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Aug 11 2009 / alecmce

Moving Animations in Flash IDE

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The designer Colin at our work uses the Flash IDE to create avatars and other animations, which we then import into applications and fiddle about with. He’s not very handy at working out where the registration point of a clip should go before he’s done the animation (for lots of good arty reasons), and we don’t really want him to nest an animation inside another MovieClip to correct the problem because it’s a bit messy to have to drill into the display list to find an animation.

If you have multiple frames of animation over multiple layers, there’s really no good way of moving all the elements in one go (or if there is, neither Colin nor I know about it), so I’ve created this little JSFL script wrapped into a Flash front-end for him.

This swf needs to be installed into your installation folder to function, which depends on your OS and Flash version. The paths for CS3 are:

  • (WinXP) C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Flash CS3\[LANG]\Configuration\WindowSWF
  • (OSX) /Users/[USER]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS3/[LANG]/Configuration/WindowSWF

where [USER] is your username, and [LANG] is your language (probably “en”).

What it does is pretty simple: Whatever is on stage at the time will all get moved by the amount you specify. It will not respect locked layers, if it’s an element on stage, it’s getting moved!

Source FLA

FLA

You are welcome to inspect the source, compile it yourself, so-on and so forth. The source FLA is here. If you do download the file, you will note that I embedded the jsfl code into the fla, wrapped into an XML cdata tag. This is just because you’re not allowed to break Strings across lines in the Flash IDE Actions panel.

Filed under animation, jsfl
  • http://twitter.com/alecmce alecmce

    A tiny utility for designers in Flash IDE, http://bit.ly/XbDkj, for moving around layered anims, as req. by crayon monkey @colinmckinney.
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/colinmckinney colinmckinney

    RT @alecmce: A utility for Flash IDE, http://bit.ly/XbDkj, for moving around layered anims, as req. by crayon monkey @colinmckinney.
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • Marc Tanenbaum

    Not to cast any aspersions on this tool, but simply to answer the question “If you have multiple frames of animation over multiple layers, [is there a] good way of moving all the elements in one go”:

    1. Unlock any layers you want to edit.
    2. In the timeline, click the “Edit Multiple Frames” button (4 buttons to the right of the trash can in CS4…might be the same in CS3).
    3. Select all (cmd-A).

    You can now edit by dragging or by manipulating the properties numbers.

  • Marc Tanenbaum

    Not to cast any aspersions on this tool, but simply to answer the question “If you have multiple frames of animation over multiple layers, [is there a] good way of moving all the elements in one go”:

    1. Unlock any layers you want to edit.
    2. In the timeline, click the “Edit Multiple Frames” button (4 buttons to the right of the trash can in CS4…might be the same in CS3).
    3. Select all (cmd-A).

    You can now edit by dragging or by manipulating the properties numbers.

  • Marc Tanenbaum

    Oops. Should have mentioned a step 2.5:
    Once you’ve clicked the “Edit Multiple Frames” button, you might have to adjust the timeline sliders (the dark grey area at the top of the timeline). This allows you to edit multiple frames, but not necessarily all frames.

  • Marc Tanenbaum

    Oops. Should have mentioned a step 2.5:
    Once you’ve clicked the “Edit Multiple Frames” button, you might have to adjust the timeline sliders (the dark grey area at the top of the timeline). This allows you to edit multiple frames, but not necessarily all frames.

  • http://alecmce.com Anonymous

    Well I never! Though I’m a touch embarrassed, I’m not a crayon monkey so I’m blaming my designer colleague for not knowing that. Thanks Marc :c)

  • http://alecmce.com alec

    Well I never! Though I’m a touch embarrassed, I’m not a crayon monkey so I’m blaming my designer colleague for not knowing that. Thanks Marc :c)

  • http://alecmce.com Anonymous

    Ah! I’m reliably informed (and just had demonstrated to me) by Colin that the mechanism you describe Marc is a total nightmare and doesn’t work properly in various cases, while my solution does the job. We’re running CS3; maybe CS4 works better.

  • http://alecmce.com alec

    Ah! I’m reliably informed (and just had demonstrated to me) by Colin that the mechanism you describe Marc is a total nightmare and doesn’t work properly in various cases, while my solution does the job. We’re running CS3; maybe CS4 works better.