Flash Week Day #5 – Adding animation in CS4

04 Vanishing Point

Now, we need to change the vanishing point for each of the photos so that it matches both its x and y co-ordinates. For each photo, select it and view its properties. In the Vanishing Point section under 3D Position and View, change the x and y co-ordinate to match the x and y position.

05 Create a tween

Right-click the first photo and select Create Motion Tween. You should see a new motion tween on the timeline. Drag the end of the tween to the desired length. Right-click the tween and select 3D Tween. Now open the Motion Editor. From here you can build a new transition.

06 Build a transition

The next step is to add keyframes and change values to create a tween. For the first transition, change the rotationY property to -90 on frame 1. Next, select frame 10 and change it to 0. Do the same on frame 10 from the end. And, finally, on the last frame, change rotationY to 90.

07 Saving a Preset

You should see the photo rotate into view, pause a while, then rotate out of view when you scrub the timeline or preview the movie. If this is the case, rightclick the tween and select Save as Motion Preset. Give it a name and then hit OK. Now you are ready to reuse this animation.

08 Timeline setup

We now need to set up the next photo. Drag the photo on the timeline to the frame directly after the previous photo (you will do this for each photo). Right-click the photo and select Create Motion Tween, following the steps detailed in step five. Now, we will create another transition.

09 Other transitions

By repeating the steps detailed from five to eight, create two more transitions for the current photo and the next one. You can see examples in the demo file. Make sure you save each of these transitions as a Motion Preset so they can be used for the rest of the photos.

10 Apply Presets

When you’ve created several transitions, open the Motion Presets panel. This is where the advantage of the new CS4 features really come into play. For the remaining photos, simply drag them into place on the timeline, select them, then select a transition from the Motion Presets panel and hit Apply. It’s that easy.

11 Final frame

After you have selected transitions for all of your photos you are left to decide what to do on the last frame. If you simply want a looping slideshow, then you are done. Otherwise, you can create an ActionScript layer and put a stop action here or any other functionality that you would like.

12 Preview

Finally, preview your project. If all went to plan you should see a visually impressive slideshow, complete with your own custom transitions. These and any new transitions that you save as presets can be used on any future projects. Soon enough, creating cool motion will be as easy as hitting Apply.

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