A flash dilemma

I am submitting an animation of a line to show my delima. Seems like when I try to rotate and tween an object such as this line, the bottom acts goofy. No matter what I try this keeps happening. Is there some kind of limitation causing the problem, or, am I doing something wrong? More to the point how can I keep the botton of the line/or object stationary during the animation?
It looks like the rotation of the bottom is following a circular or elliptical path. Am I setting the pivot point incorrectly? Any ideas?

tweening works along straight lines, at least in xtreme it does, AFAIK

so the object is moving along a level horizontal line whilst rotating and so that is why you get the effect that you do - it is not 'goofy', it is doing exactly what it should :D

in order for the base to remain where it is, the path of motion has to be an arc rising then falling as the line rotates

place a pencil on the desk at an angle and rotate it keeping its base touching the desk - your hand has to rise and fall - if the desk were virtual and you could rotate the pencil keeping your hand level, the pencil end would go through the desk - what you have in your file is an example of this

how to fix? - you need a tween expert for that - maybe more than one stage in the tween... I am not a tween fan, I would do it in ToonBoom >:)

Thanks Steve, that makes perfect sense, I'll ponder that for awhile and figure out something else to create the effect I want, even if it's not quite the same it should be close enough.

I'm not sure if I understand but if the problem is the line going up and down you fix it using rotate infront of the line name, I'm attaching an example.
Best regards

spot on I'd say :D

I'm sorry, I didn't understand :o

'spot on' means you are right on target

that does keep the bottom of the line stationary - pretty simple when you know how... thanks

aho, OK, you know english is not simple sometimes.:D

sorry - I should have remembered - I would be lost completely with any form of Spanish :o

Steve,
NP, if sometime you need spanish help, just give me a ring <:)

Larry, the rotate command is a very useful command. Here's what the Help file states:

The Rotate command
To force the rotation to be around any other point you can use a special keyword "rotate" appended to the front of the object name. Or you can use "rotate +" to force the rotation to go clockwise or "rotate -" to make it go counter clockwise.

To take the simple two keyframes animation example shown on the previous page, where the hour hand needs to move from 12 o'clock to 8 o'clock. If you name the hand object "rotate + hand", you'll get an animation showing the clock's hand moving clockwise. If you name it "rotate - hand", then the hand will rotate counter clockwise.

If there is no rotate command, then the tween takes the shortest direct path between the object on one keyframe to the next, rotating around its center. With a "rotate" command on the object name, it calculates the actual rotation point, which in the above example is the "large end" of the hand.

Note: It's not possible to rotate an object by a full 360° between keyframes if the rotation point is not the center. For example, to do a full rotation of the clock hands in the above example, you would need to create an intermediate keyframe.

Thanks Javier you fixed it! That's what I was trying to do.
Thanks also to Egg, I had looked at those help files but somehow it just didn't sink in. Thank you all for your help.

Great Larry - help files passed me by too

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jvila

Steve,
NP, if sometime you need spanish help, just give me a ring <:)

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Gracias :D