Duplicating Symbols and Childs Symbols

So far in the few animations I've done, I've faced a problem with keeping things separate in each scene.

For example, I will construct a character made out of various sub-parts (head, torso etc) and in scene one I might have the character walk to the left and look up. The result of this is that the character graphic and various child symbols within it all have key frames etc on their time lines, as you would expect. For example, on frame 10 the eye graphic within the character's head moves its pupil to look up.

Now in scene two I would really like to have a completely fresh copy of this entire character without any keyframes or anything on any of its timelines. Now of course, you can duplicate a symbol but the problem is that it doesn't duplicate any of the child symbols. So although I would have a new copy of my character, it would still be using the same head and eyes etc, which have already been animated to do things for scene 1.

Because of this, at the moment I have just been using the same character symbol for each scene, but carefully making sure the animations for the different scenes occur in separate places on the characters time line. So for scene two I will jump into the character at a particular frame e.g. 250, using the "First:" box in the symbol properties. For scene three I will have put my character onto the stage and jump in to the part of his timeline that corresponds to scene three (e.g. frame 425).

This works, but it's a bit messy and I feel like I might be doing things in a dumb and awkward way. For each scene I would really like to be able to reach into my "character box" and pull out a completely fresh, animation-free version of him.

Any ideas?

You should just put the body parts on different layers instead of making symbols out of them. That way, you can just copy the keyframes out of your base character and use them to make a graphic of your character doing a different action.

Putting symbols in symbols only makes things difficult.

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Putting symbols in symbols only makes things difficult.

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I'm not sure that's really true. I've actually discovered that you can duplicate a symbol and all it's child symbols. All you have to do is create a folder in your library e.g. "Scene2", then copy the folder containing your character and paste it into your new folder. You get a completely new copy of your character. I've been using it for days now.

Thanks Steven.. Ive been wondering about this facility.. flash should have the option added to the duplicate function maybe.. so you can choose - duplicate + all children ..

im off to try this !!!

thanks
Russ
http://www.live-team.com

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Originally Posted by StevenJMUK

I'm not sure that's really true. I've actually discovered that you can duplicate a symbol and all it's child symbols. All you have to do is create a folder in your library e.g. "Scene2", then copy the folder containing your character and paste it into your new folder. You get a completely new copy of your character. I've been using it for days now.

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I tried it and it does work.. very VERY handy..
I now have 2 versions of several movie clips and buttons (in diff folders) .. but they have the SAME NAMES.. when I alter one , it doesnt change the other (and is unique)
great stuff... more people should know about this option..

Glad someone else has found it useful. It seems like a piece of essential knowledge if you are going to do limited animation with separate legs and heads etc. It didn't even mention it in a book I have on limited animation. I hope it's not just a glitch that will disappear in future versions! If it does, I'll have to figure out how to write a plugin that does the same job, and I don't really fancy that.

If you are interested in limited animation for Flash, you could take a look at Anim Slider. It's pretty good, and there's a free download trial version.

G