Flash CS3 special effects tutorial

Draft

This is part of Flash CS3 tutorials. Doesn't contain details, just some short "how to".

Learning goals

Learn how to add special effects to animations

Prerequisites

Flash CS3 desktop tutorial

Flash drawing tutorial

Flash object transform tutorial

Flash colors tutorial

Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial

Flash motion tweening tutorial

Flash shape tweening tutorial

Moving on

The Flash article has a list of other tutorials.

Quality

This text shortly demonstrates some features and should technical people get going. It is good enough for self-learning beginners. It can be used as handout in a "hands-on" class. That is what Daniel K. Schneider made it for...

Level

Timeline effects

Timeline effects are effects that are automatically generated by the Flash environment from an object. You only can parametrize these effects, but not hand-edit generated objects and frames !

Summary of the procedure

Step 1 - Select an object and open the effects tool

• Create a new layer
• Insert an object (i.e. text, shapes, simple graphics, groups, graphic symbols and button symbols, bitmap images)
• Select this object
• Right-click->Timeline Effects or else Menu Insert->Timeline Effects , then see next step

Step 2 - Select an effect

• Select an effect and adjust parameters
• You can preview the effect within the Effects tool.

NB: Ignore error warnings about Flash 7 etc.

Step 3 - Start over

• Right-click on the object: Timeline Effects; Remove Effect or Edit Effect

There are three submenus for effects (I can't see the difference between the first two)

• Assistants
  • Copy to Grid (not a timeline effect, just a multiplication of drawing to a grid)
  • Distributed Duplicate. Will make "tumbling copies" of an element.
• Effects
  • Blur (object will blur and change size in all or one chosen direction)
  • Drop Shadow (just draws a static drop shadow)
  • Expand (object will expand/shrink)
  • Explode (object will explode and draw different fragments on an configurable arc)
• Transform/Transition
  • Transform (A shape tween with extra options, e.g. duration, position, scale, rotation, spin, ...)
  • Transition (A motion tween with extra options, e.g. direction, duration, fading, motion ease)

For each of these effects you can set certain parameters, in particular:

• Number of copies
• Offset and rotation paramters, i.e. where the generated images will display and if/how they rotate
• Offset start frame: Keyframes in which the images will be drawn

Important: Using the special effects means that you can not change anything Flash will generate. Also, do not make modifications to the object. Flash will:

• rename the layer (do not choose a "better" name)
• add stuff to a Effects Folder in the library
• Add an item to the library

If you want to remove an effect, it is best to Right-click->Remove on an object ! You also can delete all the generated objects, but this is more work and you may by mistake delete something else ....

An example

The following (ugly) example contains three effects:

Distributed duplicate (tumbling): An object will tumble and be reproduced with X copies You may set several paramaters like:

• Number of copies
• Offset of copies in x an y position (in pixels)
• Rotation of copies (in degrees)
• Offset start frame (keyframes accross the timeline that will have this animation). So "number of copies" * "offset start frame" will define the total length (frames) of this animation.
• Linear scaling in x and y direction (in percentage)
• Alpha and color change.

• Blur: Motion blur that my include change of alpha, position or scale of an object
• Total duration (in frames)
• Scale (in percentage): Object will become bigger or smaller.
• Resolution, i.e. number of steps: How many times should the object be duplicated during the blurring process.
• Horizontal/vertical blur on/off and direction

Explode

• Effect duration (frames)
• Direction of explosion
• Arc size (x/y pixels)
• Rotation of fragments and change of fragments
• Final alpha (in percentage)

Timeline effects example

To edit each animation, you will get a menu like this and you have to play with the parameters until you get it right. Remember that you can not make any changes to the object or the generated objects (except using the right-click->Timeline Effects menu !

Distributed duplicate timeline effect

Example:

• flash-cs3-special-timeline-effects.html
• Grab the source of the flash-cs3-special-timeline-effects.* files from:

http://tecfa.unige.ch/guides/flash/ex/special-effects

An other example that uses tumbling is this "enhanced" video.

• flash-cs3-video-timeline-embedd.html
• Grab the source from:

http://tecfa.unige.ch/guides/flash/ex/component-video-intro/

Masks

Mask and masked layers

Masks are layers that will allow you to draw a "see through" hole. You then can animate this hole with a motion tween for example. Masked layers are the layers underneath.

Step 1 - Create some contents:

• Put them in one or several layers

Step 2 - Add a mask layer:

• On top of these layers, create a new layer
• Right-click on the layer name and select Mask

Step 3 - Define the masked layers:

• The layer just beneath the Mask layer already should be masked. If it is not, right-click on the layer name and select Masked.
• You can make other layers underneath to be masked with the same procedure. Move normal layers in a position after the mask layer or a masked layer or create new ones...

To undo masked layer, just right-click and revert back to "normal"

Simple motion tween

Step 1 - Add a simple motion tween:

• Select the mask layer
• Draw a noneditable object (graphic object, symbol)

Step 2 - Do a motion tween

• Like in a normal motion tween...

Shape tween

• Step 1 - Draw a shape

• Step 2 - Do a shape tween

Guided motion tween

You need to animate a moving clip

Step 1 - Create a movie symbol

• E.g. create a drawing then Right-click->Convert to Symbol, select Movie Clip
• E.g. Menu Insert New Symbol (CTRL-F8)

Step 2 - Edit the movie symbol

• Double click on the symbol
• Create a guided motion tween (this implies that you should again make the graphic into symbol, then proceed in the same way as normal guided motion tweening).

Filters

This section needs to be written. When you do a "normal" motion or shape tween have a look at the options in the parameter panel....

Links

• Timeline effect settings (Adobe Using Flash Manual]).

• Work with mask layers, a section of "creating animation - animation basics" of the Adobe Using Flash Manual]).