Puzzled...

**stlewis** · 17 November 2006, 01:04 PM

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)

**pauland** · 17 November 2006, 01:33 PM

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.

**stlewis** · 17 November 2006, 01:56 PM

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.

**pauland** · 17 November 2006, 02:14 PM

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..

**stlewis** · 17 November 2006, 02:26 PM

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

**pauland** · 17 November 2006, 02:34 PM

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.

**Egg Bramhill** · 17 November 2006, 02:43 PM

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.

**pauland** · 17 November 2006, 03:05 PM

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.

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

**Egg Bramhill** · 17 November 2006, 03:29 PM

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.

**pauland** · 17 November 2006, 03:35 PM

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.

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