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In this chapter we are going to look at motion tweens at a more advanced level
than what we did in the Essential Training title. We will start off by simply
reviewing how motion tweens work. If you are following along you can open up
Review_Motion_Tween.fla from the Chapter 01 folder. You can also just create
a movie clip on the Stage. You can create a motion tween using a symbol by right-clicking
or Ctrl-clicking the frame where the symbol is in the Timeline.
So I am going to right-click in the animation layer, I am going to choose Create
Motion Tween, and by the way you may have noticed Create Classic Tween as an
option here. Classic tweens represent the older versions
of motion tweens, so that the motion tween of Flash CS3 and previous versions
of Flash are now called classic tweens. So they are still there in case you
ever want to use them. Notice that Flash automatically extends the
Timeline for one second of animation. So I now have 18 frames. So now
if I want to animate properties, I can go to frame one and adjust any properties
I want to animate. So let's say I am going to make the monster move from where
it is now, down to the bottom of the Stage. So I am going to go to the frame
one and then I am going to push Down on my keyboard and then I am going to
push Up on my keyboard. So what that did is it moved the monster down
one pixel and back up one pixel which doesn't really do anything visually
but what it does is by adjusting the property on a particular frame in a motion
tween we are telling Flash to memorize that property value. So by adjusting
the Y position of the monster we had the Flash memorize that position and make
what's called a Property Keyframe. So remember a keyframe is a place where you
tell Flash exactly how you want something to look in a particular frame and
now what I will do is I will scroll to the last frame and then I will move the
monster straight down by holding Shift on my keyboard and using the Down arrow.
The reason why I am using my keyboard instead of clicking and dragging
is so I don't accidentally move the monster a little bit to the right or to the
left; if I go to the playhead we can preview the animation.
So Flash has created a motion tween and then if you look at the purple line
that I have here, Flash created a motion path. Remember that if you click and
drag that line or you move around anchor points in it, the Flash will modify
the motion path. I am going to undo the change that I just made by pressing
Command+Z on the Mac or Ctrl+Z on the PC. So there is a symbol motion tween. So what
I have to do to create a motion tween is right-click or Ctrl-click where your
symbol is that you want to animate and then choose Create Motion Tween.
From there all you need to do is modify the properties that you want to animate
at the beginning and ending frames of your animation.