Why no animated flash support?!!

[ivca]

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

Would be nice but...

I can see Macromedia all over Xara like Adobe did them. Unless Flash is open source. Is it? Is that the correct term? I believe "Swish", a text effects editor for flash exports ready animated swf's. Never tried it but that's the same point we're raising here. Xara may not have wanted to go that far by implementing extra "flash" features like tweening and such. They're leary about bloating program code for what they may deem unnecessary. The release is overdue enough.

I finally got it to crash today. I tried to contour a WMF with a ton of points. The redraw was very unXara-like. Super slow like their estranged cousin Draw! Hope they work it out. It looks good and is a decent price as an upgrade.

[Egg Bramhill]

Surely were lossing the plot here. You can export to flash using .ia files. As Flash doesn't support half the features that Xara does it's not suprising you can't export as good a vector image into flash as you can produce in Xara.

On the other hand you've now got the ability to export from Xara into .swf files (all be it static) but the quality of the file is far better than an .ai import into Flash. giving better graduated fills and bitmaps than the .ai import.
I have attached two screen grabs as examples.

Finally would you want to see Xara's interface crammed full of time bars as is the case in Flash ?

Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

and the .swf import

[Nathan Heagy]

ivca that animation is GREAT.

Also, the two comparision images both have errors! The swf drops the b+w rear and also a section of the tailpipe, but the mirror in the ai is just white! It is hard to tell which of hte details you intended I think the .ai shows more of them - in the seat and the shadows and highlights of the wheels.

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

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes, I noticed the missing elements. I noticed that joined shapes didnt import as joined and I think blends don't come across with the intermediate blends. I dont know if change to shapes would alter this. Also the bitmap in the wing mirror has a white surround. I think it was a .jpg, I'll try it as a transparent gif soon and see how they transfer.

I have done a quick comparison, the results below. It appears to me that you will need to know the limitations of each export setting and use the one that works best for that attribute.

Egg

[This message was edited by Egg Bramhill on October 05, 2000 at 07:43 AM.]

[Egg Bramhill]

image to go with above posting (the circles at the top should have "joined shape" caption

[Nathan Heagy]

Good comparison. I'd like to see them in xara, but that's not neccessary. Seems that Xara export is only missing a few things - joined shapes and blends. I think the blends might be intentional to conserve bandwidth, but I think that is a seperate issue and blends should export properly.

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

[Egg Bramhill]

I've continued doing some work on the export to flash and I make the following notes:
NOTES ON EXPORTS IN Flash .SWF FILE FORMAT

1: Lines all export okay, even blended lines of different widths
2: Shapes made with rectangle, oval & quick shape tools export sometimes with both line and fill attributes in tack even if sliced with a shape editor tool, at others only the line attribute exports !!!
3: Shapes made with freehand or shape editor tool only export the line attributes but not the fill attributes.
4: Shapes made with the pen tool sometimes export both attributes and at other times only the line attribute !!!
5: Graduated fills export very well except for conical or 3 or 4 colour fills
6: Transparencies export on the main well.
8: Blends only export the line attributes but not the fill attributes of the intermediate blends, but even this is not consistant as often the start and end shapes don't always export !!!

I will post some attachments to highlight these points.

Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

transparency upload

[Egg Bramhill]

graduated fill attachment