I would still save it as a flash. flash documents play over and over again unless you put a stop actionscript after the movie file. just make a button that transitions to a new scene and dont put a stop actionscript after anything.

I think I misread. lol but I think avi might make a good movie file.

If I can't split the file up, goin with .avi, just wanna keep it under 10mb!

that shoudnt be a problem hopefully. or you can just compress the files.

I'm thinkin that Flash has some sort of compression, and I'm using celshade, which should cut down on things greatly (hopefully)

cool :)

Newgrounds forums. Tons of quick easy helpful stuff there

Found a couple of tips fromt he tutorials on there, but missing a couple of things tat I'm lookin for, sadly

You might send  ianrsoulfox a note, but the easiest way (from what I remember in Flash six or so years back) is to make them into AVI videos, and import them as objects into Flash.

Hmm, could you have a button play an AVI to its end and have it loop at a certain point, or would it have to be individual frames?

That, I'm not entirely sure on. It's honestly been too long since I've touched Flash.

lol It's cool, I've got a few tips here and there

I know Flash. What do you need?

lol Just trying to make one of those "progress to the next animation at the press of a button" animations. I get that it loops at a point, but not sure how to make it loop specific portions, or play through for smooth transitions

You want someone to teach you or do it for you? I can do either, you just tell me which one you prefer!

If anything, I can prolly do it myself if I had a decent tutorial lol

I'm afraid you'll only get lost with Flash tutorials =/

I actually found a couple of really good ones! I just don't know if I want to directly use/place frames in a timeline or use AVI files and string them together with buttons

hmmm >:/
you really don't want me to show it to you?

rofl It's just something that I'd want on file, so that I can study on it later. I don't mind people waking me through something, but if I have to use it again, I'd want a clear understanding, so that I can ingrain it into my repertoire. :)

actionscript 3 is the format to start with. I'll look back and brush up on buttons before I tell you how to make those.

Buttons I'm getting the idea of, but it's either importing frames in, or using movie files to string it together, but I want smooth transitions between loops, which is the issue haha

flash is unbelievably finicky when it comes to importing files. it only ever accepts certain sample rates with some files, and most commonly likes FLV files to be used. also, motion tweens, despite the name actually cause things to go more smoothly if used.

If I could just import JPG files and use the timeline, that'd be hot, but I get that it'd make the overall file huge

I'd suggest PNG if at all possible.

Dunno if he gives advice, but you could ask  h0rs3  hrs2d who does a lot of 3d and 2d animation.

Never thought of that! He seems so busy, but I can try. :)

Good luck! If I knew anything about Flash beyond how to watch them and how to download videos...

rofl Welcome to my world, but I'll figure it out with the help I'm gettin, thanks! :)

.flv

I do animation for a living just hit me up if your having issues dude.

You can import them back into your library at a later time, just keep in mind of your file size and it won't be much issue.

as for assigning buttons you just place an action script at the beginning of what you want your button to do. For instance. to play the scene from the beginning you woud have your timeline like this.

[123456789 10 11 12 ..... Ec]

[1]This is where you would have your button script,

and you'd start your animation on frame 2, so frame 1 would be blank for each scene.

Well, it's more like, I want to do the frames themselves in another program (Sai/Photoshop) and them import them in. I do get that it can cause issues if I don't import as vector, and they will be rasterized, though I was thinkin PNG for high qual, or JPG, bu keeping the colors simple for a cleaner look.

I'm getting how the Timeline works, but if I import movies in, I get that I can't quite split them up to have a Button affect certain points for Looping and transitioning from a certain point on. I also know that I'm not explaining this well enough lol

It's like, I want it to start, then loop at a certain section, then wehn a button's pressed, I don't want it to just jump to the next set, but play through the current loop into the next set so that it's more seamless. I don't know if I can do that with premade, imported movies/loops

Its possible to convert the individual frames into vector information although I have no idea how to do it within photoshop. I think your best bet would be to either roughly do the animation outside then import to ink over them, would save you a lot more time.

I would, but I want to color in a specific manner, which Flash tends to be lacking, unfortunately

Yes vectors would make the entire movie be barely a few hundred k if that was true, but it will still be okay as imported images if you do all the frames, especially if as I put in the other reply, that you have repeating frames at all.

Nah, no repeating frames, just loops and transitional animations. Guessin I just import the png/jpg files and work with those, right?

Personally your best bet would be to use something like plastic animation paper or photoshop. Color and finish your scenes then just make a series of movie files and import them as jpeg sequences in flash. Lot less hassle. :3

hey.

go to the Collin County Community College campus on Spring Creek and Jupiter. go to the "K" wing which is on the very end of the building away from the big parking lot. ask any of the instructors there (especially Marshal Pittman or Tom Ottinger) about who is available to give some tutorials. they'll probably say Gail Ellison is somewhere around and you can ask her. if she can't help, then find out when Kim Bauer is available to talk to, and you really should take her class about Flash. with in-state tuition, you can get in on a once-a-week class for like 100 bucks.

srsly.

lol Thanks, but what if you're not from in-state?

if you've been living in Texas for a year, you get in-state tuition there =P

ans besides that, Marshal and Gail and Kim are all terribly sweet folks, they'll help you if they can and have time.

Nice, but I'm in Cali! :)

thought you moved to Dallas only last year?!

Flash doesn't really compress embedded movies all that well, images it can do pretty good and you can click on the images properties individually in the flash library to set how compressed you want the jpg to be internally saved or leave it at the size it was imported as.

Quickest dirtiest way to get mini movies from buttons is to build your background and buttons on frame 1, in frame 1 actionscript put stop(); and then the buttons actionscript you put the on(mousedown) {gotoandplay(XYZ);} where XYZ is the sections first frame (I think the mousedown is proper event for that), and then last frame of each section you do another stop(); as only line of script. That way each clip is off in it's own little section of timeline and you can control finer things. Saving space you can have it repeat over frames with a simple counter and gotoandplay(ZYX); and then after X times it just lets it continue on past over that jump, so then even saving in the images, you're not placing copies.

If you just import movies then you still will have duplicate frames over and over saved as the raster pixels and still be taking up more space if there are ANY repeated frames, it's still better to import each frame as a object so it only needs it once in the library and then using the same object as links when you drag into the canvas will make it still reference the same frame. It's the difference between 1 image per frame, or 1 image per repeated scene frame, which with a looping 5 time movement, would save you in the dozens of frames and cut filesize down 1/5 for just that scene.

I'll actually build you a small template movie if you need example?

I think I got it; if I import the animation cels in as individual files and convert them to Objects, I just need to learn the script to loop a set number of frames and use Buttons to go on to the next loop, etc, right?

Well, that's what I mean? Repeating frames as in looping in an area, where in a traditional movie you'd have to copy it to extend time ;P But yeah since you'd save space just importing the frames once and then dragging the 'Graphic' objects to the frames and positioning.

Heres some snippets that should help, should be all you need to get the button and scene movements :D

stop(); // on first keyframe with buttons to keep it from autoplaying

gotoAndStop(1); // on empty black keyframe end of each scene to go back to menu

// on seperate Actions layer so it's always available invisibly, one copy for each button, name the button on the canvas in properties, BUTTON_OBJ_NAME is that instance name, creating click listener, also needs unique named function call and the function name for each button.
BUTTON_OBJ_NAME.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, UNIQUE_NAME);
function UNIQUE_NAME(event:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndPlay(2); // first frame number of scene to go to
}

var loopsleft; // actions layer first frame to make the variable exist

loopsleft = 3; // on a keyframe one frame before the beginning of the loop with number of times to loop

// on the last keyframe of a loop
while (loopsleft-- > 0) {
gotoAndPlay();
}

making a blank layer of just actions on keyframes and then a art layer is usually best, but if you're keyframing most or all the frames anyway to make the Graphic objects be different, then it probably won't matter :]

What if I want to make the loop infinite til the button is pushed to go to the next section?

instead of:

var loopsleft;

you can name it:

var escape_me;

and then instead of:

while (loopsleft-- > 0) {
gotoAndPlay();
}

you'd put:

if (!escape_me) { // if we didn't stop it yet
gotoAndPlay(START_OF_SCENE);
} else { // otherwise we want to go to next scene OR you can use the gotoAndStop with 1 to go back to menu
escape_me = false;
gotoAndPlay(NEXT_SCENE);
}

andddd then you'd need to make a button with that CLICK_EVENT block but instead of:

gotoAndPlay(2);

inside it, you'd put:

escape_me = true;

That'd make it loop until the variables set, then once clicked and the scene loop ends it'll move on.

And then rinse and repeat?

yeah, so... sounds like you don't want a menu of buttons, just the one button to go next, so you'd have a separate layer above so you can always see it on timeline so you don't have to copy the button a bunch of times. That makes it more straightforward code.

keyframe 1 will have the "stop();", the "var escape_me;", and the initial button or buttons as the block of event code.

Each scene will have a black frame after. That has the "if (!escape_me)" block in it.

Each scene on a layer above it will have the button in keyframe-framed sections so it's only one copy each scene, and have the actionscript in that for the click.

That... should be all you need :]

Swank deal, gonna give this a shot, for sure! Thanks a lot, dude

Argh! Computers are always playin up at the wrong time...If my hard drive wasnt wrecked at the moment i could stream it for you, show you how its done. Im not sure how stream would run on my laptop but i could give it a go if you'd like?

Heres an example of what u can do https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43088973/Reaver.swf

Nice! Hmm, sorta like that, but more like a smoother transition instead of scene to scene; it's all one continuous shot, just loops at certain points