Creating An Animation Effect Using Shape Tween

Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash has several animation options. Most animations are done with the help of timelines. Tweened animations are vital for professional flash web site design. They are just like morphing, but are implemented with the help of vector objects. A custom flash web design expert has two tween options:

• Motion Tween and
• Shape Tween

By tweening shapes, a custom flash web design expert creates effects similar to morphing. Tweening makes one shape appear to change into another over time. Flash web designers can also tween the size, color and location of shapes or objects.

If you want a shape tween to take place, you must remember that the objects must be non-symbols. Unlike other tween methods that require symbol, shape tween works the opposite way. One cannot shape tween a symbol. Remember that Flash cannot tween bitmap images or even text blocks. For text blocks, you must first type the text and break them down by clicking Modify>Break Apart.

Creating a simple shape tween is easy. The designer opens a new flash file and invokes the timeline by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. A layer appears in the timeline window. The designer selects the first frame and draws an object and selects another frame (in this case, frame 15). He then presses F6 key to insert a new keyframe. He deletes the current object and draws another object. After this, he selects any frame between 2 and 14. The final step is selecting "Shape" from the tween pop-up menu located in the property inspector.

To view the shape tween he presses Ctrl+Enter and tests whether the tween is properly executed or not.

A professional flash web design expert employs shape tween to morph texts. Most websites that display a transition of objects or text from point A to point B use shape tween. With such a simple logic professional flash web site design experts create wonderful and compelling shape tweens to attract visitors. This effect is used by most custom web design experts, especially when creating flash based websites.

About the Author:

I am the webmaster at www.synapseindia.com ' A web development company offering custom flash web design to businesses in India and abroad.