Flash tweening: Shape and Motion

Yep, another oldie for the newer developer. Learn how to use Flash’s shape and motion tweening ability.

FrozenHaddock Tutorials: Tweening

In this tutorial you will learn you to use flash’s tweening techniques to create
smooth animation. There are two types of tweens, shape and motion tweening.

First of all there are a few rules you’ll need to learn before you start tweening.
First of all, you can only shape tween shapes, and motion tween movie clips.
Secondly, everything on a shape tween layer is tweened, so keep things on
several layers. Only one movie clip is allowed in one motion tween, for multiple
motion tweens you need more than one layer.

Shape Tweening

Right, lets start with the simpler of the tweens, the shape tween. This is mostly
considered crude for advanced animation, but can produce a quick and easy
effect when needed.

To start off you’ll need to draw something to shape tween.

smilyface

For the sake of this tutorial, I have drawn this face. Now, you’ll need to insert
a new keyframe further along the timeline.

newkeyframe

Now on this frame, change the posistion and/or colours of your shape.

changedcolours

Now you need to select all the frames involved in the tween, open the properties
bar and change the tween box to shape.

selecttheframes

Your frames should now look like this.

timelineshape

And your shape should now be smoothly changing colour, if you changed the
posistion too, then it will move. However for smooth movement, a motion tween
or motion guide are recommended.

shapetween1
shapefinished

There, a nice, quick and easy to make effect for use on basic animation projects.
Now lets move onto Motion tweens.

Motion Tweening

Motion tweening is much more advanced than shape tweening, and has a lot
more rules associated with it. However, these are useful, as there is much
more you can do with one of these tweens.

Firstly, again, you will need to draw the thing to tween. I have used the same
face as in the shape tweening tut.

motiontween

This time you will need to convert this shape into a movie clip. To do this, select
the shape, and hit F8. Make sure you select Movie Clip under the behaviour.

convert to movie clip

Now it is converted, It should show a blue square around it when selected.

converted

Now, as in the shape tween, insert a keyframe further along the timeline. Here
I have inserted it on 20.

keyframe further along

On this new Keyframe, you need to move your movie clip to another posistion.

movement

Now, select your frames, right click, and select create motion tween.

createmotiontween

Your timeline should now look like this.

timelinemotion

motiontween

You should now have a nice clean movement. Note, we did this with movement,
but you can use things like rotation, alpha, size, tint and flash 8+ filters. These
are very useful.

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6 Responses to “Flash tweening: Shape and Motion”

  1. Ej1oo1 Says:

    how can i use this in a game

  2. Tazzydevil XIII Says:

    That depends, what sort of game?

  3. Ej1oo1 Says:

    I don’t know any game really I was just wondering like if you wanted something to move on cue would you use this?

  4. Tazzydevil XIII Says:

    Oh no, I’d be moving something with Actionscript :)

    If you want effects, little animations and such, I’d use this.

  5. Ej1oo1 Says:

    okay thanks

  6. dnyaneshwar Says:

    send me more information and projects

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