I’d like to talk about the way I use tweens in Flash. For one reason or another, I never use new-style motion tweens and I rarely use the easing editor. I’ve found that the easing editor is rarely worth the trouble, and new motion tweens never end up working like I want them to and they frequently crash the program. I’ll occasionally use the easing editor if I want a really strong ease in or out, or if there’s a very particular motion I want, but for the most part I stick with classic tweens and good old –100 to +100 easing.
Actually, though, I use very few motion tweens at all ever since I created my autotweener (which will be the subject of a later post). Fully automated tweens like those produced by motion tweens rarely produce the results I need for good animation. They usually look too linear and mechanical or they don’t work well when multiple pieces are involved.
That said, motion tweens do come in handy sometimes, and I almost always apply easing to them – usually either +100 (out) or –100 (in). I’ve written several commands to help with setting and removing eases. I’m going to show you some of them today.
“Ease In and Out” is one of the earliest Flash commands I wrote, back when I was working on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. It’s a simple little script that automates one of the things I found myself doing the most: creating a motion tween, setting a keyframe in the middle, and making the first half ease in and the second half ease out. It’s not much much, but if you do that kind of thing often it can be a chore to go through the steps over and over.
Next we have “Ease in 100%” and “Ease out 100%”. These ones do pretty much what they say: set the easing on a classic tween to be either +100% (out) or –100% (in).
Ease In 100%, ease out 100%.mxp
Finally, I created a command that will remove all easing from the selected frames. This is very useful if you want to remove easing on many different motion tweens at once, If you highlight the frames with the tweens on them but they don’t all have the exact same tween value, for some reason Flash won’t let you change any of them. With this command, though, you can easily set everything back to zero – even if there’s currently no motion tween there! (That is, it’ll set it so that when you do create a motion tween on that frame, its easing will be zero, rather than whatever it was set to in the past.)
All my Flash extensions are free for personal use but there’s a small fee for commercial use. Basically, if you’re getting paid for your Flash work I ask that give a little something back. Please contact me for pricing (don’t worry, it’s very reasonable).
I’ve made a little movie showing how to use these commands. Please let me know if you have any questions 🙂