with an annoying hickup the updates are not working.

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