Flash Extensions

While making these daily movies I've been carefully naming all my library symbols (as always) as well as layer names and good house-keeping stuff like that. But I ran into problems when I decided that I'd combine all these movies into one file and release them on other sites as one big movie.

As you may know, putting two movies together can cause library conflicts. For example, when I make a movie, all my fades to (or from) black are done by tweening the alpha value of a black rectangle. So usually, one of the first library symbols I create when I start a new movie is a black rectangle, saved as a Graphic type and called _black.

Why use an underscore in the name? Cos it always appears at the top of the library.. so it's always accessible. You can do this with any frequently used symbol, so you don't need to go searching for it.

Now when it comes time to combine two movies I'd do this:

1. In movie2.fla, select the entire timeline of frames and layers
2. Go to Edit > Timeline > Copy Frames.
   
3. In movie1.fla, (the one that already contains a whole movie) I paste it all into a new scene using Edit > Timeline > Paste Frames.

OK so one small problem is that I get a warning pop up saying "Library Conflict". Flash has detected a _black symbol in each movie, and is asking me if I want to replace one _black with another _black. No problem, cos they're the same thing anyway, but what if one movie has a symbol named BG that's completely different to another movie's 'BG' symbol? Or 12 completely different movies each containing their own completely unique 'body_1' symbol?

Now we finally get to the point of this article! Today I came across a bunch of Flash Extensions thanks to Bleego's blog article on the subject. He has written an article on an alternate way of staggering tweens and in it, mentions David Wolfe; another of those generous Flash community gurus who provides freebies to hungry, non-coding animators.

At David's extensions page, I discovered 'libAppend', a Flash extension that allows you to add prefixes and/or suffixes to library items. I've installed it now and I have no more library conflicts when combining movies, because I simply select all the library items in movie 1, and rename them all with a prefix of 'movie1_'.

Well that's just one little extension I was really pleased with and just had to tell someone.. but there's a whole bunch of awesome stuff available, not only on David's site (Timing Chart - OMFG!), but a few others as well (links below).

In the past I've been nagging macromedia (and more recently, Adobe) about making the Timeline easier to navigate for those of us who have long scenes or movies.. specifically timeline markers, keyframe navigation and jump-to-frame input fields. My Yuyu movie is one big long 6000 frame scene (necessitated by the limitations of Streaming audio), and while I was animating it, navigating the timeline was a nightmare.

So worth a big fat loud mention is Dave Logan who has created a couple of excellent timeline navigation extensions, among some other lovely little gems. I've installed his SkipAround, KeyframeJumper and LabelJumper extensions and now I really feel like making a huge movie now (all in one scene, of course!)

Dunno if it's even possible, but anyone out there feel like making a 'export all FLAs in a Flash Project as one .swf' extension for me? :D

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Thanks again to Dave Phillips (no relation) for his contributions to the list below. At these sites, there are usually instructions for installing included with each one you download - it's the same process for most extensions and pretty straight-forward stuff.

• Jarrad Hope - the camera guy. I mentioned him in a previous Woodenblog article and you absolutely must get his reanimator.camera
  
• David Wolfe - as mentioned above
  
• Dave Logan - as mentioned above
  
• Animonger - lots of lovely extensions and custom panels for character animators
• Guy Watson - Flash guru himself. His extensions page has 2 or 3 extensions you might find useful.
• CHF's plugin forum - great resource, including learning how to make your own extensions. I've read many posts over there where someone requests and extension and someone else will make it. Gotta love community huh?
  
• Adobe Flash Exchange - some free and some for sale. Even just window-shopping, my jaw drops.
• Extending FlashMX 2004 - Written by community gods Todd Yard and Keith Peters, this book is quoted (by Warren Fuller of Animonger.com) as the bible for anyone learning JSFL (the language with which you create Flash extensions).
  

If you have anymore extensions, or links to, please feel free to comment on this post. However, don't link to every single resource or extension you find.. just the good ones please :)