Flash :: 3D Character Animation By Actionscript

Character Animation
I'm makin my first animation ever; I have drawn a character, each body part on a different layer; I was wondering what is the best way to animate her; should I keep every body part on a layer and then animat them all together or separate each body part in differents clips and switch clips whenever neccessary? Please help I wouldn't want to begin animating before I'm sure what is the best way. Thanks in advance

Character Animation
Hey gang howdy,
Ive created a cartoon characten withing illustrator and exported to swf.
Now im not sure what to do once ive got it in flash.
Do i need to convert my characted into a symbol to animate his hands and feet. How would i animate his body? Im so cofused
Any input is appreciated.

Character Animation Gig Available
Looking for a character illustrator/animator for a 15-20 second animated fruit Flash animation. Job will occur in the next 30 days. If interested, please PM me with your portfolio examples and costs. Thanks!

Character Animation
is there an easy way taht u know of to help me animate a character, like is there a way to make a skeleton of a character to help make it easier to animate? and do u guys have any sugggestions to help make animating easier

Character Animation
Anyone have any suggestions for software to create and animate people?

Character Animation
does anyone have any suggestions on software to use to create and animate people characters in flash

Character Animation
hi,

i have created a character in flash, and i want to animate him walking along just to go at the bottom of my website (yes i know it sounds lame)

anyway, i think it would be easiest to move everything frame by frame - but will that mean that it will take ages to load? i'd like it to load straight away if possible, also, how do you know if it needs a preloader?

Character Animation
Hi I have a question on how to make a character animation.
Basically I have totally no idea on how.
Shall I draw the character in a whole and then use all the tweening techniques or make up the character with different symbols and put them together?
Also what's a good way to make the character movement not so fake?
Can anyone provide any tutorials for simple cartoon animating in flash please?
Thank you!!

[MX] Character Animation
hey, i am new to flash and i just figured out how to make the character (movie clip) move around with keyboard presses, now i need to make the animation of legs moving and other animations play with keyboard presses. I think i would want to make it move as long as the key is pressed, am i correct? and then have the movie clip stop but not in the middle of the animation....like i have 5 frames of a character turning into a door, i have gotten the clip to play as i press the UP arrow, but if i let go it stops in the middle of a frame, i want to be able to just hit the UP arrow and the whole animation plays, and also have it so when he is walking then when i let go he returns to the start postion. thanks for your time

Character Animation
hi i tryed mi hand at character animation this is mi first movie and i wanted to know if i cud just repeat the last section of it.

Super Sayin Jin

i want the bit where the yellow power up field shakes and hes stood there looking all mean and stuff to repeat.

ne way i can do that?
thanks
Desire.

p.s if u no any gud character animation websites where i can get ideas from or tutorials plz post the links.

Character Animation
Im talking dead simple here.

I have an MC, my character, with the MC I have several Labelled Frames which start new animations for the character, for example, Run, Walk, Jump.

My question is, How do I get my character to perform these simple movements ?

I think I tried :

ActionScript Code:
onClipEvent(enterFrame) { _root.mcBarry.gotoAndStop("rocking")}

Any eye deer? Please, any help would be appreciated.

In Need Of Basic Character Animation
ok, let me start by saying i am a flash super newbie. infact, if there were a lower catagory i would probally be in it. :-D. anyway, being the only person within my group who is computer literate i have been called opon to create a 2d flash animation of an alien..... the only problem is i dont know where to start. :-(
so, i am here hoping that one of you kind souls will be able to lend me a super basic flash animation of some sort of character (it dosent even have to be human ;-)) that i can work with and mold. if you think you can help me then feel free to email me at GRicha2380@yahoo.com or IM me at GRicha2390 (on AIM)
-thanks

PS: sorry if this is in the wrong forum, im new here too

Any AS Gurus Out There? Character Animation.
How do I animated random chars in a text field?
To be more specific, I want to have a text field that randomly selects a char and scales it to give it a bubble type effect (so scale bigger then smaller then bigger then normal).
I want this so the field starts off with 0 chars then they start to randomly come in and stop when they've come in.

I hope you guys can understand this. thanks for any help.

Character Animation And Movement Help
My charcter has 7 frames. The first one is the still one which I put stop() on. Then when it gets to frame 7, I have gotoAndPlay(2). For my movement code I used:

Code:
onClipEvent(enterFrame){
if (Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) {
move(0, 4);
_parent.gotoAndPlay(4);
}
}
//
onClipEvent (keyUp) {
if (!Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) {
_parent.gotoAndStop(1);
}
}
The problem is that it only plays the first frame of the animation.

Vector Character Animation
I'm really curious as to how people do those vector character animations.

I see on some people's sites, what looks like figures that are drawn in vector format. They usually are filled in with all one color and they're usually doing something like walking or something.

Does anyone have any idea how this is done?

Is there a tutorial or something that I could learn this from?

Thanks

KS

Help With Smooth Character Animation
I posted this thread on the Flash MX board also (because I am using MX), but I figured that this kind of thing would probably go into General Help.
I am having some trouble making characters and animating them. My goal is to be able to create characters, and be able to pose them at keyframes, and tween them so they move from pose to pose somewhat smoothly. However, to use motion tweens doesn't let me connect the pieces, so they disconnect and look really awkward. I can connect them into groups, but then I can't use any kind of tween with them. The attatchment is an example of both techniques, both trying to do the same thing (an arm kind of flexing), so you can see what I mean, particularly with the disconnection with tweens. If anyone has any pointers or tricks or advice, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you!

Problems With Character Animation
I have a character that needs to be animated.

I have created the character in a movie file with the each piece of the character on it's own layer, and with several keyframes for how i want it to move. It's a basic walking animation.

THAT is all within a movie, which is set apon a motion path.

now, my problem is that when ever i try and motion tween them, it resets the pieces center points (im not sure the exact name of these. it's the axis that the piece rotates on), and it screws up the animation.

I was wanting to know if anyone could look at the .FLA for me, and tell me what I'm doing wrong, and/or give me better step by step instructions on how to animate a character.

the FLA is at http://tylerlagaly.com/tyler.fla

Character Running Animation
I am trying to make a side scroller game (or at least a small part of it), and I can't get the running animation right. Here is my code.

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
this._x += moveSpeed;
this.gotoAndPlay ("running right");
} else if (Key.isDown (Key.LEFT)) {
this._x -= moveSpeed;
this.gotoAndPlay ("running left");
}
}

I want the character to move while the animation plays, but instead the character moves and stays stuck at the first frame of the animation, and then starts the running animation when he stops moving. I understand why this happens, but I don't know how to fix it.

Also, I have a question about jumping. In most games, the longer you hold down the jump button, the higher you jump. How do you do that in Flash?

[F8] Character Turning Animation
Hi there. I have a problem and was wonder if anyone could give me a few pointers.

I have my character on screen. he moves to wherever the user has clicked his mouse.

when the user clicks his mouse, the angle between the cursor and movieclip is calculated and some IF statments tell the movieclip which frame to playwithin itself. i have 8 frames within the character movieclip.. each showing the character facing in a different direction.

so when the user clicks his mouse the character faces in the correct direction as he's walking.

thats all well and good. but i'd really like the character to when instructed, turn and move. and not just jump from facing LEFT to facing RIGHT in 1 frame.

if he was facing LEFT and instructed to walk RIGHT. i'd really like the movieclip to show the frames inbetween. ie. the "diagonal downleft", "down", "diagonal downright" and finally "right" frame.

can anyone give me a few ideas as to how to accomplish this?
thanks.

[F8] Character Jumping Animation Help
Ok i have tried messing around with this code multiple times. I want to make it so that when you press the jump key the character will jump while playing the animation. Heres where my problem is when my character jumps once you let go of the key he dosent play the animation anymore but he still jumps. Can any one help? Heres the file and below the script im using(Actionscript 2.0)StickFigureJumpingHelp.flaAnd heres the code im using
Code:
onClipEvent (load) {
moveSpeed=20;
_root.laser._visible=false;
laserCounter=1;
scrollx=_root["level"+i]._width/3;
scrollStart=false;
var jump:Number = 0;
var jumping:Boolean = false;
var falling:Boolean = false;
var g:Number = 4;
gotoAndStop(1)

var dir = "Right";
KeyListener = new Object();
KeyListener.onKeyUp = function() {
if (dir == "Right") {
scrollStart=false;
gotoAndStop(1);
} else if (dir == "Left") {
scrollStart=false;
gotoAndPlay(4);

}

};
}
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {

if(jumping == true || falling == true){
this._y -= jump;
}
if(jumping == false){
if(!falling){
jump = 0;
}
if(Key.isDown(79)){
gotoAndStop(5)
jump = 15;
jumping = true
if(jumping == true && this.hitTest(_root.level)){
gotoAndStop(1)
}
}
}
if(jumping == true){
jump -= 1;
}
if(jump <= -10){
jump = -10;
}
for(i=0;i<g;i++){
if(jumping == true && this.hitTest(_root.level)){

jumping = false;
}
}

Key.addListener(KeyListener);
if (Key.isDown(65)) {
dir = "Left";
_root.level._x+=20;
gotoAndStop(3);
} else if (Key.isDown(68)) {
dir = "Right";
_root.level._x-=20;
if (this._x<scrollx){
this._x+=moveSpeed;

} else {
scrollStart=true;
}
gotoAndStop(2);

}

for(i=0;i<g;i++){
if(!jumping && !this.hitTest(_root.level) && !falling){
falling = true;
this._y -= 1;
}
}

if(falling == true){
for(i=0;i<g;i++){
if(this.hitTest(_root.level)){
falling = false;
}
}
jump -= 1;
}
}
Sorry for the long post

Flash Character Animation
I am creating a CBT for E-Learning. In the CBT we have used animated character, voice over, play and pause option.

By default play button is selected, when user click on the pause button it will pause the character movement like (body movement, eye-popping and lips movement) and as well as voice over. Click on play button it start the all the movement from where he paused it.

I have faced following problem while doing the same:

1) For Play and Pause option, I have made the character animation in flash timeline, and it is very time consuming to do the lips movement in timeline. If I put the lips in a movieclip then, clicking on Pause button it will not Stop.

Now I need the solution how to reduce the time to do the same character animation in flash timeline with Play and Pause button.

Any idea.....! Pl revert...

Regards
Sonum

Character Animation Tutorial?
I searched this site but I didn't find any tutorials on how to animate a character or simply have him walk across the screen [and not slide]. Is there a tutorial that I skipped over or didn't see to make this easier? I'm trying to make a website with my "mascot" walking across the screen in the beginning but I'm not sure on how to make him look "real" while walking. Thanks for any help, and if there are no tutorials on this site, could you point me in the right direction?

Lip Sync Character Animation
This may upset some people and i apologize in advance for the blatant advertising but it is some usefull information none the less. It is now possible for windows users to create lip synched talking characters using text to speech from within the flash IDE using our new extension - Vocalise TTS.

Vocalise TTS is the new character animation extension for Macromedia Flash mx 2004 that uses text to speech to create amazing talking characters. Whether it be for animations, Games, Information systems, advertising or any where else that you need to create a lip synched talking character, Vocalise TTS is the first choice to bring your flash projects to life.

check out http://www.digitalcuriosity.com for more info

Problem Regarding Character Animation
Alright, firstly, I'm brand new to this flash stuff. I'm attempting to build enough skill to make a flash game, but I keep having this recurring bug happen.

I have a character that I programmed to walk up/down/left/right, and that works all fine. I then wanted him to run when you hold shift down, so I put in all the code, and it goes to the correct frame and the movie clip moves faster (like he'd be running) but the run animation doesn't play.

It's probably an easy fix, but I can't find my problem. Any ideas?

Character Animation To Follow Mouse?
I want to know if its possible to make a 2D animated character follow the mouse...? I want my character to seem terrified of the mouse and when it points over her, she'll run away or duck.

I'm not sure how to go about doing this or whether it can be done at all!! I'm also new to Actionscript so if you have the answer please explain in laymans terms or send me off to an appropriate tutorial!!!

thanx

C.

Walk Cycle To Character Animation
Hey everyone. I'll cut to the chase.

I have a movie clip symbol that is a walk cycle of a character. I need it to stop and possibly do some arm movements or lip sync. I have the character in a standing pose as a Graphic symbol that could be broken apart and animated.

I need to have the character's body parts on different layers for tweening after it has completed it's walk cycle.

What would be the best method to go from a movie clip on a single layer, to character's body parts spread out on multiple layers to be animated? (I need to keep a character's size constant on the Stage.)

I tried to break apart the Graphic symbol of the character standing there and distributing it to layers. But since it will have to go from the walk cycle to character parts often, distributing to layers every time will just make more layers rather than distrubuting to the already defined layers. This is messy.

Can anyone provide insight on a good method of doing this poorly worded question?

Thanks.

Corey.

[MX] Building Character For Non-game Animation
I wouldn't consider myself terribly new at flash, but this is one thing that stumps me, bad.

How do I properly build an animated character? What I have right now is a little complex in the sense that it has arm and leg joints, torso pivot point, various hand positions, eyes, mouths, etc. I keep hearing about nested symbols, but I don't think I'm doing it right because sometimes they don't work when I test the swf. Some do, others with identical construction do not. When I take them out into another fla, the parts work on their own, but I don't really know what that means. I was under the impression that you'd nest movie clips(or graphics?) within movie clips, the outermost clip could then be manipulated while the inner clip would just go through its animation cycle unaffected, making it easier to animate things like arms and legs, etc.

Is there a thing as too much nesting? (character>left arm>lower arm>forearm & hand) Do I have to use action scripting? Should graphics be used inside the movie clips or should everything be movie clips?

Using Sprites For Character Game/animation
Hi there,

I am planning to add some creativity to my site by adding a game-like flash program.

It involves a character walking left to right and beign able to jump horizontally up. I have the sprites here:

http://yolkfolk.com/site/images/misc...C64CKDizzy.PNG

But I am not too sure how I would implement these into Flash to make the charcter move and animate at the same time.. For example when he walks right, his arms will go across his sides, as seen in the above sprites.

Any ideas on how this would be done?

Interactive Character Animation In Flash MX
Ok...this may be to advanced (not for you, for me) but I'm interested none the less.

Anyone got any insight into how this excellent piece has been animated. I understand the theory behind the hitting part, it's more the actual reaction animation of the character I am interested in.
http://www.neostream.biz/shop/images...02/preview.htm

Also, iIs it possible to create a hierachical linking of graphic clips/objects to create something similar to character animation? I hope this makes sense. I.e. if one object is moved another follows according to it's registration/pivot point.

Walking Character Animation Question
Sorry, I know I posted a character animation earlier, but I was wondering if anybody had any .fla files of a walking character they created or know of a place I could get open source files of a character walking. I promise I won't steal content lol, I already have my character I just need help jump starting into making him walk. I watched tutorials and I have a vague understanding, I think I would understand better if I had something to play with. Any points in the right direction is appreciated! Thanks for your time in reading this thread.

Character Animation Tips Needed For Mag Article
If you're a Flash guru who does some character animation, please get in touch with me via cngrannell@yahoo.com. I'm writing an article on Flash character animation and need tips from teh pros.

[CS3] <AS2> Question About Attack Animation For Character I'm Stumped
ok, so i've been deving a 2d platformer for the past two weeks and i'm a beginner so its been hella hard but i've resisted asking people but now i think i should just so i can make this process go faster.
First off, let me say that I appreciate all your help in advance

Ok, so I want to have the character do an attack against enemies. What he does is, he has a stick like weapon and does a stupid attack animation that i've made. and i've got it so it plays through the animation when he presses the space bar then stops at the end.
However, i've been having some trouble with regards to attacking enemies. At first i did an "if" statement saying that if his stick colides with the enemy && is "attack"ing. (basically set to true if he presses the space bar, then do something (like make the enemy rear up or die or w/e, which btw is a problem for me too becuae i wanted to have him moving but can't seem to make an "internal" animation work while he's moving).

HOwever, this causes it to work ONLY when he first presses it and the stick is touching. THis obviously doesn't work because it doesn't hit him on the actual hit, only when he pulls he stick back to attack. Therefore, i'm wondering if there's a way to test if the attack sequence is on a certain frame in teh animation, so i can say liek 'if its past frame number 10">> and he collides with the stick, carry forth the death.

or is this a bad way to do it?

this is really hard for me, the whole animating thing while doing coding. I just don't get the structure of how it should carry out.

anyone have a solution?

THANKSSSSSSSSSS!!!
-mcap

Character Animation Chugs On Low-process Computers
Once again the SWF format has me kerfuddled and puzzled.

I have a vector animation of little vehicles on a map moving around. Granted it's probably high in the curve settings (when exporting SWF format out of Illustrator), but everything is vector and moving smoothly with event based sound efx at 45 fps. Looks dandy on my G4 and PC.

However, same SWF file on an iMac or smaller Intel PCs just plain CHUGS. Lower processor machines. Ok, so now I have to stream the sound efx so it keeps up with the animation. As a result frames are skipped, but I think this looks better than having the animation move oh so slowly. I even tried this at 30fps and 12fps and still, slower performance.

My question is... am I just dealing with the inherent naturing of complex vector illustrations? Granted the entire SWF file is less than 400k, so it's no behemoth by any means. How can I best optimize this file so it plays the same on both my G4 and cruddy iMac.

Thanks for listening.

Parker

PS:: Case in point, a complex SWF file like 2advanced.com plays the same on both higher and lower processor machines. Am I missing something here?

Character Animations With Actionscript
I have 4 different movie clips...each one is an animation of my character walking a certain way (left right up down)...now, i have it so that the character moves this way and the proper animation plays, but i dont know how to make the character stop and stay still on the way that he is going... i tried gotoAndPlay(1) but that doesnt seem to do it. Can anyone lend some assistance?

Actionscript Character Question
I am looking at a set of actionscript code and there is a character that looks like a beefed up/bold-faced return arrow. Sort of like this:

|
|--->

Just imagine that as being much more solid and dark.
Anyway, does anyone know how to make that character or is it just to be ignored? I see it used in these example things in the book quite often so I think it is legit.
Ideas?
Thanks.

Is There An Escape Character In Actionscript?
i need to escape a " in a string

Is There A Newline /n Character In Actionscript
Hello please help.

Can someone tell me if there is a newline character in Actionscript to use in a dynamic text field. I've tried /n but it doesn't seem to work.

Also, is it possible to write to text files through actionscript?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Adam.

Actionscript To Control Character?
Hi there,

I have a character which is being animated for me in a 3d program.
My client wants me to be able to put the character into Flash and attach a simple roll-over instruction
(so the character will animate when the user rolls over the area and stop when they roll off)

How difficult is this to achieve?

Any advice would be really really helpful. As you can tell, Im a bit unsure of the level of actionscripting involved in doing what seems to be quite a straight forward roll-over action. Especially when the final thing will be placed within the website - I would like some advice if Im missing out on something really important...

Thanks!

Character Spacing In Actionscript
Hi,

Is there a way to alter the character spacing (kerning) of dynamic text in actionscript?

I can find anything about it so it isn't looking good.

Thx

Special Text Character In ActionScript
Hi there....I'm trying to use a couple funny characters in the values for variables in ActionScript. For example, let's say I want to use the word "resume". How do I get the "é" to show properly in action script?

Code:
printVariable = "resume";
Thanks!

Can You Control Character Spacing With Actionscript?
Hello

Wondering if it's possible to control character spacing in an input text box with actionscript?

Here is an example.

I would like the character spacing in the price to be tighter.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Kind regards,
______________________

REGAN SHEPHERD

[CS3] Simple Character Movement Actionscript
I was trying to follow a tutorial on making a character move with the arrow keys. The only problem I have is when I add my character movie clip to the main timeline and try to select it to add the actionscript to it it says "Current selection cannot have actions applied to it" in the actions panel and so I can't up the script in there. Does anyone have any idea why its saying this?

Honestly, I have the stupidest problems with Flash sometimes. Someday I'll be good at it...someday...

Here's the tutorial if it helps: http://www.flashperfection.com/tutor...eys-73583.html

Game Actionscript - Character Movement
hi guys i have this AS code and am no sure what i would need to add/change to allow the character to fall from a platform if they're no longer on it... currently the character stays at the same _y position even when its no longer on thew platform

can any1 help me out with the changes i need

heres the code i currently have

Code:
onClipEvent (load) {
y_start = _y;
jumping = false;
jumpspeed = 0;
speed = 5;

}
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) {
this.gotoAndStop("Walking Left");
this._x -= speed;
}
if (Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
this.gotoAndStop("Walking Right");
this._x += speed;
}
if (jumping) {
this.gotoAndStop("Jumping");
_y += jumpspeed;
jumpspeed += 1;
if (_y>=y_start) {
_y = y_start;
jumping = false;
}
} else {
if (Key.isDown(Key.SPACE)) {
jumping = true;
jumpspeed = -10;
}
}
if (_root.Platform.hitTest(this._x, this._y, true)) {
jumping = false;

}
}