Why no animated flash support?!!

[ARICEBO]

I got all excited when I read that Xara X supported flash...but now amvery dissappointed as it has no support for animated SWFs.

I thought the GIF animation facility would at least let you export as flash.

I don't see the point of the current addition...exporting as .ai into flash gives you much better results.

If the generated .swf includes any content not supported (soft shadows etc) a bitmap is generated, but appears off register...

Anyone else have any thoughts?
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img]

[ARICEBO]

I got all excited when I read that Xara X supported flash...but now amvery dissappointed as it has no support for animated SWFs.

I thought the GIF animation facility would at least let you export as flash.

I don't see the point of the current addition...exporting as .ai into flash gives you much better results.

If the generated .swf includes any content not supported (soft shadows etc) a bitmap is generated, but appears off register...

Anyone else have any thoughts?
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img]

[Nathan Heagy]

The current animation controls are too basic for flash export. Hopefully a new version (however far off) will include more robust animation controls which will let us replace flash with Xara.

Nathan Heagy
<HR>
Blow Your Beef Away
Cow Comics!

[Sheff]

Before motion graphics came into play, I would have to say Xara beat everyone to the punch with the Flare/Web format.

It's too bad they never took it anywhere under the Corel agreement. If they had, Corel might have beaten Macromedia to vector web dominance.

Sheff

[Ross Macintosh]

Whilst it would be great if Xara X could export a flash animation it isn't the end of the world. I recently purchased flash and hope to master it. So far I find trying to use it very painful as it forces me to think differently and it seems so damned clumsy.

I'm glad Xara included the .swf export. I can forsee using the xara-exported .swf files on my web pages just as I would a .jpg or .gif - It seems like a great way to get the benefits of scalable vector graphics on the web. I exported a few basic graphics and found the results impressive. Creating the particular graphics was easy in Xara and I know I would have difficulty recreating them directly in Flash. The benefits of the .swf format (even in its static form)are significant. Perhaps xara's ability to easily create static .swf's will make it available to those who can't afford Flash or those who find Flash cumbersome.

Ross Macintosh

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[ivca]

I also agree with what Nathan said as well. Macromedia had the foresight and marketing way back when to create a vector based animation program who's export format required their unique plug-in for the www. That was key in the beginning and it paid off. And, in a perfect world, Macromedia would have Xara's vector illustration code instead of Freehand but it doesn't. So for now, Xara has generously included SWF export and IMHO, so far so good. Of course it's static ... heck, it doesn't even "release to layers", but it sure beats the crap out of putting a piece of vector through a half dozen filters. So what if some of the effects like shadowing or bevelling get rasterized upon swf export. That's not Xara's fault ... it's Flash's limitations ... Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Xara or getting my nose out of joint here. It's just that I knew Xara wouldn't come with a timeline and actionscript.

I read these posts and well ... This took about 10 minutes. It isn't great as I'm a newbie, but as you can see, there's a bevel and contour there that exported nicely. It would take me forever to to that with Flashes native tools.

www.ivca.net/sample.html

All the best, Wayne


[This message was edited by ivca on October 03, 2000 at 08:56 PM.]

[zone]

I need so much Flash animated Export that I'am thinking of exporting each individual frame of the animation, and then recreate the frame by frame animation in Flash.

Exporting all the animation frame by frame could have been a nice feature to start with.

[FrankMcAree]

Yes O.K. it would be great if X exported animated Flash, but as Flash 5 imports animated gifs as frame by frames its not that big a deal,is it ?

[pknair]

Importing frame-by-frame animated GIFs takes away one of Flash's best qualities: tweening! Making an item tween is generally much cleaner than trying to use an animated GIF. Less redrawing is necessary - so you end off with a better quality image, smaller size file, and smoother animation. While I've never used Xara, I use Illustrator, Flash, and Corel Draw! pretty frequently, so I'd have to say that if any of these could export Flash animations, I'd be pretty happy. Xara, by the sounds of it, is pretty amazing, so if they're the first to come out with this, we might start seeing some sweeeeeeeeeeet animations!!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


hth,
Deep (just a guy)

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[zone]

Sure Flash 4 and 5 imports animated GIFs. But a 800x600 animated GIF is kind of eavy.

I wonder if Xara will ever become a vector animator has complete has Flash? I don't feel that's what the Xara guys want to do.

Will they ever, or should they implement Tweening and ActionScrip?