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Flash Animation Toolbox - Guide
I’ve compiled a little guide here to some very useful flash plugins, that I highly recommend.
To install these plugins, download them, open up your Extension Manager, click ‘install’, and select the .zxp or .mxp file. Easy as that.
I’ve included a brief description of some of the tools or features, on what they do or how they’re used.
Head past the break to read through. Hope you find this useful!
Toon Monkey (David Wolfe) ::Plugins ::Navigation ::Accessibility ::Library Management ::Asset Creation
These are a collection of tools to suit your fancy. Most of them do single functions, so read their descriptions and decide what would be useful.
For assets and puppet rigging, I would recommend libAppend and Search and Replace, which allow you to rapidly name and rename symbols.
FrameEDIT and FrameEXIT make editing nested symbols easier by taking you to their corresponding frame in the timeline, instead of their first frame.
New Anim Clip allows you to make a new symbol that is immediately centered in the stage. It is meant to speed up shot creation, such as when you want to have a shot moving as it takes place. Just copy all your frames of the shot, run the tool, and paste them into the symbol it creates.
Break into layers is predominately useful for un-nesting your symbols for more flexibility. It just combines the effects of 'break apart’ and 'distribute to layers.’
jAnimation Tools (Jay Edry) ::Plugins ::Accessibility ::Asset Creation ::Tools
(See description of video.) This is a toolbox that adds some very useful hotkeys and tweening commands.
Alt download if the video doesn’t have the right link
The Rig Tool allows you to essentially draw a 'bone’ over a graphic to turn it into a symbol for a puppet set, setting its rotation and center.
Batch Select quickly selects all active symbols on screen (there’s a way to 'block off’ a batch as well, watch the video.
I don’t use Quick Tween very much, as Custom Ease functions the same way but with more simplicity, and high utility. These quickly will tween your symbol, with easing going in, out, both, or none, the value you enter in being the strength of the ease.
Flip does what you think it would.
Scrub Layer and Scrub Keyframe allow you to jump from layer to layer or keyframe to keyframe (note, not like jumping frame to frame with , or . ).
Smart Key allows you to make a keyframe inside a tween without changing its course of motion. It can either set the frame as the start of the tween, the end of the tween, or whatever the current frame is.
Bump simply cycles your frame in a graphic symbol.
Keyframe Caddy (Cloudkid) ::Plugins ::Functionality
Keyframe Caddy allows you to rapidly lipsynch a character by requiring only a single click to choose what frame to enter on a symbol. It is practically MANDATORY for any lipsynched animation.
To use Keyframe Caddy, open its window, select your symbol and click 'load’. The frames of your graphic symbol will appear in the window.
Clicking one of these graphic frames will create a keyframe on the timeline and change the loaded symbol’s current frame to the one you clicked (setting it to play 'Single Frame’ if not previously).
Before, to lipsynch, you had to
- click on the timeline where your symbol is, at the appropriate syllable
- create a keyframe
- click the symbol in the stage
- click inside the 'Current Frame’ dialogue box
- enter in/cycle through to find the appropriate syllable
- click outside/click enter
With keyframe caddy, you only need to- click the frame where the symbol is, at the appropriate syllable
- click the corresponding graphic for the syllable (visual cues being much faster to recognize and requiring no 'cycling through’)
Essentially, this replaces the required 5-6 actions that respond to textual entry to make a single lipsynched instance with just 2 actions that respond to visual cues. This isWAY more efficient. NOTE: for CS6, you need to install this through the Adobe Exchange plugin.Art Brush Tool (Pink and Aint) (Added 1/31/2013) ::Plugins ::Accessibility ::Asset Creation ::Tools
In a nutshell, this tool allows you to morph a shape to make it conform to a path. This is like a hybridization between inverse kinematics and shape tweens, only it doesn’t screw up on you and it just relies on raw graphic data.
How it works: You draw a line. This will be the path your brush takes, with the start being the start of the symbol. Your symbol to be brushi-fied will rely on the data going from left to right: ie, if you animate a tail, the base should be at the left of the stage, and will connect to the start of your path. You then go to Commands > Art Brush, with the path selected on stage, and the symbol selected in the library, and it’ll break it apart and transform it. Do note it’s more limited to more basic paths, and anything that is nested will be ignored in the transform. But still, cool!Swivel (Newgrounds) (Added 3/17/13) ::Rendering
Swivel is a tool that can load an SWF and record and encode it to a video format as it runs. It can export to whatever dimensions you want as well, and it preserves movie clip behavior and scripts.
Flash’s default 'render to .mov,’ though it functions similarly, has the issue of experiencing lag in anything that’s even slightly complicated. Swivel records one frame at a time per frame of animation, so you do not need to worry about lag when rendering. It can even record around scripted stop() commands, such as preloaders and menus, using manual recording or by choosing a different starting frame. Just select your .swf file, your audio file (if it’s not present in the flash), choose your settings (size, bitrate, etc.) and start and end points if necessary, and start record. It takes the pain out of rendering. And, it’s totally free to use, even for commercial productions (good guy Newgrounds). In short, this thing is awesome.Kurst (Kurst) (Added 8/6/13) ::Rendering
Swivel’s one pitfall is that it’s ability to render videos with an alpha channel is very iffy, and it cannot render PNG sequences, so even if it works, you’re left with a MASSIVE video file. Kurst allows you to import an SWF in a much similar manner and render out a PNG sequence as it plays in Flash Player.
It’s very clunky and rather slow, but it’s totally functional and will preserve frame positions on the timeline, and run scripts. Render out what you need, then import it into After Effects or Premier, or even Photoshop if you’re just making a gif. Very useful. It can render with or without transparency, and also scale the content (so you can get to 1080p if you’re animating in 720p, for instance).Frame Scrub (AjarProductions) (Added 10/11/13) ::Plugins ::Accessibility ::Tools
Framescrub allows you to drag a graphic symbol and cycle through its frame positions without ever having to use an additional panel. It also has the option to cycle through the looping types (single frame, loop, and play once).
AnimDesin (Added 7/31/15) ::Photoshop
AnimDessin is a plugin that, at its core, allows you to make a new keyframe in Photoshop without each new frame taking up the entire duration of your animation, and without futzing with your other layers as you create a new frame. It also has onion skinning available.
The plugin actually can do a whole lot, but at its core it’s actually quite simple–it just does a lot of really mundane tasks all at once.
CC
CS6, requires AddobeExchange
CS5 (not official)Reset Transform (Pink and Aint) (7/31/15) ::Flash
This plugin allows you to zero out a transform of an object. Say you draw a limb at a 45 degree angle and symbolize it, then rotate it so it’s upright. You can zero the transform using this plugin which causes its current position to be default (so now you can scale it lengthwise and widthwise)
(Really you should check out all of Pink and Aint’s tools, there’s a ton of great ones there!)