Adobe Flash CS4

Components allow you to make your Adobe Flash CS4 animations a bit more interactive. They consist of prebuilt movie clips that perform some task when a user does something with it. Here is how you add a component to your Adobe Flash CS4 animation.

1. Launch Adobe Flash CS4 and select New ActionScript 3.0 file. If you have an existing animation that you wish to add components to, you can load up that also.
2. Step 2

   
   

   From the main menu at the top select “Window” then from the submenu select “Components”. You can also use the shortcut key combination “CTRL+F7″. The components panel is shown in the picture associated with this step.

3. Step 3

   
   

   The components panel will appear. There are two separate categories of components to choose from. One is for user interface and the other is for video. To add a component simply click on your component of choice and while holding the mouse button down, drag the component onto the stage.

Nothing spruces up your Adobe Flash animations like sound. The best part is Adobe Flash makes it so easy to do. With a few mouse clicks you will be well on your way to an Adobe Flash animation complete with sound.

1. Launch Adobe Flash CS4 and either select an existing project or a new one. For this tutorial it doesn’t matter as you will soon see.
2. Step 2

   In the timeline panel create a new Layer and call it “sounds”. If find that having a layer for the sound itself works best. This way I can manipulate it in some fashion to get it to do what I exactly want it to do. To change the name of your layer, just double click the layer name and type.

3. Step 3

   The next thing we need to do is import our sound to our library. Click on “File” then click on “Import” then click on “Import to Library”. This will bring up the “Import to Library” window.

4. Step 4

   On the “Import to Library” window, navigate to where your sound file resides on your computer, select it then click the “open” butto.

5. Step 5

   We need to associate the sound we just imported to our library to the layer we have called sounds in our Adobe Flash animation. To do this click the sounds layer to activate it and then go to the properties panel. If you don’t see the properties panel press the “CTRL+F3″ keys on your keyboard.

6. Step 6

   
   

   In your properties panel you will see a heading labeled “sound”. Under that heading you will see a drop down box labeled “name”. Click the arrow on the dropdown box and you will see your sound in there that you just imported. Select your sound from the dropdown box.

7. Step 7

   Your sound has now been added to that layer. As a side note if your animation is not long enough to play the entire sound file it will only show up to the number of frames that have. This is where you will have to extend or shorten your animation to have it match the sounds you just imported.

Adobe Flash CS4 is a great product to create a wide array of multimedia projects. From animations, to website intros, Adobe Flash C4 can do it all. in this example, I want to show you how you can morph one shape into another and move it all at the same time. For this example I will use the shape tween. Here is how you perform a shape tween in Adobe Flash CS4.

1. Open up Adobe Flash CS4 and select Flash File (ActionScript 3.0).
2. Step 2

   Using the oval tool, draw a circle on your stage on the far left. It can be any size or color you want.

3. Step 3

   In your timeline window, click the frame under frame 25 for layer 1. See the picture associated with this step.

4. Step 4

   Click Insert->Timeline->Blank Keyframe
   This inserts a blank keyframe in your timeline for layer 1. Look at the picture and notice how it fills in your timeline. Also make note that your stage is now blank.

5. Step 5

   On the right side of the your blank stage, draw a rectangle. Again it can be any size or color that you wish.

6. Step 6

   Right click onwhere on the timeline between frames 1 and 25 to bring up the pop up menu. From the pop up menu select “Create Shape Tween”.

7. Step 7

   Test your shape tween animation by clicking Control->Play or simply hitting the enter key on your keyboard.

A motion guided path allows you to create an animation in Flash that follows a specific path that you draw.

Here is how you create a motion guided path in Adobe Flash CS4.

1. Launch Adobe Flash CS4 and create a new project.
2. Step 2

   
   

   Draw an object on the stage. As you can see in the picture associated with this step I drew a blue rectangle in the upper left corner.

3. Step 3

   
   

   Right click the frame in the layers panel where you want the animation to end, and select “Insert KeyFrame” from the pop up menu.

4. Step 4

   
   

   Right click on Frame 1 and select “Add classic motion Guide” from the main menu.

5. Step 5

   
   

   Select the motion guide layer, then select the pencil tool and draw the path you want the object to follow.

6. Step 6

   
   

   Select the layer that contains the object and select frame. Then select the object itself and move it to where it “snaps” onto the beginning of the path that you drew. Then select the last frame and snap the object to the end of the path.

7. Step 7

   Right click anywhere in the timeline for the object layer and select “Class tween”. You are now done. Press the CTRL+ENTER keys to run your motion guided path animation.

A button symbol in Adobe Flash allows you to create a stylish button by giving you the four basic properties, up, over, down and hit and allowing you to edit what happens during those frames in your timeline. Here is how you create a button symbol in Adobe Flash CS4.

1. To insert a new symbol select “insert” from the main menu at the top and then on the submenu select “New Symbol”.
2. Step 2

   When the “Create New Symbol” window appears, give your symbol a name, select “button” as the “type” and then click the ok button as shown in the picture associated with this step.

3. Step 3

   Flash is now ready with a timeline already created and frames called “up”, “over”, “down”, “hit”. We need to add a button to our “up” frame. You can either draw one or use one from Flash’s button library. To do this we are going to use one from Flash’s library. So go to “Window” then “Common Libraries” then “Buttons”.

4. Step 4

   The buttons common library window will appear. Choose any button from the long list. You will see that Flash has done to great length’s to create a variety of buttons in all different shapes, sizes and colors.

5. Step 5

   Right click frame 2 (the over frame). A pop up menu will appear. On the pop up menu select “Insert key frame”.

6. Step 6

   We need to make it appear to the user that they have hovered over the button and to do that I just drew a rectangle with some fancy color and placed it behind the button.

7. Step 7

   Insert a keyframe for the down frame in our timeline just like you did in step 5 for the “over frame”.

8. Step 8

   You need to insert something that lets the user know they have clicked the button. In my example I just changed the color on the rectangle I added in the over frame to something different.

9. Step 9

   Do the same thing for the hit frame that you did with the down frame except change the color.

10. Step 10

    Your button symbol is now complete. Just click on edit->edit Document to go back to your animation. Your new button symbol will appear on your library panel. To use your new button, symbol drag it from the library and drop it onto your animation.