Have any of you guys used Flash much? Is it the worst software ever or what? Obviously people are getting stuff done in it but for the life of me I’m not sure how they do it. The interface has got to be the worst ever. Trying to select single frames, multiple frames, whole layers etc. Under Flash 5 if you drag a selection rectangle around an object and the rectangle cuts through the object your object is AUTOMATICALLY cut into multiple parts. The parts inside the rect and the parts outside the rect. You CAN’T START OVER!!! You are expect to UNDO if you selection wasn’t perfect.
I’m working through the Hillman Curtis book and it’s amazing to me that it all has to be done by hand one element at a time. You’d think you could copy and paste keyframes and selectively paste stuff (ie, everyting put the position or all positions relative to the object’s current position etc). You’d be able to get stuff done in 1/10 the time. Maybe there’s faster ways to do stuff and I just haven’t gotten that far but my experience with Dreamweaver was the same. They really need to hire some interface designers.
Has anybody tried the Adobe Live Motion? Is it any better? I know they need some work too. For example in Photoshop you can make “slices” which are rectangles defining parts of an image. For example using slices you can have photoshop automatically cut your image into multiple files. You can set attributes for each slice (like save, don’t save, save as GIF, save as JPEG) What you CAN’T DO is select multiple slices and set them ALL AT ONCE to GIF or JPEG for example. What were they thinking? Having to click on 47 different slices and set each one by hand is a joke.
As an interesting side note, I’ve been helping out in the trial Flash classes at Digital Hollywood and Flash crashes regularly at least on a the Macs in the class. It’s pretty frustrating. Worse, I found out Wednesday that just pressing Ctrl Caps-Lock crashes every Mac in the lab. If you just happen to press Ctrl and Caps-Lock (which I happen to press quite often since they are about the same places as shift and control on my Vaio keyboard your Mac crashes and you have to press the Reset button on the case. And you thought Macs were supposed to be user friendly.
Well, I haven’t downloaded live motion yet. (It won’t help me work through the Hillman Curtus book) but I did check out their website and it looks like they addressed at least some of the problems with Flash. You can read it here.
For example in Flash, to do most of the text effects you see you have to convert the text to graphics then manually select each letter and covert it to a symbol. Then manually create a layer for each letter and put one symbol in each layer.
As this is probably the single most done action in Flash, LiveMotion made it automatic. Not only automatic but you don’t actually have to convert to graphics. LiveMotion will still let you edit the text even AFTER you’ve animated it.
Another problem with Flash is that all attributes are Keyframed together. In otherwords if you want to fade from black to white over 30 frame but you want to scale from 0% to 50% over 12 frames you can’t do this in Flash. You’d fade from black to 12/30s white while you scale to 50%, then fade again from 12/30s white to 30/30s white. L!A!M!E! LiveMotion has fixed this (or so they claim) You can keyframe things separately. There are arguments for both ways. It’s alot simpler to deal with one keyframe than say 50 for all the different attributes but I’m sure there’s a way to make the interface so it feels like one keyframe until you need it to feel like more. Kind of like in 3D software moving X, Y and Z and all be keyframed differently but by default they are keyframed together.
Lots of other cool things. Reading through the Hillman Curtis book you have to be careful of how you create stuff in Flash. If you use the same graphics more than ones and you do the wrong things (which is very easy to do) it will store the graphics once for each use. LiveMotion figures it out when you save and makes sure you don’t have the stuff in there twice.
Another cool feature of LiveMotion is that it keeps links to the original files. So for example if you edit your graphics in Photoshop or Illustrator and you put them in LiveMotion you can re-edit them in their original program and LiveMotion will automagically re-import them. Flash has no such concept, once you’ve put it into Flash the other program might has well have never existed which makes fixing things a pain in the ass.
I wonder if Adobe will be able to kill Flash. My impression is that Adobe has not been able to get people to switch. I don’t know where I get that impression. Maybe because I haven’t seen any evidence of a LiveMotion *buzz*. I suppose the other problem is that since Macromedia controls the format they can always stay ahead of Adobe by adding stuff. I’m sure LiveMotion doesn’t support the new programming stuff that lets pages like this be possible.
Me again…
I am actually a Flash Designer/programmer. In my opinion I am ok at what i do, though some people do rate my work highly.
When using Flash 5, go to preferences and select Flash 4 selection style.. this will make using the timeline a LOT simpler. Flash MX also uses this approach.
I have tried Livemotion 1 and 2, I don’t like them. Although similar to After Effects, the timeline can get far too busy. it is very easy to get lost, especially when you have lots of layers (which you will if you are making a Large site/animation.)…I have also heard that LiveMotion is going to be dropped by Adobe.
“if you want to fade from black to white over 30 frame but you want to scale from 0% to 50% over 12 frames you can’t do this in Flash” ; That is crap, I could do it for you in a couple of seconds…just ‘cos you don’t know how to use a tool you can’t say it is shite. Spend some more time on it or visit were-here and check out the forums. (I think shockfusion had a board dedicated to LM, there may have been 10 posts in there once)
Flash MX is really good, the interface is not perfect, I do miss some things that I had in Flash 5, but to be honest since I got my hands on FMX I have hardly opened F5
With FMX i can edit my Bitmaps on Fireworks MX easily…I think I even done this in F5…but even this function I rarely/never use.
Also, FMX has its own programatic drawing tools: look at this: http://www.mx3d.com/preview/index.html the same guy created this :http://www.kruesch.de/world/ (Flash 5) (the thread and this may be interesting too).
Give it a try, you are obviously talented, I would like to see what you could conjure up in Flash.
I checked out those sites. One site is “under reconstruction” the other is a corporate site. I didn’t find anything there.
So, tell me how to do it AND tell me how to edit it later. Let’s say I want to fade from black to white from frame 1 to 30 and I want to scale from 100% to 50% over frames 10 to 20. How do I do this in Flash? Then lets say tomorrow I want to change that black and white fade to frames 1 to 40 and the scale from 15 to 30. How do I do this in Flash? In any descent 3D software each of those items would have a separate timeline entry making it easy to go back and edit all I want. In Flash though at appears it all gets boiled into the same timeline. The difference is Flash only has one timeline for each object instead of one timeline for each value on each object like most 3D software. The advantage of one timeline per value is it’s infinitely more editable. I haven’t tried LiveMotion but their literature claims they have separate timelines per value. Has MX added that?
Yes the timeline gets busy if you are animating alot of stuff but then again, if you are animating alot of stuff and you want to edit that stuff it’s seems like it’s impossble to do in Flash since all the various values are all part of the same timeline/keyframes.
OK.
Yes were-here they are reconstructing, but the Forums are open (i did say this in the previous post) : Flash 5 ActionScript and Flash MX ActionScript
The corporate site….I presume you are speaking of ShockFusion, yeah it has turned corporate, you are right, infact it is totally different to the lasttime I visited it, it still has a board (but again you didn’t look around), but the LM board has gone…it won’t be missed.
<I want to fade from black to white from frame 1 to 30 and I want to scale from 100% to 50% over frames 10 to 20. How do I do this in Flash?>:
Easy!
Edit, move the time of the scaling, click & drag the middle keyframe. If you want to reset the size of the graphc to another scale other than 50% first find the Transform tab, press the “reset” button (this will put it back to its original size) then apply point 6.
If you want to edit the object you are animating, press CTRL+L to bring up the library, double click the icon of the symbol you want to edit and you can now change anything about it.
If you are really good you can even do the above effect programatically.
<Flash, it all gets boiled into the same timeline> True, but it is pretty easy to get used to it.
<you want to edit that stuff it’s seems like it’s impossble to do in Flash since all the various values are all part of the same timeline/keyframes.> Not impossible, you can easily add and remove keyframes, using the effects and transform tabs it is easy to edit objects.
I have no bias, I will use the best tool for the job, I am sure the rest of the Flash community is the same, if LM was any good I am sure they would have adopted it. (I do actually have a copy of both LM1 & LM 2, but never use them, besides the Swf’s they output tend to be larger than the MM Flash equivalents)
Being a programmer yourself I thought you would have commented on the 3D examples done in Flash and even at this http://www.vectorlounge.com/04_amsterdam/jam/wireframe.html
It is obvious Flash is a very powerful tool.
Ok, hope this helps.
You seem to be missing my entire point. It’s not about making the initial effect it’s about editing that effect.
Following your steps I’d get fading to white from frame 1 to 30 and scaling from frame 1 to 20. If I decided I wanted the fading to be from frame 1 to 60 my understanding is I’m fucked. Because Flash stores one keyframe per change per object instead of one keyframe per change per value I end up with just 3 keyframes
Keyframe #1 at frame 1 is color=normal, scale=100%
Keyframe #2 at frame 20 is color=20\\\\30 white, scale = 50%
Keyframe #3 at frame 30 is color=white, scale = 50%
Because of that, if I try to move keyframe #3 to frame 60 I’ll get this
Keyframe #1 at frame 1 is color=normal, scale=100%
Keyframe #2 at frame 20 is color=20\\\\30 white, scale = 50%
Keyframe #3 at frame 60 is color=white, scale = 50%
instead of this
Keyframe #1 at frame 1 is color=normal, scale=100%
Keyframe #2 at frame 20 is color=20\\\\60 white, scale = 50%
Keyframe #3 at frame 60 is color=white, scale = 50%
If Flash had separate timelines for each value there would be two independant timelines One for the scale, one for the color. This would make complex edits much easier because I could adjust one timeline and not have it effect the other.
Doing things programatically is NOT a plus. The whole point of Flash is that NON-programmers can do this stuff. Saying I can do it programmatically is like saying “if you know C you could write flash”. I’m not saying that having the ability to program flash is bad, I’m saying that the less programming required the better it is.
I also never said LiveMotion was good, I only said it appeared they give each value it’s own timeline which is the way it should be. Nearly every pro 3D program has been that way for the last 10 to 15 years. Without having the values separate the 3D effects for movies would not be possible. Clearly it is possible to get work done in Flash. I’m only saying it could be alot better.
I like to see good presentations so it’s nice that people are able to do some stuff like that but I can’t help but look at it and partly think, “woo hoo, now my 2ghz Pentium 4 with GeForce 3 card can run games that look like they are from 1982 in my webpages”. If you want 3D, use Shockwave or Java or wait until it’s really been added to Flash.
Ah I understand what you mean now.
Yeah, I guess a LM/AFX timeline would be better for that kind of animation. Although, it isn’t too much hassle to delete one key frame and press F6 to creat another one where I want to and then re-apply the scale. Sure editing over many layers would be a pain, but I suppose LM would suffer the same trouble….I dunno
But I am used to Flash and its querks (it is my favourite application out there, by a mile, I get the chance to be creative & draw and I get to use my brain when coding), I am constantly swearing & cussing it, but I suppose if I used LM all the time I might do the same.
I when I get a chance I will try and do this simple animation that you mention.
(I have messed about with LM in the past, adding a motion blur to a word moving right to left, thinking that I could do this in LM and import the exported SWF into Flash, but unfortunately the SWF created would not import successfully (the motion blur created bitmaps for the moving word and the last frame was vector which came in as odd characters that were difficult to replace in Flash and make look right)).
Besides, Macromedia is giving Flash a massive boost, ColdFusion MX and its Server Side ActionScript, FireWorks MX and its importing/editing facilities for Flash (import as vectors), DreamWeaver MX and it ActionScript integrated editing window, Flash Communication Server MX (video conferencing through Flash…cool as F*$k!) and Flash Remoting.
check this out::
http://www.veracast.com/macromedia/flashmx_launch/
It is a bit of a long, boring video, but does mention a fair bit about Flash MX’s new bits…
I reckon Flash may have a rosey future (at least for a bit longer).
Anyways, I am outta here….
You go and have a dope weekend…
I know I am gonna (De La Soul tomorrow)
Later…..
First things is first.
These programs as with all programs can be designed better if you were the designer. Each person has different little things they want and like. Problem is not all are consistent with the other person. If you wanted to make a program that could allow the user the modify the way the program acts on a complete level to satisfy all persons, you would have just developed a compiler. The select part you talked about (where it slices things in half) is useful if you are trying to move things, you can slice them up, move then around, then set them up together again. But this is a style preference for someone that likes it that way (ctr+z is a quick key stroke for me). As far as photo shop having to rename all these slices all the time, personally I never saw much issues here, not enough to rant about it, but the programmers could make it easier for you, at the cost of bulkier less stable products, with more glitches then before, every feature added increases the potential of glitches, kind of like playing the game called gossip. Think of it this way if we make it compatible with every user out there, there would be so many “features” that every key combination could have different functions, talk about getting lost with all these features. Not to mention some would make sense while others would not, the program would be huge, and people looking at the over crowded interface would be threatened by it. As a software developer these are the things a good developer looks at, what people want and what is in the way. Actually looking at things from a developer stand point, you can start to see why allot of things are done the way they are, and can make constructive critism towards those that are not, instead of bitching about it without any real solutions. But if you are not used to photo editing or Flash and are just a beginner, you may not understand why something is setup the way it is, in other cases there is a better way, just come up with it and let them know. The best place is to tell the developers why you want the change made.
My biggest bitch has always been the idiot developers that went to a tech school or college and can’t write simple code without spending a month. Too many programmers and designers flooding those that can really do a good job, quicker, better, and so on. They produce crap, companies start to expect crap, and next things you know everyone expects a blue screen of death when you blink. This I want it my way attitude is why Windows is the most unstable OS, the most insecure server, and all around piss poor, because instead of learning something, people want it programmed their way. We buy into Bill Gate’s methodology of make it user friendly so the idiot can do it, instead of make it stable, strong, and right. If you get used to the tools you get fast at the tools. I can program something in C++ without a GDI in the same time some punk with a BS in CS can in VB, because I spent the time to learn it right. Learn how to use flash the right way instead of bitching about how you don’t know how to use it, or move aside and let people with experience step in and handle it for you. Get out of computers as you obviously are too lazy to learn, and that is what computers are all about.
While seperate time lines would be nice for each piece of the puzzle, it is not needed, and you do not need to be a programmer to do so. Just figure out the long time frame first, then set the value of the added key frames in that way. There are work arounds for it all, and instead of having 20 billion timelines for every little detail, you can have one timeline with better planning.
As mentioned flash is supposed to be for people that cannot program. You can do flash without programming, but as with any 3d art, if you can’t handle basic programming and math, you need to find a different career, 3d art and flash are vector based, if you don’t know how to add vectors then go to school and learn basic trig or calc. The worst things in the world of computers both programming and graphics is people that think the high end stuff should be for the lame, it is not. 2d art is for those that can be creative, basic programming for those with some logic, 3d art and real programming are for those that are very logical and creative. Any 3d artist worth their wieght can do advanced math and at least minor programming (Like that contained in flash), while flash is only 2d, it is not for kids, tricks are for kids, flash is for professionals.
btw, I stumbled across this site looking for some I need flash to do, and have no respect for people that complain about things because they may have to actually learn something. It would be nice to have a program that reads you brain and puts it up like you see it in your head, or draws a flash movie like you pictured it, but welcome to the real world, want to say what you think, then I would suggest you learn it or find someone else to do it for you. Or write you own version of flash, and make it sooo much better that people pay you for it. Until then stop bitching, be constructive learn something, or go to the developers and tell them something they need to do in a constructive format.
You’re right, reading over the post it was just criticism and not constructive. I was too lazy to list the myrid of poor UI problems in Flash 5.0 (I have not tried Flash MX yet). I did list a couple here
That said, maybe you should pay more attention. I’ve been editing graphics now for 19 years and I have 19 shipping software products on the market. It’s not like I don’t have some experience. And I’ve written both image editing tools and animation tools for several of my projects. Also, I WAS LEARNING, hence the Hillman Curtis book reference.
Flash 5.0 was arguably poorly designed in many many areas. Poorly designed = frustrating and hard to use for the majority of people. Sure, people can get stuff done in it. That is not proof of good design. By that argument they should just give you a C compiler and tell you to write it yourself, hey, you could do anything then so therefore it must be the best design. NOT.
Flash evolved from something that just simply animated vector graphics with almost no help from Flash’s interface to what it is today but it still shows it’s roots. It wasn’t designed to make it easy to do what it’s being used to do most of time. One way to design a better product is to figure out what people need to do most of the time and make those tasks easier to do. Flash doesn’t seem to do that.
Another is to learn the interface conventions on a particular platform and make your product follow them on that platform. Mac people hate it when a Windows program is ported to Mac and the interface is not fixed to follow Mac conventions. Macromedia messes up in the opposite direction. They start on the Mac and then don’t consider Windows conventions when making the Windows version.
You can very easily change settings on multiple slices at the same time. In the Save As Web Page dialog you can use Shift + Click to select multiple slices or just drag a rectangle around multiple slices and you can then change the file type and quality of those selected slices.