Puzzled...

Having had a play with the Flash functions...

For anyone who has struggled with the Adobe Flash drawing tools, this will be a great improvement.

It will be useful to build complete standalone swf files - say an advert panel.

If you need timeline functionality or scripting or more user control, then create the objects in XtremePro, and then import into Adobe Flash. But I'm puzzled at the result. I am a bit of a Flash novice, but is the attached correct?! I have attached the XAR file, SWF export and then the FLA file (you need Adobe Flash for the last of these... (all in a zip)

I'm puzzled too. I took your .xar file, did the flash export to .swf and the result is as you would expect it to be. I don't see any relationship between the three files apart from the red ball.

The key step is the third one you don't mention trying - in the fla file I loaded the export from XtremePro and then did a motion tween. I had expected the ball to (at least sort of) bounce along the path. Instead you get a rather strange result...

I've attached it.

OK, the .swf exported from Xtreme Pro has 60 frames. The motion tween is over twenty frames, so the motion tween is repeated three times over for every time the ball.swf animation completes one cycle. This explains the jumping around.

If you stretch the tween to sixty frames, this is what you get..

Ahah! Thanks. Make me a Flash beginner - not a novice!

Flash is like that. I didn't take enough notice when I first looked at your post to realise what was going on. Have fun.

Simon,

The problem is being caused by you importing a swf animation into Flash. A swf file is the output of Flash. It is not intended to be IMPORTED to Flash. To import an animation to Flash you need the .fla file that holds the tween information.

That said however, swf is an excellent medium for bringing non-animated objects from Xtreme to Flash. I would recommend you use swf4 for this transfer as later swf versions can also have strange effects.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Simon,

The problem is being caused by you importing a swf animation into Flash. A swf file is the output of Flash. It is not intended to be IMPORTED to Flash. To import an animation to Flash you need the .fla file that holds the tween information.

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Err.. sorry Egg but you're completely wrong. You can import .swf files as part of your flash project - the .fla files aren't necessary. It's a common thing to do.

Paul

Paul,

I'm not saying you CAN'T import them, just that they'll be useless to use. Everything comes across in a single layer and each object has a defined position. All tweens have dissappeared and been replaced by frame positioning.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Paul,

I'm not saying you CAN'T import them, just that they'll be useless to use. Everything comes across in a single layer and each object has a defined position. All tweens have dissappeared and been replaced by frame positioning.

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Well, useless is a bit strong. The symbols will work as intended, so you can use them in another animation.

I think that we both know that in any example involving animation, if you have Flash then you are always going to be better off animating in the flash environment perhaps using non-animated symbols exported from Xara. This isn't a dig at Xtreme Pros capabilities, just that it's nowhere near as sophisticated as Flash for animation, but is ideal for those who don't have flash but want to make some flash animation.

Paul

The above screengrap is of an imported swf file. Only one layer and all objects positioned frame by frame.

Below is the original fla file with layers tweens etc etc intact.

Paul,

I agree totaly with that. If you've got Flash use Flash to create your animations. XtremePro's swf animations are designed for nonFlash owners.

Egg, the flattening caught me out - I initially thought it was down to Xtreme Pro - not pretty, is it?

Paul

Egg

I was puzzled by the apparent absence of tweening in the imported swf - I wondered if it was just something else I did not understand!

Another giant waste of programming time without any real functionality for professional users ... pro people already have flash and photoshop ... they're the tools of the trade ... you have to have them if you're a serious designer ...

It's get another waste of development time to appease the hobbists.

When will Xara Ltd wake up, take them selves seriously and support the professionals that use the tool.

Logo Kid

Calm down! I imagine that the progamming effort cannot have been huge - they already had the drawing, the layers and the SWF output - the work was in filling in the gap.

I have Flash - which I use *occasionally* and always struggle with; the XPro tool is great for the easier stuff - with a drawing interface/toolset that I understand. I still hope that I can (as I had experimented with) create symbols and small movies to import into Flash and then do the more complex stuff there - when I need to. Yes, there are serious Flash experts around, but then there are Flash-dabblers like me.