I'm totally frustrated with the animation feature..Grrr

[Egg Bramhill]

Avoid bevels etc, but if you must use them create a transparent png and use this to animate.
Also avoid 3 colour fills etc. Name everything that needs to animate. keep testing using the swf preview, that gives you great hints if there's any problems with the file.
Using handrawn's tweeked file I recreated it further.
You can go to Swiffy and load the swf and it'll convert sweetly into an html animation viewable on all devices. The whole html animation is only 150Kb.
You can view the swiffy output HERE

[handrawn]

that's good egg

[GiddyupGilbert]

I've probably messed up 50 ways from Sunday. I'm getting what you say and will make corrections and repost. The one question I do have is that "Taste of Italy" is broken down into curves, and there are several different groups nested into the auto. Do I need to name each individual piece, or can I get away with naming the groups, forgetting the individual pieces? I tried to export as AVI and got several nesting errors.

[handrawn]

name the group - there is no need to name the objects within unless you are going to ungroup it at a later stage and manipulate the objects separately - in which case it might be better to keep them separate in the first place to avoid nesting errors

[Egg Bramhill]

Cheers handrawn. Best way to do it is to decide what needs to be animated & what can remain static before you create the animation.

So for example the header "Taste of Italy" is static, not going to be animated, therefore doesn't require a name. If it's broken down into curves etc it doesn't matter. Once you're happy with the final look of the header best thing to do is create a bitmap copy then either delete the original vectors or move them to the pasteboard for tweaking later. The pasteboard won't render in the final swf.

You've then got the car, full of bevels and 3 colour fills and various other objects. Again once your happy with the final look of the car, draw a rectangle that encompasses all the car objects, give the rectangle no fill or line colour. Drag select over the rectangle and the car objects an create a bitmap copy with Alpha. Now either delete all but this bitmap or drag the vectors to the pasteboard for further tweaking.

You're going to animate the car bitmap so name it something exciting like "car".

Next you have the Italian Boot image. This will be animated. This is slightly more tricky as you want a smooth rotation as the "kick" effect firstly goes back, then forward and under normal circumstances this will rotate about it's centre and not ideally what you require. For example it looks better if the boots centre of rotation is centred towards the top part of Italy rather than the centre of the bitmap of the map of Italy.

So here's where a cheat comes in. Draw a circle centred on the central Northern part of the Italy image. Go to wire-view and ensure that this circle completely encompasses the bitmap of Italy. This bit is important as the supplied bitmap was already part rotated and this isn't obvious unless you view in wire-view. Now set the circles colour & fill to none and Shift select the Italy bitmap. Create a bitmap copy with Alpha and name it "boot". Again delete or move the originals to the pasteboard.

The final part is to create the speed lines and exhaust parts of the animation. You don't want to include these in your original "car" shape as they shouldn't appear until the car is kicked up the arse. Create these shapes and either create a bitmap copy or leave them as vectors (but remember NO bevels, if your using bevels, create a bitmap copy with alpha) Name them "go".

Throughout all this process keep clicking on the SWF Preview button. Is it showing any issues.

So far all these elements, header, "car", "kick" and "go" are all included in a single frame. Copy this frame and move/ rotate your elements any which way you want, it's only a test.

Now do another SWF preview. Any errors? Hopefully there shouldn't be.

Delete the second experimental frame, copy the first frame, move to the meaningfull positions. delete unwanted animation parts as required and slowly copy frame and build up your animation.

Finally, if you don't want to use a Flash (swf) animation within your site, import the swf into Swiffy and have it create an html copy of your animation. Use the output html file in a placeholder to add it to your site. All devices will be able to view the resultant animimation. I haven't yet created a swf in Xara that Swiffy doesn't convert.

Hope this helps.

[GiddyupGilbert]

Here's the next incarnation. Will not save as AVI. Will include the error as well. I can't figure where I've gone wrong. Egg, thanks for going to the trouble of an extensive explanation. That will come in handy. I'm using the file in Sony Movie STudeio 13, so it does need to be AVI. Sony doesn't handle SWF files.

TasteAnim.xar

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Gilbert,

See my post above. Why are you trying to create your animation as an avi?

[GiddyupGilbert]

Just edited my last post. BTW, your lengthy post is not wasted. I will be doing some things for our WEB page. I just have to figure out with a few re-reads everything you said. This is all new to me. The first anim.

[handrawn]

yes nice explanation egg

[csehz]

So here's where a cheat comes in. Draw a circle centred on the central Northern part of the Italy image. Go to wire-view and ensure that this circle completely encompasses the bitmap of Italy. This bit is important as the supplied bitmap was already part rotated and this isn't obvious unless you view in wire-view. Now set the circles colour & fill to none and Shift select the Italy bitmap. Create a bitmap copy with Alpha and name it "boot". Again delete or move the originals to the pasteboard.

That is so great idea, I still remember to the demo which you posted somewhere on TG before with that technique, there was a small rocket or someting on the circles and it demonstrated that perfectly