Flash :: Animating Lines

Animating Lines
Ok, I want to do this very very simple animation, but I cant get a thing right. I want vertical lines to start at the top of the screen and drop down, then when they get about 3 inches from the bottom of the screen, they turn to the right and go to the end of the movie. The only way I can do this successfully is to draw the 2 lines off the screen and then like 30 frames later, put them where I want them in place, and create a motion tween. Is that the best way to do it or is there something better?

Thanks again for answering my moronic questions

Animating Lines
I know there used to be a tutorial somewhere on how to animate lines, can anyone help me out on this one? Thanks in advance.

Trouble Animating Lines
Afternoon all.

Im trying to animate a line that grows from one point and moves around the stage, which turns at 45 & 90 degrees.

I have drawn the line in stages and then tweened these stages, for example:
from dot to vertical line to line extend right to line extend up, etc.

as you would expect the tween doesnt understand what im trying to do, and doesnt animate it correctly. So Ive tried using Shape hints, whioch partially solves the problem, but the extensions of each stage start befor the previous stage is complete.

How would i make flash wait untill tweening the next stage of the line?

If you can imagine the snake game on the nokia, when you have a really long snake and you turn up, and the rest of the snake follows the turn, this is the effect i'm trying to create, without the end of the snake following on, but being static.

Help appreciated.

Animating Actionscript Lines
Hey, how would i go about animating lines via actionscript? i have search for a tutorial but i only found a tutorial on how to draw static lines in actions script. Is there a way I can make it so the line takes time to draw it self, i mean so it not instant so it can draw the line say over a period of 10 seonds or 20 seconds, so it just draws itself and i specifie the points?
Thanks.
Definity.

Animating Drawing Lines
Here's the picture of what I'm trying to achieve. You know the game Tron and the motorcycle/bike section of it where a line follows drawing the path of the bike? That is what I want to do. So to break it down into a simple example lets draw the stroke of a square. I'm not sure if this is possible with Actionscript - or with using masks how do you handle the mask on the corners?

Know what I mean?

m/

Animating Dashed Lines
Hello all,

here's a simple question. Is there an easy way to animate a dashed stroke?
I've included an example below. The illustrations are from Freehand. Making amovie clip etc is all clear. With a straight line I could just mask off parts and animated a moving line, but with the curves I want that crawling ants effect. Anyone?

Thanks!

-Patrick

Animating Freaky Lines
Hi guys,

I've been stuck on this for a couple of hours now and figured I might get some hints from you that could get me in the right direction.

I'm trying to animate some "freaky lines", eg. straight lines that go berserk and flip out. I've tried shape tweening them, but as soon as the line crosses over itself the animation looks like crap.

An example of what I'm trying to accomplish:

Has anyone got any suggestions? Thanks in advance

Animating Lines And Showing Scribbles
I'm not sure how to describe my help.. but here it goes..

I need to learn how to animate lines.. Making them appear, move, grow longer, fly around the screen. Like in so many of the other flash sites. You see the lines appearing, from left to right and then it opens up and and something else appears in the middle of it. The only thing I can think about is to actually tweening the lines with a mask. But I want to know a better way to do this. Something more precise and complicated and something that I can control with action script. I understand you can now use the draw line tool in Flash MX.. but it draws the line too fast and it doesn't look like any animation. I want to be able to draw a line and have it show up like somebody is drawing it in real time...

I would also like to reveal vector graphics like a scribble with curves that overlap each other. I want to reveal it like as though somebody was drawing it. Since we can't attach a guideline to a mask, I think it's weird.. I don't know. I spent some time trying to do it last night and the night before and couldn't come up with any thing.. all the Flah examples I hunted down doesn't seem to help much either.

If somebody and actually show me how to do it, it would just make my day.. I mean actually show me.. send me a flash file of your example or something.. I've just started Flash for about a month or two now.. I seem to know the basics of it, but as you can see.. not all the basics..

Why am I writing so much..? Because I don't want to think about my problem for the moment.. it's hurting my head.. Anyways.. I'd appreciate anything from all the gurus that exist in this realm.. I was looking at some of your works and it just baffles me how you come up with such creation.. I hope I'll get there someday..

Oh.. if you can take a look at this site and tell me how they do their animations.. it would help me out a lot..

For example.. http://www.firestormpc.com/
how do they make their screen switch from one to another with the animated line dropping down.. I assume the line isn't tweened but actually programmed.. how do you do that? This site is one of the best sites I've seen so far.. cool!!!

Or how about this site.. http://www.derbauer.de/
how did this person make their animation soo cool.. like that.. it's like it was real or something.. awsome.. ? See how those buttons morph as though it was real.. cool!!!

Somebody get me started.. Please..

PKX

Animating Growing Lines - Howto
Hey all,

I'm a coder, not an animator. I have a very basic animation question.

The curly elements in an interface background http://sidewalkbullies.com/backframe.jpg should grow very naturally on startup.
An example http://www.cafelocal.be/ how the lines grow around the logo on top.

Only my lines are not 1px wide. I've been screwing around with masking and tweens. I can't seem to make them grow nicely.

Can anyone tell me how a thing like this is generally done? Thanks all.

How To Find Number Of Lines Of Dynamic Text...and How Many Lines In Textfield
is there any way of finding out how many characters will fit in a dynamic textfield?

I have a textfield that is dynamically loaded with text. Sometimes the text is long and i need scroll buttons, but when the text is short i would like not display the scroll buttons.

How can i figure out if text is short enough not to display the scroll buttons?

oh..to make it even more complicated; the font of the text is not always the same. I use textformatting to display header-like lines in the textfield.

Text Animating And Zoom Animating
Hey im a beginner at animating and i need advise on how to animate text. Like when the viewer is watching my movie I don't want a whole paragraph to come out of no where I want it like word by word or letter by letter like someone was typing it right then and there. I tried figuring out a way but the only thing was adding a key frame for each individual letter. any tips? and also any advise on how to make the text come in with flare? like fading in or coming in from the top?

Also another thing. Let's say I make a city from far away on the stage. I want to zoom in on a person (a stick figure) for a couple seconds and then zoom back out to it's original position. Is there a way I can do this without having to disassemble the city and make the person zoomed in and then make it look zoomed out construct the city from scratch again?
I would like any help please.
Thanks in advance.

Bad Images - Straight Lines Are Jagged Lines - Why?
Hello -

Wondering if anyone had a solution --- I have some images for a portfolio - almost all of them have a diagonal line that's supposed to look straight, and in flash it's looking jagged and wiggly.

I began with 300 dpi images - saved them to the proper size, no compression, saved PNG's, then imported to Flash with lossless (jpg,png) setting, created Graphic Symbol with all graphic information in the upper left quadrant, and it is in an even space on the stage (no 113.4, but 113.0)....

I did a lot of research to make sure I got the best quality images & have taken all of these steps and it's still coming out crappy....

Any ideas? Much appreciated...

Some Problems Drawing Lines Over Other Lines...
Hi.
I'm designing a character for a movie I'm gonna make, but I'm having some trouble. I recently decided to change the colors of the lines I used, so I switched them around a bit to match the fills but some of the lines I changed the color of now overlap the lines that are supposed to be in front. I tried to draw the 'good' color over them again but at the moment I release the button the lines I draw disappear again and the others overlap them. Any help? I'm using mx 2004.

Thanks in advance

Lines, Lines, Lines....and Their Movement...
How do i make a line to move, grow, shrink, follow a path...i thought about masking but i believe there must be an easier way of doing it via actionscript...am i right?

please help...
Thanx a lot for your time...

:eek:

Draw Lines By Mouse Drag And Erase Same Lines By Mouse Click.
Put the following script on frame ..

var i=0;
var sxcord;
var sycord;
var excord;
var eycord;
onMouseDown=function(){
i++;
sxcord=_xmouse;
sycord=_ymouse;
createEmptyMovieClip("temp_mc", 20);
onMouseMove=function()
{
temp_mc.clear();
temp_mc.lineStyle(1, 0xff0000);
temp_mc.moveTo(sxcord, sycord);
temp_mc.lineTo(_xmouse, _ymouse);
temp_mc.lineStyle(6, 65280);
temp_mc.lineTo(_xmouse + 0.500000, _ymouse);
temp_mc.moveTo(sxcord, sycord);
temp_mc.lineTo(sxcord + 0.500000, sycord);
}

}
onMouseUp=function(){
temp_mc.clear();
onMouseMove=null;
excord=_xmouse;
eycord=_ymouse;
createEmptyMovieClip("line"+i, i)
with (eval("line"+i)){
lineStyle (1, 0x0093DD, 100); // this is the colour of the final line.
moveTo (sxcord, sycord);
lineTo (excord, eycord);
endFill();}
eval("line"+i).onPress=function(){
trace(this._name)
removeMovieClip(this._name)

}

}
//++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +=

Enjoy !!!

Newbie: Actionscript Long Lines Don't Wrap How To Break Long AS Lines?
Newbie question,
I'm writing .htmltext and have very long lines in my ActionScript panel I want to be able to
wrap the lines so I can read them without side scrolling. It's dumb but how do I wrap the
AS lines without starting an new line like I had entered a ";"

Thanks,

Anyone Know Why This Isn't Animating?
Ok, it's a redux on the looping movie question. I've fixed all my problems except for one.

http://www.kitsunestudios.com/temps/Movie5correct.html

Here's how it should work: after the preload page (big green button) there is a set of 5 menu items on the bottom of the screen. When you click on one, the entire bar scrolls left, then launches the secondary navigation (Represented by the white box with the funny words). Everything works, except that instead of scrolling over, it jumps immediately to the final position. I've tried a trace, and it spits down a continual countdown, but does so instantly, instead of over a period of time.

Here's the animation code; frame 2 of a 3 frame Movie instance called "Control"

Code:
play ();
if ( CP > 0) {
CP = CP - 5;
setProperty ("_root.botnav", _x, _root.botnav._x - 5);
nextFrame ();
} else if (CP <= 0) {
if (_root.botnav._x<500) {
setProperty ("_root.botnav", _x, _root.botnav._x+750);
}
tellTarget ("_root.film") {
gotoAndPlay (title);
}
tellTarget ("_root.botnav") {
gotoAndStop ("active");
}
prevFrame ();
}

The previous frame in this movie is a Stop action, the next frame is a "prevFrame" action.

What this should do is count down, move the navigation over by a set amount, then go to the next frame, jump back, and repeat. When it's finished, it then resets the navigation bar invisibly, so it dosen't scroll off the page, tells the secondary "film" navigation window to launch, then reactivates the buttons.

Everything is working except for the animation. If anyone knows why this is jumping to the last frame instead of slowly moving to it's new position, I'd appreciate it.

the original FLA can be found here:
http://www.kitsunestudios.com/temps/Movie5correct.zip

Thanks in Advance!

A Little Help Animating
ok....i just got flash 5......so far.....i know how to make a circle turn into square..........make a car move across the screen.....but i want to make animations that have a lot more detail(like xiao xiao movies)......i cant seem to make a stick man kick......only move across the screen......a little help on how? i think it involves layers

Animating MC
Is there a way to animate a MC so it looks like a motion tween? If so, how do you do it? Say you have a simple square box as a MC, and you want to move it from point A to point B - in AS how do you make look like a regular motion tween?

Thanks...

Animating An Arm
Hey All...
I'm trying to animate an arm. What I need to do is get the arm (from the elbow up to the hand) to move counter-clockwise, with one point (the elbow bit) to stay still, then stop... At the same time, I need the hand to move clockwise but at an extremely slow speed, while attached to the moving bit of the arm..
Any help would be much appreciated!!
Thanks!

Animating A JPG?
I just got Flash 5.0 and I'm trying to animate a .jpg file. All I want it to do is spin clockwise. How can I do this? Thanks...

Animating My Dog
How do I turn his tail, eyes & head into separate "movies" so that they move when the mouse rolls over them? HELP! I'm going crazy!

Animating
how do i make characters in a cartoon animated like moving just an arm or elbow? do i make a movie clip for each limb?

Animating
Can anyone direct me to a good tutorial to animate a stick figure walking?

Animating PNG
anyone knows why animating PNGs or Gifs causes some pixels of the background image to flicker?

Animating W/ AS
I know how to animate a clip using actionscript but I seem to have a problem that I cant get my head around! Here is what id like to do:

There are two movieclip buttons, one that will animate a ball MC up and another that will animate it down. When you press the up button, I want the ball MC to animate up say, 50 pixels with easing, then gradually start to animate downwards until you press the up MC again. It will keep animating up as fast as you press the up MC until you get to a certain height and then it wont let you go up any further. At that point it will start coming down again. If you click on the down button I want it to do that exact opposite of the up MC of course. As fast as they can press the button, it will keep animating downwards (this time w/out easing) until they get to a certain y coordinate and it wont let you go any further. Any help would be great guys! Thanks!

Animating
I was just wandering how I start a animation. I,m new and I need 2 no where I can download a program to make flash animations prefebly a free program.

Animating
I would like to figure out to how to create the effect on the polyphonic spree website (http://www.polyphonicspree.com). Specially how to animate lines to form objects or words.

New At Animating
All I want is a program to create cartoons or movies.
If anyone has any ideas, please post them here.
Thanks,
Thethingamabob

Help Animating A Dog
I need help to animate a dog....Any one know of a good tutorial.....a good web site or even have a good fla I could look at? Thanks

Animating Jpg
OK..I'm just getting started with FlashMX 2004. I created a background with 3d text in another pgoram and saved it as a .jpg file. I imported it to the flash stage and then I added a timeline effect. I was wondering if I can add multiple timeline effects to the same image...also, I want the text only of the first logo pic to be animated, but it animates the whole jpg with the background. Also, how do I add another image and add a timeline effect? do I hafta make a new scene? When I make a new scene with the same background and a new pic it's not that smooth when going to next scene..Here's what I am aiming for...a logo wehere the text only zooms in then zooms out, I know how to do the zoom in in transform effect which makes the whole pic move and not the text only which I want....Then I want the text to zoom out or fade out, not sure which effect I want yet, then fade or zoom in with another picture, I can add the stars background and send it to back and then add the pic I want in front on top and animate just the pic there, for the other pics..I have done that before. So for now this is my problem...adding mulitple timeline effects to a jpg. How do I make the effect last longer or shorter? even when I slide the bar to slow at end, it's still a bit too fast. I'm sorry I made this post as long as I did, but I need some help with these things. Also I will be using mp3s playing while the images are loading. I know how to add the sound, it's just that I want the mp3 to keep playing while the images are on screen with the effects applied to each one. So far I get the audio with the pics, but can't add a new timeline effect to the 2nd pic I use unless I make it a new scene and then only part of the mp3 will play and it goes to the next scene. Hope someone can guide me on my way with this. Being a newbie I have a lot of stuff to ask.

Animating A .gif
I'm trying to animate a .gif for an AIM icon in Flash.

Everything works just fine, except for the text. It looks hideous and completely illegible.

I was wondering what my publish settings should be or how the text should be? I noticed that it really screwed up when I tried using static text or any text that was selectable.

Age For Animating
about what age do you think most poeple start or should start using things like flash animator

[F8] Need Animating Help
So I have a question about creating a growing animation. Basically my navigation has straight lines that go into a rounded curve. I want the mousover to animate the bars starting from the straight part and into the curve. Anyone have any expereice with this? I want it to be as smooth as possible. Some of the curves come back around (see the attached example), and I think that is what is so hard for me to get my head around.

See Example

THANK YOU

Animating With AS2
Hey I'm trying to create this animated interface where when you click on each paper, it'll rotate out and load some content, and if you click it again it will go back. I'm only up to the rotating part. This is really just an experiment so that I can learn. Anyway, it all works well, but only once. It goes out, you click it again and it goes back, but if you click it again it just kind of jumps around instead of repeating the process.

Also, I may be getting ahead of myself, but I'm sure you'll notice that the mcBluePaper is clickable even behind other mc's. I'd like only the visible parts of the mc's to be clickable.

I'm really new so there's a chance that I've just done everything in some weird backwards way that isn't working out, so thanks ahead of time.

http://jtnatoli.googlepages.com/papers.fla

Flash 8

[F8] Help Animating
i just got the trial version of flash cs3 yesterday so i can try to make some animations...i searched for tutorials on google and only found how to make something slide across the screen...I'm trying to make something like a stick figure walking...if anyone can help either post here, or you can message me on xfire if you have it, names the same on it...thanks guys

Animating Out
im working on my website and i have 5 buttons that go to five different scenes and each scene animates out. So say for example, everytime i press a btn i want it to animate out- no matter which btn is press.( if currently on scene 1- and i press the scene2 btn, i want it to use the scene1 animation- out. if its on scene 5, and i want to play scene2, i want it to use scene 5- animation out?

can someone please help.
i tried setting up a simple variable, but after pressing the btns more than once, it would randomly go to different scenes- but it did play the animation "out" -scene.

Animating
lo all.
im tryin to animate a pencil/paintbrush to draw/paint the intro for a site.

http://www.kaoss.org.uk/drawn/

if youve got 5 mins take a look at the link. thats what i got so far, im usin shape tweens and such. the problem is the frames/layers are buildin up and im strugglin to keep the pencil/lines in sync.
anybody got any tips/hints/links for a source on how to do this in a more efficient/simple way, i feel like im goin the wrong way about it and wastin precious time!

ne help much appreciated...

kev.