Small change, need to update every frame?

**remi** · 14 July 2007, 10:27 PM

Perhaps you can create a Autohotkey script for your task. Apart from that you can ask the Xara developers if there are plans to implement a scripting solution within Xara Xtreme. I never received a serious answer from them about that (only the "impression", that they are not willing/able to develop such a feature)...

Remi

**Tallis** · 15 July 2007, 01:20 PM

"Why can't you just copy the corrected group then paste it into the second frame and adjust it?"

This is my question. If I see errors, or need to make adjustments, and I have several frames that form the animation, I need to adjust each and every frame to make one small change. My question was oriented towards optimizing this tedious propogation workflow by seeing if there is an easier way that I'm missing...

"I can't help but think you're making this a bigger thing than it needs to be."

Just trying to understand the dynamics of how Xara animations and naming items or groups to tween can be done efficiently is all.

**pauland** · 15 July 2007, 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by Tallis

My question was oriented towards optimizing this tedious propagation workflow by seeing if there is an easier way that I'm missing...

Yes, it is tedious and it's more tedious because Xara have missed a very simple trick (from another perspective we could argue it's a bug).

Currently, for example, if you edit a group "g1" in the first frame, you need to do exactly the same thing in every other frame (or cut and paste as per my advice).

The trick that Xara missed was that if ,for example ,you edit group "g1" in the first frame, Xtreme should replace all other occurrences of "g1" in the other frames with the changed version. This would make you (and many others I imagine) very happy.

(Wicked comment: If it's any consolation, this is how the Flash environment does it)

"I can't help but think you're making this a bigger thing than it needs to be."

Just trying to understand the dynamics of how Xara animations and naming items or groups to tween can be done efficiently is all.

Yes, there is going to be some tedium using Xtreme for animation.

It's really good that it does it at all - it's a recent addition - some people are doing some fun stuff with it. It's no competition for the Flash tool though.

My confession is that I don't use Xtreme for animation.

Paul

**Skaven252** · 24 July 2007, 06:14 AM

Originally Posted by Tallis

Question two is, how do I make the frame stop more smoothly like on the page I referenced above? I think I need some sort of parabolic slowing down, and I'm not properly expressing it in my frame intervals and times.

I just looked at the Xara Flash tutorial 2 and turned out there is a way to do this. You need to put "<:", ">:", "<>:" or "><:" in the beginning of the name of the object you want to animate, and it will ease in/out the frames. So you'll only need a single frame to animate, which is easier to manage.

See the tutorial for more details.

**Xhris** · 24 July 2007, 02:54 PM

Originally Posted by Skaven252

I just looked at the Xara Flash tutorial 2 and turned out there is a way to do this. You need to put "<:", ">:", "<>:" or "><:" in the beginning of the name of the object you want to animate, and it will ease in/out the frames. So you'll only need a single frame to animate, which is easier to manage.

See the tutorial for more details.

I'll be updating that tutorial soon; there are a few other features you can use: using the command "<X:name" where X is a number from 1-9 will determine the profile of the acceleration. Lower X values are gentler accelerations; higher numbers are more harsh.

**Tallis** · 25 July 2007, 01:32 PM

Skaven- thanks! wow, reading compresension... i read the same tutorial and somehow missed that section...

Xhris- thanks! waiting for the update... you should set up a micropayment button on your website to collect some donations to you when people find your tuts helpful-- i cant imagine when you find the time to do these, but i'm not complaining!!

I will look into the < & > stuff. From 1st glance, then, it doesnt even seem like tweening or animation in the frame-to-frame sense... With these commands, the name gallery handles it all for that one frame.

Are there any more "unpublished" commands like this!!??

**remi** · 25 July 2007, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by Tallis

Are there any more "unpublished" commands like this!!??

It's all well documented within the Xara Xtreme Pro manuals, delivered in a printed form with Xara Xtreme Pro (chapter "Flash Animations", page 23ff).

Remi

**pauland** · 25 July 2007, 04:27 PM

Originally Posted by remi

It's all well documented within the Xara Xtreme Pro manuals, delivered in a printed form with Xara Xtreme Pro (chapter "Flash Animations", page 23ff).

Remi

LOL - I thought manuals were just for putting on the shelf..

**Xhris** · 25 July 2007, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by remi

It's all well documented within the Xara Xtreme Pro manuals, delivered in a printed form with Xara Xtreme Pro (chapter "Flash Animations", page 23ff).

Remi

In fairness, that acceleration profile command was sneaked into the documentation without anyone being told. Just like the shift-override drag drop feature to revert to the old dropping rules.

**Tallis** · 25 July 2007, 04:58 PM

Thanks. I'm just used to many of these "epiphanies" being from "tricks of the trade" and not necessarily from a manual, esp. with Xara and its habit of frequently having 2-3 different ways to do any one particular thing...