Unit 14. Shape Tweening (II)

Shape Hints

As it happened in the previous unit, sometimes the action type that makes Flash by default isn't convenient for us. In the motion tweenings we solve this usingf the motion guide.

    In the case of the shape tweening, it is possible that Flash makes the transformation of the objects in an unexpected way, and can taht can be enough to bring our proposal to completion.

    Then, for these cases Flash provides us with a tool to solve them: the shape hints.

    The shape hints are marks that specify Flash what points should correspond in starting and ending shapes. When indicating this, we are controlling the intermediate forms that will be generated.

    In order to add a shape hint to a tweening we'll place our cursor on the first keyframe of a shape-tweened sequence and press Control + Shift + H (or go to the menu Modify → Shape → Add Shape Hint.).

  It’ll appear a color circle with a letter inside. Its color will be red while it isn’t placed on the object outline (the ends, if there is no outline) where it has effect.

Note: When the shape hints are placed on a curve (vector) that compose an outline they are yellow in a starting keyframe and green in an ending keyframe.

    We should place this circle on the outline of the initial figure. Automatically a new hint will appear somewhere as a circle with the same letter inside on the ending shape (this point should correspond to the first point of the original object) and we should move it to the desired final point of the animation.

    The first shape hint is marked by the letter "a". If we create more than one hint new hints will appear with the letters that follow "b", "c", "d"... and so on until the limiting z. You can use up to 26 shape hints.

    Press here to understand better what a suggestion or hint of shape is and see an example of the shape creation and exercises on the shape hints.

Let's go for another example, we have the following animation (without shape hints):

Place a shape hint on the point marked on the graphics located a little more down:

Focus on the beginning and ending points of the Shape Hint and following the same one up, later we’ll verify that Flash makes what we ask for:

     Starting Point                                                             Ending Point

Continuation

    As we see the point marked at the initial object finally corresponds to the ending point marked at the end, with which we have succeeded in forcing the desired transformation.  

  This is the result of the previous example.

  Exercises of Unit 14                                                           Unit 14 Test.