Page 559 - Xara Designer Pro X17

Animations 559

Advanced Flash Commands

Accelerating and Decelerating
Usually the tween steps are evenly spaced between keyframes, producing a linear
animation from one keyframe to the next. By appending < and > symbols to the front of
the object name, you can make objects speed up or slow down. So naming an object
>Name means that it starts fast and slows. The opposite, <Name, would start slow and
speed up.
You can even use these in combinations. So an object name <>Name would start slow,
speed up and then slow down towards the end of the frame period. In traditional
animator’s terminology this is called ‘easing’, so you can ease in or ease out, and the
command <> would be an ease in/out.
You can control the degree of acceleration or deceleration by using numbers from 0 to 9.
So <2 Name would be a very gentle acceleration, while <9 Name would be extreme
acceleration. Similar >2 in front of the name would give a slight deceleration. Using the
name >Name (with no number) is the same as >5Name.

Example: there is an example file called Pendulum in the FLASH EXAMPLES section of the
DESIGNS GALLERY (on page 28) (click the DISC DESIGNS button on the DESIGNS GALLERY).
The pendulum group uses a combination of <> and the rotate command. Another
example called "Zoom.xar" is also worth examining.

Stop and Goto Commands
You can append STOP or GOTO commands onto the Frame names (separated by a semi-
colon ; ) to control the sequence flow. So for example if your first frame was named
"Frame 1;Goto Frame 6", then the animation sequence would jump to Frame 6 at the
start of Frame 1. This may produce tween errors, but these can be ignored. It also waits
for the specified period of the frame with the GOTO command on before jumping, but
frames with GOTO or STOP commands do not tween.

Similarly a frame name with ;STOP appended to the end of the name would stop when the
animation reaches this frame. Why is this useful? Because you can make the animation
jump to any other key frame with either a click or by moving the mouse over objects. For
example you might have an animation that waits for the user to click on or move the
mouse over an object before continuing.

Clickable Buttons & Mouse-over Effects
You can make the animation sequence jump to any keyframe either by clicking on an
object or just by moving the mouse pointer over any object.