August 1, 1999

Animating "Other" Objects

As you may know, you can animate, or release to layers, Text and Blends for easy importing into Flash (See Creating a Simple Flash Animation and Keeping FreeHand Layers in Flash in the Tips Archive for more on these). What you may not know, is that you can actually animate almost anything else too. This includes Smudge effects, mirrored shapes, and step-and-repeat objects.

Below I show how one method can animate some of these examples very easily.

Version: 7 and above

 
 


Smudge Effects

1) This first example I'll be animating a Smudge effect. Above I used a similar Smudge technique that was described in the Creating a Glow Effect in the Tips Archive.

 

2) In order for Smudge effects to work correctly, you must Ungroup them. So while it's still selected, do that step. Next, while the objects are still selected, Copy them.

 

3) Now for the trick! In a new document create a blank text box. Next just Paste in the copied graphics. They are now an inline graphic.

 

Version Addendum

In FreeHand 9 and above it is no longer necessary to Paste these objects in a Text box. Just group all of the objects/groups together, then proceed to the next step.

 

4) With the Text box still selected, do the Xtras -> Animate -> Release to Layers command. For FreeHand 9 and above, choose the Sequence option.

Since text boxes can be Released to layers, anything within a text box will be released to layers as well. This includes groups of objects such as this Smudge effect.

 

When I exported this example, I used a similar technique as described in the Keeping FreeHand Layers in Flash tip in the Tips Archive. This created the transitional fade animation you see above. You can import this directly into Flash 5 and animate the layers to Frames instead.

The above effect can be mimicked using the Build option in FreeHand 9 and above using the Release to Layers function.

Mirrored Shapes

For this next example, I'm going to be animating a series of objects using the Mirror Xtra tool. Above I want to first Mirror the above spiked shape. You can choose to Mirror any type of shape. Line shown for clarity only.

 

Above is what resulted from the use of the Mirror Xtra. I used Multiple, 20 items with the Reflect option. Lines shown for clarity only.

With the Mirrored objects still selected Copy them and repeat steps 3-4 as shown above in the Smudge effect section.

 

Above is the final animation imported and optimized in Flash. It's kind of a neat effect, and sometimes it never seems to be the same animation twice.

I ended up getting three different variations on the animation every time I exported the .SWF file from FreeHand.

The above effect can be mimicked using the Sequence option in FreeHand 9 and above using the Release to Layers function.

Step-and-Repeat Objects

Another great use for this technique is when animating Step-and-Repeat or Power Duplication objects. You may recognize the above shape from the tip Creating Spiral Objects in the Tips Archive. If not, go check it out.

I would repeat the same steps as above to animate this kind of shape.

Just Ungroup the objects, Copy them, then Paste them in a Text box.

 

Above is the final animation imported into Flash using a similar technique seen in the tip Keeping FreeHand Layers in Flash in the Tips Archive. Very cool!

The above effect can be mimicked using the Build option in FreeHand 9 and above using the Release to Layers function.

These are just a few of the hundreds of different things you can do with this technique. Remember, the key to Releasing some objects to Layers is to make sure you Ungroup them, then just paste them in a Text Box.

And don't forget, that in FreeHand 10 and above, you can now test the animation before you export. Just go under the Control menu and choose Test.

Now the only limit to bringing in images into Flash is your imagination (among a few other little things. heh heh).   image