Saving Animations As Movie-Clip Symbols

I l @ ve RuBoard

The procedure that you use to save an animation as a movie-clip symbol is the same as for saving an animated graphic symbol, except that you define the symbol as a movie clip in the Create New Symbol dialog box.

To convert an animation to a movie-clip symbol:

  1. Open the document that you created to make the Ping-Pong animation in "Animating Multiple Motion Tweens" earlier in this chapter, or create your own multiple-layer animation.

    The Ping-Pong animation is a three-layer, 20-frame animation.

  2. In the Timeline, select all 20 frames in all three layers .

  3. From the Edit menu, choose Copy Frames.

  4. From the Insert menu, choose New Symbol, or press graphics/01icon01.gif -F8 (Mac) or Ctrl-F8 (Windows).

    The Create New Symbol dialog box appears.

  5. In the Name field, type a name for your symbolfor example, Ping-Pong Clip.

    Flash remembers what behavior you selected for the last symbol you created and selects that behavior for you again when you choose Insert > New Symbol.

  6. Select Movie Clip as the behavior for your symbol (Figure 11.33).

    Figure 11.33. Selecting Movie Clip in the Behavior section of the Create New Symbol dialog box defines a symbol that has an independent Timeline. The entire movie-clip symbol runs in a single frame of the main movie that contains that symbol.

    graphics/11fig33.gif

  7. Click OK.

    Flash creates a new symbol in the Library window and switches you to symbol-editing mode, with that symbol selected.

    The name of your symbol appears in the info bar above the Stage. The default Timeline for your new symbol consists of just one layer and a blank keyframe at Frame 1.

  8. In the symbol Timeline, select Frame 1, and choose Edit > Paste Frames.

    Flash pastes all 20 frames and three layers that you copied from the original Ping-Pong movie into the Timeline for the Ping-Pong Clip symbol (Figure 11.34). If you want to make any adjustments in the animation sequence, you can do so at this point.

    Figure 11.34. After you name the symbol and define its behavior in the Create New Symbol dialog box, Flash switches to symbol-editing mode. The icon that precedes the name of the symbol indicates that this symbol has movie-clip behavior. Now you can paste the animation frames into the symbol's Timeline.

    graphics/11fig34.gif

  9. To return to movie-editing mode, click the current scene name in the info bar at the top of the Stage.

graphics/01icon02.gif Tip

  • If you want to make a movie clip that contains exactly the same frames as an existing animated graphic symbol (as you did in the preceding exercise), you can duplicate that symbol and change its behavior. Select the animated graphic symbol in the Library window. From the Library window's Options menu, choose Duplicate. The Duplicate Symbol dialog box appears, allowing you to rename the symbol and give it Movie Clip behavior.


I l @ ve RuBoard


Macromedia Flash MX for Windows and Macintosh. Visual QuickStart Guide
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 for Windows and Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guides)
ISBN: 0582851165
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 243

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net