September 10, 2004

  • A new FLASH for Animators?


    Finally! After three seasons of Mucha Lucha, we are very relieved and excited to learn that a new version of Flash for Animators/Designers is in development! In a recent email received from Mike Downey of Macromedia Inc.:

    … I’m happy to tell you that we’re in the early stages of defining the next version of Flash, code-named “8ball”, and will be focusing the release on animators, multimedia designers, and digital artists.  We have a lot of features in mind, but one of the biggest areas that we are having difficulty defining is video export from Flash.  We understand that there are limitations in our Quicktime exporter (which I understand is necessary for exporting to broadcast television).  One of these limitations is the fact that we don’t support exporting nested movieclips.  Several experienced developers in your industry have told us that they must export from Flash as SWF and then import into Director MX 2004 as SWF, then export from Director as Quicktime – just to get nested movieclips recognized on export.  We obviously want to fix this for the next release.

  • Gee, that was longer than I expected it to be. o.O;

  • beyond the suggestions already listed, here’s….
     
    ADDITIONS AND CHANGES I’D LIKE TO SEE IN THE NEXT FLASH VERSION
     
    Pen tool doesn’t work while ‘editing in place’ – often times when an animator is diving deep into layers and nested symbols in a scene, the pen tool doesn’t work.  From what I’ve heard it’s because the image has been altered or flipped, and the remedy is to right-click (PC) and ‘edit’ as opposed to ‘edit in place,’ but that process takes the artist out of the scene and off track.
     
    Infinite zoom – if a graphic has been scaled on the timeline to a much smaller scale than it’s original rendering, the zoom tool often doesn’t allow the artist to go further in.
     
    Locking graphics – this would help greatly in the case of character models.  Our crews often run into the problem of multiple versions of models that have been altered in the process of animation.  Not sure exactly how this would work – whether it would be password protect or a simple ‘click’ to lock and unlock. The later might make more sense.
     
    More elaborate masking capability – masks currently have to be a single symbol, and it would be nice if masks could be made of multiple symbols.
     
    jpg rippling – JPGs tend to ripple and distort when moved on the stage
     
    More brush options – more photoshop-esqe brushes, like texture brushes and sponges, and the ability to import bmp designs that are turned into brush shapes
     
    Control over tweens – tween on the 2′s would be a big help in taking out the overly-smooth feel of certain tweens.
     
    Contrast – ability to manipulate contrast (and brightness on the same palette) on graphics and other symbols
     
    Global color – the ability to build global color lists for various characters would greatly speed up any global color changes.
     
    Flash MX & 2004 importing issues – both of these versions (PC) seem to have difficulty importing illustrator (.ai) files, and often drop points in the process.  We often use Flash 5 instead for this task.
     
    Transparency of layered symbols – when a graphic consists of many layered symbols, and the opacity is lowered, the layering of the symbol is revealed.  For instance, if a character is a complicated ‘puppet’ model of a ghost, and we wanted the ghost to be opaque, we would have to do this in post, outside of flash, or the structure of the model would be revealed.
     
     
     
    PIE-IN-THE-SKY REQUESTS
     
    3D extrude and rotate tools – not unlike the Kai power tool package for illustrator
     
    Brush tricks – the illustrator brush tool tricks that have developed over the last few years are exceptionally cool.  Helps with animating a single image in a very dynamic way.  Can take a static flag design and warp it to create a waving flag.
     
    FX – a stronger blur tool (rack focus & whatnot), ripple glass, glows, a stronger drop-shadow tool,
     
    Parenting/IK – seen this option in other vector animation offerings, and not sure if it’s worth the trouble, but would be something fun to play with
     
    Play in reverse – playing frames in reverse can currently be achieved with the ‘reverse frames’ button, but it would be very useful if a multiple-frame graphic could be flagged to play in reverse from a certain frame.  This would help with cycles and other re-use options.
     
     
    AARON SIMPSON
    Warner Bros. Animation
    Producer – Animatics
     
     

  • Hi Lili,Great opportunity here so I couldn’t help but put my bit in.I would love Flash to have a rotatable work space to make it a bit more “wrist friendly”.BTW, Happy Birthday Eddie!Cheers,Mic

  • Great feedback, folks. We have a VERY tight schedule for the next release, but we’ll cetainly try to do as much of this as possible.Also, to clarify, the next release (8ball) won’t be *just* for pro TV animators, rather the key focus will be on animators and multimedia designers. I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that we are creating a special version of Flash just for pro TV animation. Believe me, I wish the TV animation market were big enough to target a full release towards.We have been visiting with and talking to pro animators and designers from all around the world while building a spec for 8ball and we think we’ve defined a great product that should make all of you very happy. Please keep the feedback coming as we’re still early in feature development.Thanks,MD——————————–Mike DowneyTechnical Product Manager, Flashmdowney@macromedia.com

  • There’s not much more I can add that already hasn’t been said, so here I go:
    -Bring back the Flash 5 interface where you can have the instance panel open at the same time as the motion tween panel.
    -Bring back the old undo, need I say more about that
    -Do not have the right-click create motion tween default on sync and snap.
    -Often on ‘Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends’ the files get really slow when we have characters with instance buried in instance buried in instance and so on.  I understand it’s not the program itself but the complexity of the character’s setup.  But it would be nice if Flash had a little more power to support the complex setups.
    -When there is a ease set on the motion tween it would be a lot cooler if when a keyframe is set between the tween that the keyframe doesn’t set the ease back to zero.
    -Make the shape tweens a little more intelligent much more like the Blend tool in Adobe Illustrator.
    I don’t really care for the 3-d or camera junk, or tweens animating on archs, I don’t want to let the computer do everything for me.  However it would be nice if flash did also have the same kind of capabilities that adobe illustrator offers ie. the brush libraries.  And some better sound editing capabilities would be nice.  Please don’t get overwhelmed and change the program entirely because I, and I’m sure many others, can get around the current version of Flash (with the help of other programs) without too much trouble.
    Thanks for your time,Eric PringleCartoon Network”Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends” -Flash Director

  • NTSC safe color palatte

  • I’m glad I’m not the only one who misses the separate instance/frame/etc palettes, Pringle – I actually miss it enough that I convert things to Flash 5 when I do freelance.And to think I used to laugh at Photoshop people who stuck with a three-years-back version! The only thing you lose is layer folders and running native under OSX (if you’re on Macs), and since I still have the many-symbols-on-one-layer, few tweens, habits left from “Booty Call”, that’s not a big deal when it makes the rest of the work feel 10x faster.(This is Paul, by the way. Hi. Haven’t seen you since Nebulous – glad to see you’re doing well!)

  • Simple things really: Separate outline colours for symbols and groups. It’s so annoying when you realise you’ve just tweened a group and you have to go back and reset your keyframes.
    When you come out of a symbol and then hit undo I’d prefer if it would bring you back to edit in place rather than switching to edit mode.
    Just by selecting things new points are added. No thanks.
    The envelope tool needs oodles of work done to it. Things are constantly disappearing when I’m trying to work with it, unless I distribute to layers.
    Distribute to layers – it could be an Adobe illustrator thing, but I’ve frequently imported graphics that bring up 1000′s of empty layers when I click distribute to layers. It’s very time consuming to get rid of them all.
    Sometimes flash crashes when all you’ve done is hit undo after inserting a keyframe. That should not happen.
    I’ll ask around and get some more.
    C McIntyre

  • Guys, no matter what, you’ve GOT to fix the audio sync problem.
    AND
    You have to fix that frame limitation! I don’t even understand why Flash HAS a frame limitation! But it prevents me from having a 30fps FLA over 8 minutes, and that’s jacked up. FIX THIS. I’m not a TV animator like them but I like to produce stuff for the web that’s LONG, and I am getting sick of having to rig together multiple SWFs. This problem has existed since Flash has existed and it’s got to stop.

  • These are the suggestions, in no particular order, from Boulder Media in Dublin – Producers of Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends:
    When a symbol is skewed and all you want to do is rotate a symbol that’s inside it, it shouldn’t start skewing itself. It’s such a waste of time to rotate, skew back to the original shape, rotate again etc.
    Change the naming of ease in’s and ease out’s to the correct animation terms. E.g. ease in = slo out
    The ability to flatten layers as in Photoshop would be great
    It’s been said before, but it’s very important that when a symbol is flipped, you should still be able to paint inside it.
    When double clicking into a symbol, you should enter on the same keyframe as in Flash 5
    When importing a swf into a new fla it would be good to keep the original symbol names
    Change the masking technique so that you cover up what you don’t want to be seen; and, if possible, have both options – covering what you see, and covering what you don’t see.
    The ability to alter the properties of multiple layers all at once, i.e. turning several layers in to guides.
    A “create shape tween” option in the right click menu would be super, and the ability to assign a shortcut key to both.
    The ability to change properties on motion tweens and shape tweens at the same time, instead of separately.
    You should be able to use keyboard shortcuts no matter what window you’re in. For example: if I’ve typed in the transform box and pressed enter, I’d want my keyboard shortcuts reactivated, rather than clicking back onto the stage before I can change tool.
    When a symbol’s alpha is lowered, the symbol’s separate parts become transparent separately. It would be better if it was possible to turn down the alpha as if it were a solid shape.
    Instead of turning off a mask and then turning the layer that was masked into a guide layer, it would be great if we could turn the masked layer into a guide layer directly
    Easings should be more sensitive. The graph suggested earlier is a good idea.
    An option for changing all layer outlines to one colour. Also, the yellow, grey, black, light blue etc. outlines are usually difficult to see. They can be dropped. We’d prefer the option of putting them in ourselves if needed, but generally they’re a nuisance when they turn up as default.
    Labels for custom colours would be good.
    The option to save a palette to import it later.
    The old undo option was better, as in flash 5. and the inclusion of a history panel for symbols.
    That’s all we have for the moment. If we come up with any more we will post them too. Hopefully you’ll be able to take at least some of our suggestions on board.
     
    C. McIntyre

  • I have a few ideas. I am heavilly on the design side of Flash, so nothing I have to say involves animation… It seems that you guys need to make a decision… are you gonna try and have the kind of strong design tools that are available in Adobe Illustrator ( robust bezier tools, brush assignment to lines, etc.) … or are you gonna make importing Adobe Illustrator files seemless… where colors and shapes are IDENTICAL when brought into Flash. I have no preference… but having neither is frustrating.I would also like to see more ability to manipulate colors. Not tinting whole symbols, but altering the artwork’s actual colors similar to how old bitmap programs would work… where you could replace a certain color, and every occurance of a color, with another color. And giving us the option of doing it throughout an entire .fla too would be cool… where we could create different time of day palletes for characters and even locations. I often have to take things into Photoshop as Raster art, play with the saturation and hue there… then re-import it into Flash and color pick the new colors… too many steps!I hate that the “lock” is default… every file I’ve ever opened I’ve had to unclick that little button… waste of time…Similar to what I was saying about Illustrator, Flash needs more robust vector tools. Complicated objects dissapear on me constantly when broken apart, or converted to lines… I have work arounds… but for my limited understanding, it’s just because there are a lot of points very close together which define the shape, and when they are asked to solve themselves for optimization… they freak out and break. Illustrator does not do this. You can have a storm of points all on top of each other and Illustrator can figure out the shape and not freak. This would be a welcome fix.Along with this, it would be great if the line tool had different ends. The current rounded tip is functional, but I am constantly converting it to a fill and then having to sharpen and taper the ends… if there were other options on how the line tool ended, that could be really great and save me from spending a ton of time “nubbin-killing”Optimization for the Mac would be nice. There is no processor excuse for why Flash runs faster on PC than Macs…Alright, I’m sure there is more, but if you even did half of all these great suggestions… you make a wizzened Flash artist very happy.Roman LaneyWalt Disney TV Animation

  • Here are some additional suggestions that the Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law crew came up with that aren’t mentioned above (well, we’re also re-listing ones that are important to us):New:• The ability to select lines of a certain weight across an entire shot and globally change that weight.• Setting in and out points in the timeline for rendering (i.e., not having to render the entire file if you only want a small portion of it)•The ability to define multiple layers at once (Setting 2 or more layers simultaneously to guide, mask, etc. We frequently use the ‘guide’ setting as a workaround to indicate layers that shouldn’t render, like reference images and movies).• Fix the issue that when you try to scale a symbol up (via the tranfrom dialog box) past the visible work area, it messes up the proportion.• When editing in place, being put at the same frame displayed on the timeline, instead of defaulting you to frame 1. Ex: Frame 498 is displayed on the timeline, double-click into the symbol and be on frame 498 inside the symbol.• Two possible fixes with the keyboard zoom (Ctrl + or -). When in a symbol zooming out is fine, but when zooming in it will only zoom to the designated center point of the symbol. Even more annoying is when you’re in a group, once again the zoom out works fine, but the zoom in will pop you to the upper left hand corner of the frame. If it is possible to fix it so that the Ctrl + works the same way in the symbols and groups as out in the scene, that would be great.• The ability to swipe paint bucket through multiple shapes to color them all at once, but not changing an already existing painted shape (This is similar to the ‘Paint Unpainted’ tool in USAnimation/Toonboom Studio).•The ability to find and replace colors in a group (currently the find and replace ignores colors within groups).• In the properties inspector for a symbol, ability to see more than just 2 digits where you type in the ‘First:’ frame number• Ability to use the same shape hints over all keyframes… not having to set a new bunch with every key frameAnd while we’re asking….• Better sensitivity with the brush tool, more like Photoshop. Even possibly having varied opacity with a brush.• Animatable line weight over time.• Filters for lines like noise, etc.• A more robust render engine that could handle a large render (up to a five thousand frame) without stalling outAlready mentioned but things we’d really appreciate:• Rotating work surface. The Toon Boom platform rotates in small (10 degree?) increments, which captures the essence of turning the old animation disc very well.• The addition of a camera.• More complex motion path controls, including eases in and out on the same path.• Better sound editing capability, especially being able to cut the audio layer and not lose the edit point.• Ability to have various, not-circular ends of ink lines, especially tapered ones.• Similar performance from Macs to PCs.There are a lot of good general notes posted above, and it’s interesting to see how many issues are common to every post. Even if we saw half of these additions/fixes implemented, it would make our lives easier (but here’s hoping for all).Rich Ferguson-HullCartoon Network/Turner Studios

  • This is exciting news! Flash is already a great tool, but there are a few things that would make it much more powerful and user-friendly. The following are my personal suggestions- mostly related to animation. We use MX 2004 on the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi Show- Ill ask around and see if we can come up with additional suggestions for a later post.First off, PLEASE undo the undo function of MX 2004 and return it to the powerful, intuitive tool it once was in previous versions. I dont know anyone in our studio who is happy with the redesign. Its pretty much useless and disorienting past a couple of moves. The old undo worked perfectly and was VERY powerful, with individual undos within each layer of nested animation. I used to be able to test multiple parameters on different nested layers concurrently, knowing I could undo things independently in each layer at any time. This was great for experimental FX animation….A Maya-style graph editor would be fantastic, with the ability to edit individual parameters. This would make organic or eccentric movements much easier to create and edit. The graph editor would also cover another suggestion… which is to have greater flexibility and control in eases. That includes everything from making scaling independent of movement on tweens, to the ability to do more extreme easing without having to employ a time consuming “cheat” method.More control over sound clips right on the timeline.A variety of bug fixes, like the inability to paint in flipped symbols, or the sluggish response (and sometime program crashes) when undoing keyframes in complex, nested animations.Better usage of screen real estate. For example, the Properties toolbar in MX 2004 has plenty of empty space when docked in most locations, but it frequently cuts longer names short, even though theres plenty of empty area within the box. Unfortunately it can also display only 2 digits of a frame assignment, which creates all sorts of problems (you have to scroll through with the arrow keys to see whats hidden- and there is no way to tell if your frame assignment is 11, 111, 1111, or 11111, for example.Animators at our studio almost never use the shape tween tool because it rarely follows the most obvious tween path, and often creates bizarre solutions to seemingly simple shape tweens. Animators on TV productions timelines rarely have time to use elaborate, time consuming shape hints.A pie-in-the-sky suggestion would be to include a deformation tool similar to Photoshop’s Liquify. I can think of plenty of uses…..My dual G5 is very fast a just about everything EXCEPT Flash. Why is the Mac version so much slower than the PC version? A few of these suggestions have been mentioned earlier, but I hope similar postings from multiple users will increase the chances of some of these improvements being implemented.Im looking forward to this next release of Flash. Its a good sign that Macromedia is willing to listen to suggestions from artists using their programs.T SzaboAnimator,Renegade Animation

  • Wow! You guys are great! Thanks for taking so much time to articulate your feedback. This has all been circulated around the Flash team for review. Now comes the fun part. We have to prioritize these things and try to fit them into our ever-shrinking development schedule. In fact, as you continue to post feedback, please post the version of Flash you currently use, platform, and please prioritize your feature requests (if possible) in order to help us out.Thanks again. This is great. Cheers,MD——————————–Mike DowneyTechnical Product Manager, Flashmdowney@macromedia.com

  • First, PLEASE consider the previously suggested CAMERA.
    Then, just a pie in the sky thing.. it’d be nice to get some motion blur or general blur/focus options. That’s one thing that Adobe After Effects has over Flash, from my perspective.
    And if you can fix the Stream audio sync or frame limitation, that would sell the product for me, I think.

  • well “tight dealine” aside I would much rather have you guys take your time to do things right, rather than released another rushed and unpolished version.
    1. Non Linear Editing of SWF files.The ability to import SWF “clips” and edit, composit, retime, transition, in much the same way video clips can be edited in After efects. And be able to export finished product in native swf vector format, from there.
    2. Particle System Support. The ability to attach symbols to aparticles system and create effecs like snow, leaves in the winds, smoke, etc…give the canon a series of propperties, like gravity, time to live, wind, direction, velocity, spread, etc…
    3. Dynamic and programatic effect export for video.What good is being able to generate beautifull effects using action script if they can actually be used in production work.
    4. Wall, Obstruction, and Friction system…. Much like the motion guide layers, you could set up a layer where objects you draw act as obstructions. Say I animate a ball from one side of the stage to the other. I can place an obstruction layer and draw a rectangle in the way of the two keys. This would cause the ball to have to go around the box in order to reach the second key.
    5. Timecoding/Timestamping…I dont really think I need to explain this too much, but it involves hours:minutes:seconds:frames
    6. Fix the freaking terminology. The colums are the frames, the rows are the layers, and the intercection of the two are NOT frames, they are “CELLS”. Inserting a key frame is not “inserting anything, but rather “duplicating” the previous “cell”. “Insert Frame” does not insert anything, but rather it “extends the exposure” of the previous “cell”.

  • oh yeah…
    7. Fix the frellin’ terminology.The colums in thetime line are the “frames”. The rows are the “layers”. The interception btween a row and a colum is called a “cell”…. “Insert Keyframe” is inacurate because you are NOT inserting a frame. You are merely duplicating the contents of the pervious “cell”. “Insert Frame” is also misnamed, because again, you are not inserting a frame, but rather “extending the exposure” of the previous cell.

  • Hey everyone…the feedback is great.  Unfortunately terms like “Fix the freaking terminology” do no-one any good.
    Macromedia are going out of their way to improve their products, by way of this dialogue.  Please let’s keep it professional.  -Eddie

  • I’m very excited to hear that Macromedia has finally realized the need to focus on Flash as an animation tool. I’ve been sticking with Flash 4 (!) because the various benefits of later versions have always been balanced out by drawbacks. Most of the comments cover anything I can think of right now… Anything that improves the drawing and line control capabilities top my wish list… This might lead to the first new version I will actually look forward to!xeth feinbergmishmashmedia.com

  • all these suggestions are spot-on! Let me add:being able to crop/enlarge the canvas stage from it’s center point as opposed to just the right and bottom sides. Then we won’t have to use edit multiple frames to adjust the animation to reflect the new stage size.

  • speed up the Mac version….pleeeeez!!!

  • enlarge the Search & replace dialog so the path to the script is visible

  • Muddbubble… the complete and total anihalation of the stage would solve a lot of problems. Having simply the work area and a separate camera system would be the ideal approach. Adding features to the “stage” would imply that you want to keep the stage, and if that happens we would continue to be limmited by the confines of the stage.

  • It’d be pretty awesome if movie clips actually worked in video/picsequence export’s… Also, if the importing of png’s actually worked… ie. not fill the background, that’d be pretty awesome. It’d be pretty cool if the distort tool actually worked on graphics/movie clips.

  • By the way, though this release will be focused on designers/animators, that doesn’t mean we’re going to completely write of Flash developers. We have ideas in mind for them as well…And regarding the “tight deadline” I think that refers to our imperative to choose a small number of the right features and enhancements and do them really well, not spread ourselves thin with a huge number of features. Schedules are a reality of the software business, being smart and doing the right features is the key to building a successful product. I totally, and whole-heartedly agree, however, that the next release needs to be super-solid, stable, and high-performance. That is the top theme that our development team is working towards throughout the cycle.Thanks,MD———————————Mike DowneyTechnical Product Manager, Flashmdowney@macromedia.com

  • By the way 2, I like the radical thinking in this thread, but I don’t think we’ll be getting rid of the stage or renaming any existing core concepts like keyframes. If this were a 1.0 product it would be do-able, but in version 8.0 it’s extremely risky to change anything. A great example was the decision to change “Undo” in order to introduce the History panel. That was a bad decision. We don’t plan on doing anything like that in the next release. We are also looking into bringing back the old undo system. It will likely be a preference (if possible) so we don’t interupt yet another workflow.Cheers,MD———————————Mike DowneyTechnical Product Manager, Flashmdowney@macromedia.com

  • Like many other animators here, I’m delighted to see macromedia’s willingness to gear a release a little more toward animators. I don’t use Flash in a studio environment, as most of my work is online and I operate from my home PC. Nonetheless, I do some pretty full-on animation and push Flash as hard as I can in many areas, so like everyone else I have my preferences and things I’d like to see in 8ball.I have been upgrading with each new version of Flash and I could never go back to the earlier versions for anything. The workflow improvements (interface customizing, etc) are far too valuable for me – I even love the History panel (surprised to hear how much people hate it, frankly). I now get around the interface quicker than in any other version and can put out some classy illustration and animation really quickly.Because of this I’d hate to see any major adjustments to the core of the interface, but some little fixes or perhaps options I think would be invaluable are:1. I’m not sure whether or not 8ball is specifically intended to please or placate the animator, but perhaps at the start page of Flash, there would be options to choose your preferred setup… Much like the Designer, Developer choice of Panel Sets in MX. Choose “Animator” and all the options we’ve been discussing come to the front.2. Having 12 years experience in animation at Disney’s Sydney studio, one thing I’ve noticed missing from Flash since I first laid wacom on it, is invisible paint. If you could designate a layer as invisible paint (much as you can designate Guide or Mask layers) then it would have an ‘inverse mask’ effect, where, rather than the mask acting as the window through which you see stuff, invisible paint blocks stuff making it invisible (I hope I’ve made sense here). At the risk of over-explaining: imagine a character ankle-deep in long grass. You want his feet hidden by the grass, so with invisible paint you can simply paint a small patch of grass that cuts grass-shaped mattes out of his legs. To do this with Flash’s current masking, you need to create the reverse of this, i.e. a large block of colour over the character that doesn’t cover his feet.3. I’d like to see a smaller brush-size, either that, or a “detect no pressure” button while the sensitivity button is clicked. Why? I notice that if you click the sensitivity button on, set the brush-smoothing to 0, then draw with the mouse, you get a beautiful thin line, thinner than any I’ve ever seen. This is simply because when using the mouse, there is no pressure detected so you have the thinnest possible brush line allowing for some really fine detail. You have very poor control over it though, cos you’re using the mouse :) 4. I second the earlier suggestion that you can save a colour palette that affects all instances of that colour within the movie. This shouldn’t be automatic however.. you should have to save the palette as a global palette before it affects everything in the movie. 5. Finally (there are a few more, but this is getting long), I second the other earlier suggestion that you have colour-naming options. i.e. Palette_003, skin_day, skin_night, shirt_day, shirt_night, etc..6. oop yeah I’d just like to add my support to the spline curve/graph editor easing thing.. with the added suggestion of having an option to apply a constant timing.. i.e. exact measured interpolation between keys with no auto easing (all tweens, even at 0 easing have a frustrating degree of auto ease).

  • oh sorry for the double-post.. one more thing if I may. I knew I’d remember something important the second I’d press ‘submit’ :)
    Currently, to combat the inability to stream sounds or music across scenes, you need to place many scenes in one, so you have an uninterrupted timeline for the sound to stream over.
    I thought it would be really cool to have vertical folders on the timeline that hold groups of frames, in the same way that the horizontal folders hold groups of layers.
    Say for example you have one scene that goes from fr1 – 55, so you create a folder to group those frames and call it Sc_1, or something. The next scene may go from fr56 – 287 and it too could be placed in a folder and collapsed, taking up no more space than one frame. That way, you could collapse hundreds and hundreds of frames into each folder and effectively have a 18,000-frame movie appear as 150 frame folders, one for each scene (taking up only as much space on the timeline as 150 frames).
    You could also shuffle and re-order those folders in the same way that you’d re-order Scenes or docking panels.
    I came up with that idea when I heard a rumour that macromedia were going to ditch Scenes for MX2004.. glad it didn’t happen, but the frame-folder idea I reckon is a good one (if i say so myself!)
    While I’m on the subject of the timeline, it also would be great to have a field where you type in a frame number (or the name of a ‘frame folder’ as mentioned above) and the playhead centres on that frame.
    ok.. thanks for listening Mike! Gnight!

  • fyi:What does “8Ball is focused on designers” mean?http://www.markme.com/mesh/archives/006055.cfmmike chambersmesh@macromedia.com

  • The ability to work with “individually named ‘dynamic’ colors” has existed in Flash quite sometime now. Way before Toon Boom Studio came out. Most people just don’t think to make use of it. http://flashfilmmaker.com/index.php?id=5,8,0,0,1,0
    I like the idea of an “upfront” version though, however It would benice to have a way to lock the colors so that you dont accidentally modify them.

  • How about adding that elusive “Animate Scene” button that some producers seem to think exists…
     
    Harhar
    ….everything I’ve read covers all my thoughts and concerns, and I’m thrilled that Macromedia is at least considering some fixes.  Thanks
     
    gene_galiano

  • Requests? Huh, i made one at the time Flash MX had to be born, and someone answered me “thanks”, but… Oh, anyhow, it would be great to have collection of fill tools i’ve seen in Newtek Toonz, if i’m not mistaken: rectangle fill tool, that fills every closed shapes in area, switcher if it will fill only unfilled shapes or not and “multiplication” of this or basic fill tool, which allow to define filling spot or area in starting frame and filling spot/area in ending frame, and after filling it in every frames between, moving spot/area just like standard motion-tween. Having this 3 tools (area-fill, don’t touch filled and multiple frames fill) togather will be extremely helpful in many and many animation tasks!
    Sorry for my not-so-good english, hope my explainations it understandable. =)

  • I need to choose type of transparency of simbol (or layer). For example, additive and substractive. Thank you.Anton Volkovinfo@antonvolkov.com

  • I have to say that I thought this was a lost cause. We’ve had conversations in the past with the fine folks at macromedia who have basically told us that there wasn’t any point in trying to incorporate suggestions from animators because we are such a small part of their market.Great comments from everybody so far. I agree with the majority of you.Needless to say, I have some suggestions to make, and I will do my best to not belabor points already made. Let me first say that our shop uses FLASH MX. (not 2004, the new UNDO alone was reason enough to avoid MX-2004) We found that alot of the issues created by the move from 4 to 5 had been corrected, and the organizational tools (folders on the timelines) were big improvements.-DISTORT AND ENVELOPE TOOLS THAT WORK ON SYMBOLS (AND ALLOW TWEENING)As far as I’m concerned this is the single most important improvement they could make, and would go along way toward decimating the characteristic “FLASH-look” that things animated in Flash tend to have, because symbols can only be scaled, skewed or rotated. If we were able to manipulate symbols in the ways that Flash allows us to manipulate broken apart materials, it would save an unmeasurably high amount of fresh drawing, and produce an end-product that was of much higher quality.CAMERA EFFECTSAs previously mentioned, the ability to move the camera, (multi-plane, change focus and motion-blur) as well as other camera-style effects (lens flare and aperature changes) would be very helpful, but I totally disagree that this should be separate from the stage. That separation is the major thing that has kept us away from TOON BOOM. It is much more intuitive to animate directly under-camera, and the loss of this would be a huge blow.TIMELINE HIGHLIGHTINGIt would be nice to be able to mark up the timeline in ways beyond the label flags. I’m thinking in terms of highlighters that can color directly onto the timeline, or writing tools that would allow for marking above the timeline, so that we can make notes the way we would on traditional exposure sheets.ALSO, just as we can hold the space bar, and reposition the stage, it would be helpful to do the same with the timeline which can often be very large and hard to negotiate.FOLLOW GRADIENTSPreviously mentioned, but very important. More options for the gradients, beyond linear and radial. A ‘follow gradient’ that conformed to the edge of it’s fill would be very useful.DIFFERENT LINE CAPSPlease? Tapers, and squares.ALSO, regarding lines: When custom lines are used, they behave unpredicably when partially selected. It would be nice if what you saw was what you got.CONNECTIONS and KINEMATICSConnected symbol anchors would save alot of time.SELECTIVE TIMELINE RENDERINGAgain, on time-saving. A lot of time is lost to waiting for tests to export. It would be extremely helpful to select only the portion of the timeline one wishes to render, rather than rendering the entire scene over and over again, when the area in question may be very small.FLATTEN LAYERSMerge layers, maintaining the original layering. The opposite of the distribute tool. Right now, it is a frame-by-frame process.PHOTOSHOP-STYLE FILTERS and DRAWING TOOLS.A pipe-dream maybe in a vector-based environment, but would radically change the options for style of the end-product. If macromedia is going to improve the tool for artists, they should be looking to the tools that artists use.SYMBOL HIGHLIGHT IN LIBRARYWhen a symbol is selected onstage it would be nice to have it highlight in the library.SOUNDCurrently, the sound capabilities of Flash are practically useless. We almost exclusively incorporate our sound elements post-Flash. Any improvements here would be welcomed.FLIP HOTKEYSI cannot understand why Flip Horizontal and Vertical do not have default hotkeys. We use these very frequently, and the commands are nested rather deeply in the overhead menus. (I have added my own hotkeys for them, but it would be nice if they were defaults)FRAME LOCKLike layer-locking, so that things are not inadvertently altered, something that could be applied to single or multiple frames, just by clicking on the timeline.-This is tip-of-the-iceberg stuff, but then, I’ve been working with FLASH as a professional animation tool for four or five years. Improvements in these areas would make Flash absolutely irreplaceable.- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -D. Campbell MackinlayDirector Trapeze Animation Studios, Ltd.

  • how about feathered masks? now this would be useful – and speaking of masks – i agree with earlier comment – a mask should *hide* what’s below it – not *reveal* – i always thought Flash’s masking technique was backwards – maybe because i used to do a lot of airbrushed illustrations with carefully cut masks made of Frisket.

  • sorry again for triple posting (or is this the 4th time?) – how about an oval selection tool? so we can select areas of a circular/oval shape?

  • Mike Downey
    I don’t think I’m saying anything that hasn’t been said already, but hopefully if enough people say it, it will be changed.
    First and formost, then “undos” should be changed back to how they were befor MX ’04.  It’s very distracting to be popped out of a symbol when hitting the undos.  Also because of this we have a lot less undos now.  I think the old undo’s were one of the most powerful features on the old Flash.  Please change it back.
    Like my Boulder Media cohorts have said, the ease-in/out terms could be fixed.  I think the names should be the opposite.  The Ease-in should be called ease-out, and vice-versa.  Ease-in means an object gets slower, (or slow-in) as it comes to the next keyframe.  How Flash is set up, is backwards.  I actually have to have a Post-it on my monitor that says “ease-in = Flash ease-out,” it is that counter intuitive.
     I also wouldn’t mind if the next version was more user customizable.  For instance, being able to set the default type when creating new symbols, like graphic, movie, or button, so it will always be the same every time.  Also some thing nice would be if the user could set a default for how Flash will open FLA’s.  Like always have grid snap on or off, or have the sound always set to stream.  That way when an animator opens a new FLA or another animator’s FLA all the interfaces are set up exactly how he/she works.  This would speed up work flow, and thus save us time and money. 
    Also Szabo mentioned the frame assignment window be bigger so we can see more than just 2 numbers.  Something simple, but very handly.
    Thanks for listening.
    Erik Girndt                                                 Cartoon Network”Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends” – Animator
     

  • Hey Lili & Eddie,Just another recommendation… When drawing in breakdowns/inbetweens manually in a particular layer – usually in outline mode and using onion skinning – it would be great to be able to change the colour of the previous and following images to clearly see what drawing you’re working on at any moment.Cheers,Mic

  • that’s a cool idea… if the onion-skin tinted previous keys/drawings red and your later keys/drawings green, then inbetweening and breakdowns would be much easier. Perhaps a tint option on your onion-skin markers then?

  • Distort and envelop for Movieclips & bitmaps!!!!!
    Quad (4 corner coordinates) would enable 3d-textures!!!

  • I have been using Flash MX, and one of the things I HATED when trying out MX 2004 was the fact that the NORMAL MODE for action scripting was gone!  For the life of me, I couldn’t even come up with directing a link to a web address without having to learn how to code.  I’m an artist, and my time is valuable.  Yes, it’s been said that you can learn action scripting if you put enough time into it.  But honestly, something that I was able to do with a couple of clicks should stay that simple!  I have deadlines, and can’t stop everything to learn a scripting language!  PLEASE PUT NORMAL MODE BACK IN!  I’d hate for this latest version to be an animator’s dream, but still have to take it back into MX to make buttons and links.
    Ryan Simmons
    http://www.starswarsspoofs.com

  • I can’t believe we’re the only studio that uses the Wacom’s pressure sensitivite pen with the brush option to do our drawing. The brush’s pressure sensitivity has been massively flawed in all versions of Flash after version 4, and subsequently, we have kept our studios using 4. In a nutshell, versions after 4 add far too many extra control points to a brush line, resulting in jaggy lines where they should be smooth and rendering the resulting animation file too large to use. This issue is in my mind *CRITICAL* to the functioning of Flash as we need it in order to continue working with the software. I’ve contacted Macromedia a few times about this, hopefully they’ll listen this time. We have a lot of documentation and research into this problem, which we’ve been dealing with for years now. Please contact me at m-a@collideascope.com for more information.
    M-A Kuttner
    Collideascope Digital Productions Incwww.collideascope.com

  • P’raps I’m too new to Flash authoring (can you say “noobee?” sure ;) but I thought I’d offer my two cents anyhow.
    The undo/history was a bit of a kludge at first but since this is how I learned Flash (read: learning), I’ve gotten used to it and for the most part I’ve found it’s not a big problem since I anticipate what to expect in MX Pro ’04 and not what I might have grown accustomed to in previous versions.  ie: I already know that if I undo to a given point what I’ll have to potentially rebuild before I actually undo it.  My only beef with the undo history is does it have to remember every bloody click that I’ve performed???   Any change to that I could surely adapt to.
    So far all I could wish for would be better “snap-to’s”, like snap to a line.. Snap to objects is okay but not quite what I mean here.  ie: a series of text or drawn objects that snaps to curved line and rotates and orients to that line.  I haven’t used CorelDraw sinc v. 4 but they had a snap-to-line that did just that, automatically placing the edit points (hinge points) along that line.  Not sure what trade-offs we’d have to endure to be able to do that but if it could be done… ?
    Hotkeys are cool but too bad we have to use [ctrl] as one of the must-have keys.  I mapped ctrl+right arrow to my flip horizontal and I’m good with that. (ctrl=left arrow to flip vertical).
    Okay, I shaddap now.  ;)   I got no qualms about my $1grand Cdn peso investment other than what I said.

  • in the regular flash mx, when you scrub through the timeline, it displays all of the frame numbers as you drag the marker.  in flash mx 2004 it doesn’t show you the frame number until you release the mouse, so i am constantly having to guess if i have selected up to the desired frame and usually i am off by a few frames.  I liked it a lot more the old way.
    pringle

  • #1: IK-style linking or anchoring for puppets would probably be at the top of my list. It is such a pain to have to shift a puppet’s hands around frame-by-frame every time I move the arms.more to come…

  • poopenfarsen – put the hands inside the arm symbol and then they’ll move all around with the arms! No bother

  • cathmci – not always an option as the hands will no longer be an independant object where an animator may often times need them to be – it still doesn’t “link” them the way IK-style linking would.previous versions of flash allowed the user to click on a frame with audio and you would hear that 1 frame of audio – in the latest version you hear nothing. this was helpful for lip syncing – can this be re-implemented?

  • Hey now that most of the issues with the interface/tools and properties are covered, there is just one small wee bit of flash hidden in the closet of my mind that kind of didn’t get any attention.The flash library is a Bit of a nightmare to most of us at jadoo Works, the simple structure definitely helped but renaming symbols is a Pain. Multiple renaming would definitely help.Also sometimes when the folder contains complex symbols, individually transferring complex symbols to another folder just ceases to function.Could you incorporate a better way to kind of maximize the library, rather than dragging the bars on the left and bottom, tends to be a waste of time. with ref to the ruler , sometimes when an symbol is skewed and when the ruler is activated, the ruler skews too !!? With ref to the keyframe size (tiny /small/yadayada), since we work on multiple layers, we have a tendency to use small keyframe size, but this option doesn’t stick on once we open a new fla,With ref to the zoom tool, at times when we work on really zoomed in curves and lines; it’s very difficult to control themSometimes when the complex symbol is flipped, and when you go into the symbol to move it left of right, the movement also gets going in the opposite direction. The brush tool and the erase tool at times also act quiet vague when dealing with complex symbols. Sometimes to paint/erase a certain region, we would have to go around the area to be painted/erased to get the job done and it wouldn’t be preciseAt times when working with very blown up symbols, which tend to go out side the work area, if there is any way to totally zoom out so that we are still able to handle the symbol without having to drag it to the filed of view Very glad to know that this is one amazing company that’s keen on working to help us! Much appreciated! :) Ajay Karat,jadoo Works

  • Yes to feathered masks, tapered line tool, more malleable gradients and kinematics.  Is it possible to improve the Shape Tween?  It does some really peverse things, especially if you insert key-frames in what was once a working Shape Tween.  Not being able to delete point from a line in a group without the fill vanishing and the line changing to hairline.  Flash also crashes frequently when moving a bunch of keyframes spanning layers in folders that are inadvertantly pasted in the incorrect layer – had this one happen a lot.  Tweening of groups causes bizarre and frustrating ticks and jumps.  MX does seem to do less spontaneous crashing, thank goodness.

  • hey there I just got here and i’d have to say…..WOW….I’m really excited to see that the next version of flash will be for animators…..It seems that some of the things i have read I had ideas on myself…But one thing that i didn’t see that I would love for you guys to fix is a particular bug that has been bothering me for quite sometime and it envolves tweening symbols…….Sometimes (not all the time) I’ll end up tweening a symbol on the timeline and would want to change the symbol to say another mouth if i’m doing a lip sync, and the symbol i would place there would be the same symbol that i had tweened in the previous frame (Arrrrgh!!!) Please fix this bug because I really don’t want to remedy the problem by having to start another mouth layer and start where i had left off on the previous layer….Man I can’t wait for this next version to come out……thanks for listening!!

  • Alot of my suggestions are repeats, but I’ll still say them anyways.Default shortcuts for horizontal and vertical flipping. (I set mine to CTRL+SHIFT+F for horizontal and CTRL+ALT+F for vertical, but it would be really helpful if there were defaults!)Chluaid’s vertical timeline folders is a great idea!I also think that distort and envelope effects need to be added to symbols.Another thing, it would be nice if alphas effected the masking areas. For example, I tried using a gradient with the outermost color set completely transparent to create a sort of flashlight beam.It would also be nice to not have a limit (or a more forgiving one) as to how big you can enlarge a symbol. Sometimes if I make large ones to big, like 300%, it changes the width and height to something like 157.6% by 300%.Markham CarrollBoogaTech Productions

  • sorry fr double posting, but Mr_Nurbs brings up a very good point. I have also had problems with symbol tweening, where I would try to swap out an instance, and it would remain the same after I had swaped it. If it was a graphic symbol, it won’t even let me change it from “Single Frame” to “Play Once.”

  • Another thing I forgot. Back when I was working with AutoCAD, I had the ability to attach a line to a tangent of a circle. I don’t have that with Flash, and it is difficult to attempt it. It would be nice if when using the line tool that could be one of the snapping points.Another thing I liked about AutoCAD was that I could type in “<35″ and the line I was creating would be forced to that angle.

  • I don’t have any comments for upgrades or anything like that, but mudbubble mentioned how masking actually reveals what’s under instead of hiding it. This may come as confusing for new comers but it will be pretty annoying (and difficult) if masking is changed to something that hides. So, maybe you could just change the name from “mask” to “reveal” if people are really getting that confused. … I’m pretty sure that Flash veterans will catch on and figure out that “mask” changed to “reveal”… Then again…
    maybe they should just get used to it (the new people). It may be confusing, but that’s what we have tutorials for.

  • Look…Being a fellow artist/animator, I agree with everyone’s requests, comments and complaints here. Thanks for voicing issues that I had with Flash for a long time and bring up new ones that I never thought of. I am happy that Macromedia has finally stepped up to the plate and decided to bring on a fresh new developement team and gave us (Designers and Animators) our turn in listening and hopefully implementing the features that we want and need.Ok…so enough with the butt kissing.1.) I want some type of normal mode in the actionscript window back for those of us who need assistance in scripting.2.) There are many tools out there that have evolved outside of Flash that cater to those individuals looking for features that Macromedia has neglected to add. Such as Moho ( http://www.lostmarble.com/ ), The Tab ( http://www.the-tab.com/ ), Ibis Fernandez Tools such as Toon Titan ( http://flashfilmmaker.com/index.php?toon_titan ) and Jim Fisher’s Symbolizer ( http://paperfuse.com/product_disc/8/the-symbolizer ). I don’t know if you guys at macromedia have seen these products yet, but you really need to look at “all” the features that “all” these products have (Especially Moho & The Tab) and attempt to put them into the next version of Flash (along with all the other things posted in here).3.) There should be some 3D features in flash as Macromedia Director…heck, let me go one step further…Why not take the best features of director and just make one product. Who really uses Director anymore anyways and why have two seperate plugins (Shockwave player & Flash Player). Give us a choice to use Realtime 3D instead of fake 3D.4.) What the hell is up with the pen tool since version 5!?! Can you please make it function like the Adobe Illustrator Pen tool (especially when your changing from straight to curved points or corners). I love Flash’s drawing tools, but I have to go into Illustrator to use the pen tool and then back into flash. Flash’s pen tool has always been problamatic and buggy for me.5.) We need some way of having the file browser saying what version of flash an fla was authored in before opening it and the ability to save all earlier versions of flash flas.That’s all I can think of for now, but I definitely believe everyone else here has whatever I’m missing covered.Carlos

  • Hey now! great news! i thought i was gonna have to stick with mx for the rest of my life until today.here’s my suggestions for the mac version:change the undo back to the way it was. i.e. symbols having their own undo levels. please.one thing i could always do for the pc but not mac was set the number pad to specific functions without holding command or anything. that would be great if I could do that with my mac – it seems like an oversight its not there.and when selecting specific frames of a symbol the mx version would auto-highlight the number in the properties box after hitting enter. therefore making it easy to quickly punch in another number and enter it if it wasnt the right frame. in 2004 i have to re-select the number every time. small nitpick – but please change it back. thanks team flash 2005.best program ever.jeff

  • I bought MX 04′ and it sucks.. I demand the ability to upgrade for free…

  • also pressing the delete key while highlighting frames actually deletes the frames (like in flash 5) would be nice too…

  • I would like it if there was a mode for the guide layer that let you set it so it still shows through when you’re not in the symbol, that way you could put reminder marks to show where you want symbols to overlap and how far yo intend to rotate symbols and stuff like that. Having a shortcut to toggle that on and off would be useful too, so the guide layers can be hidden when you don’t need them.Inverse Kinetics – being able to link symbols together would be a welcome addition.A different brush tool that keeps to a relative size, like in Photoshop, so if you zoom in, the brush gets larger, so you can draw more intricate details without zooming in and trying to find the right brush size to keep it consistent.Also being able to change the size of the brush using short cut keys.Being able to paint with a special colour which you can change while you’re making the movie and the changes to that colour are global. So say if you wanted to change the colour of a characters skin, you wouldn’t have to go through all your symbols to change it. Being able to control this with actionscript would be good too.Being able to exclude a colour when you’re tinting a symbol, so say if you were tinting a symbol green, you could keep the outline being black, rather than it becoming dark green.Being able to scan directly into Flash.Being able to trace a bitmap and have it turn into lines rather than fills, like you can in Adobe Streamline.

  • Oh and one other thing, while in the brush tool or better yet any drawing tool in Flash you should have the option of rotating the stage for those hard to reach angles….Like when you’re in the middle of drawing and you hit CTRL+Alt, Flash shows a rotating grid or better yet an animation disc. Then you just left click to adjust your rotation…

    Thanks for listening!!!!!

  • Great news that flash is focussing more on animation now than ever. I agree with alot of the points raised here, but also some of them are not necessary, and are peoples personal opinions. One thing that whould be great is an animated camera, like a virtual camera, rather than having to download it or work too much with action script. This will eliminated alot of tweens and will maybe not slow down as much when viewing the animation. If you incorporate a camera there could be possiblities of developing Z space like in Combustion. It will add a slight 3D feel to the animations and saves you having to animate the foreground faster than the background to achieve the same effect.

  • hai,
    In short what I feel is if we closely see in to softwares like animo and US Software-which are ment of traditional animation,we can get all the animators expectation.Moreover the compositing sofwtware which has camera and filters option will add on the postproduction features within flash.
    Thanks
    Dr Suresh

  • A tapered line tool and a system, perhaps a point system, for making tweening easier would be nice. I know this has already been mentioned, but I just wanted to back up those suggestions.
    THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LISTENING TO THE NEEDS OF ANIMATORS. Animators are the main reason for the mainstream success of Flash, but we were starting to feel cheated, ignored, and downright insulted. Now I can put off my plans for buying Toon Boom Studio. Thanks again.
    Korey

  • Hello

    This mail is for Jason Bierut ( sorry but I don’t know his mail)

    I’m a flash animator from Egypt , I read your comments about upgrading flash for animators at Fwak and I needed to know: 
    - why do you use QUICKTIME for broadcasting and not AVI and why AVID and not any other broadcasting card


    what is the best settings for scanning to vector if I use Stream line and what else software can I use..  
    I really appreciate you answering my questions and thanks for your time.. 
                                                                                                           Ahmed Arnaouty

  • Ahmed.
    Quicktimes are used because Avi’s are too large in file size!  The ratio of quality verses compression produces a better picture.  Also, we use quicktime because we use the AVID on macintosh.  I work for WB and that is what they use.  Avid is the industry standard, next to Final Cut.   I really have no say in using another brodcasting card.  Not sure I would want to.  But when you are dealing with hundreds of scenes, you can’t have the average size of a scene be a gigabyte in size when you are exporting at 1920 by 1080 for Hi-definition.  However, I’m guessing you are not using AVID ‘cuz it’s very expensive.  I would still use quicktime for my own projects.  Only quicktime offers animation compression.  Remember, you are trying to produce the best picture using the least amount of file space.  Quicktime does that.
    As for streamlining your drawings, it’s all about HOW you bring them in to streamline.  Are you inking your drawings?  Are you boosting the brightness/contrast levels in Photoshop?  It all depends.  I can’t give you any numerical values off hand.  Maybe someone else can.  You just have to play, going back and forth from photoshop to streamline to get the results you want.  If you want perfectly clean lines, I would just trace my drawings in flash, and convert my lines to fills.  That’s what I do for my own stuff.
    Jason

  • To my friends Mr_Nurbs and Mc_booga,
    You are having a bug problem with your tweens holding your instances because you are using the right mouse button to set a tween.  This automatically causes the snap and sync boxes to be checked.
    You have to get into the habbit of going to the properties menue to select motion tween.  I know this sound like a pain in the ass, but IT’S THE SYNC AND SNAP BUTTONS that are causing your “bug”.  Keep them unchecked!

  • It would be nice if Flash could organize and easily access multiple Libraries. If I could easily access individual character libraries, I would not have to scroll down through tons of items to reach a needed movie clip or item. I know I can put things in folders but the process is still cumbersome. The entire process of working with large libraries is sluggish and time consuming.For instance, if I have a symbol in a library folder that starts with z and I want to move it to a folder that starts with a, I have to drag it to the top and that is a very slow process with items clicking by on a very slow scroll.Furthermore, some kind of custom symbol window that would have small versions of a group of drag and drop symbols, say a character’s head and mouth symbols would allow me to drag and drop needed parts to the frames I’m working on without having to fuss with the entire library.

  • In fact, let me add this. I have a large archive of Libraby symbols. Some way of getting in and organizing them would be great. Right now, I just suffer with it because reorgainizing it would be too painful.

  • One other suggestion. I saw the little 8ball film showing a possible drop shadow capability.If you want to make that one useful, it would be great to be able to distort the shadow so that it falls away from the figure towards a vanishing point and can be compressed to show up below the figure, that sort of thing.Right, well that’s 100 guys doing ten years of programming, but this is a wish list, no?Thanks for listening. So excited about the prospect of a more animator friendly version of Flash.m

  • I’m back.How about a way to set a default panel set in preferences?Same set of panels I reset from the window pull down.m

  • Anyone have an idea of when Flash 2005 will be released? Middle of this year, fall?

  • 1. Drawing in reversed symbols-  Flash mx doesn’t let me use the brush tool if the symbol is reversed.  In animation I am constantly reversing symbols to reuse the animation if the character switches direction.  I need to make changes to the symbol to make parts hook up.  It would be so much easier if I could draw in a reversed synbol.2.  Unlimited zoom in work area for pans
    3.Importing.  If I scan in a series of animation named 001-095  I want to be able to import the scans as individual symbols and have Flash the symbol the same name as the scan (or any tiff, eps or vector art).  Much like Macromedia Director does.4.  For Pencil tests-  I would like Flash to treat jpgs like Director does.  I need to make the symbol transparent, but keep the outline solid, as if it is on an  acetate cel.  This feature in Director made it great for pencil testing.  Now if I have multi layers of jpgs and I make them transparent, eventually the scene becomes hard to read, with say 5 layers.5. Ability to handle jpg or other raster based art better.  Flash chugs when these are used in tweens and especially zooms.6.  Easy swf exporting is still needed for quick testing of the animation.7. Color swatch namimg.  I need to be able to name color swatches when using flash as an ink and paint tool.  Illustrator lets me do this. (i.e. Char_eyes, Char_pupil, Char outline, char_shirt)8. Properties window.  The rectangular input box for the keyframe should be wide enough to view at least 6 characters, not 2 as it is now.

    Thanks

    Frank Forte
    Animator/Vector Manipulator
    Renegade Animation

  • 3 areas that I think that would make Flash 8 even greater..a) Animation features – almost have a small Maya in Flash. Even different releases of Flash 2005 with different animation, studio and iTV productions. This benzier curves thing sounds exciting.b) How about some integrated feature like TOONBOOM where a ‘moveable virtual camera’ is a component.c) Strong video-control functionality, and maybe some solid 3d enhancement features.

  • For Mucha Lucha..
    your camera moves, you do it in flash using a code camera or u just scale it ?
    or you do it in after effects ?

  • i have some problems with sound editing some times my movie become so heavy because ther are a lot of somples so when i make the sound event ….the sound ended before the somples finished…. and when i try to make some of the sounds streaming the sounds plays with each others so whin i play the movie “swf” for example sound in the scene “a” plays with the sounds in the scene “b” and “b” plays with “c” thats make me delet all the sounds to put it again ……………. so please can you help ?! 

  • aarnaouty – we do it in Flash with scaling.

  • Hey there! Glad to see this thread is still moving at a moderate pace…..Something else came up as a great feature in my book for the new version of Flash…How about a section in Flash that acts like a lunch box? What i mean is have a section in Flash that allows you tool pencil test using a “Real” pencil tool….Kinda like Sketchbook….It’s the best program out on the market right now that acts and feels like a real pencil…If you do consider it, really put some time in the fast strokes….What i mean by that is like Photoshop for example…..if you grab a 3pixel brush and draw a quick circle, your lines are segmented which isn’t the case for Alias Sketchbook…
    Thanks for listening!
             Nurbsie

  • i was not a professional on using flash, but im really having fun on exploring it,  just want to ask why sometimes i can insert flash multimedia on my page, sometimes not, i have tried extension SWF, but to no avail its still cannot be viewed,

  • flash is a realy strong programe ….. give you alot of offers that i never see in a
    2d programe …… and i wish for flash to be stronger …. i hope to see a section
    in flash for making bones in the characters like ” moho programe ” thats will
    help a lot in some stayles  …….

  • 3D CAMERA CAMERA CAMERA..!!! are you listening Macromedia?I don’t want to have to do things in bass-ackwards TOONBOOM any longer!!!!Puh-LEASE! Multiplane camera moves…! (and add the ability to rotate the camera..) -Toonboom dosen’t do this..C

  • i think …… only think………. if i can guided the fill transform tool ……. i dont know if its a good idea or not …… but i think its help making a good effects

  • Spray is a brand new particle generation component.
    With Spray, you can simulate a flow of sparkles, rain, snow, bubbles, falling leaves, etc… The only limit is your imagination. The only thing you have to do is to design your own sprite.

    http://www.yaodownload.com/video-design/animationdesigntools/spray_animationdesigntools.htm

  • Hey, I read your blog & I think you might want to hear my tunes. Turn up your stereo & check my website here! http://www.musicbycali.com.Thanks!

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