Advice on taking toonboom clips into Flash

[gombul]

Hi people, first post - Adam is one of my fav artists so I'm looking forward to spending some time in here! I'm curious about how people work - in terms of a 4-10min animated short film.

I'm new to toonboom and I'm completely sold on using it for all my artwork. But I still feel more comfortable comping all the scenes in Flash - including audio. I make each scene a separate toonboom file then export them as separate SWFs. Then I import to the Flash library for laying out on the timeline (adding a blank keyframe at the end of each clip/symbol). I'm wondering what other people think about this way of working? The Flash timeline is getting pretty long and rickedy. Yurtle the turtle springs to mind.

The thing I'm finding the clumsiest is adding all my clips to the Flash timeline. Because if I adjust the length of a clip in toonboom then re-export I need to adjust the amount of frames it uses in the Flash timeline. Not a huge deal but I usually end up doing this with a calculator in hand! It would be much better if I knew how to cue up all the symbols using ActionScript and have them automatically move on to the next one in the queue once each had played out. Too technical for me though...

Thoughts / opinions?

[Juggleballz]

Hi Gombul!

Welcome to Brackenwood.

I understand what your issue is but as I have no experience with ToonBoom I can't help you on that front.

Although, I do have experience with Flash. The method you mentioned about painstakingly added edited clips seems like the more cumbersome but logical way to go.

You mentioned making movieclips and cueing them up using Action Script. This is probably not a good idea. It would work although it would become harder to fulyl see exactly when a scene starts and you will be popping in and out of Movie Clips to add the code to the end of each one to cue up the next. If you edit a clip you will have to add the code to the end of the that edited movie clip after you re-import it.

Plus this way of doing things will cause complications when exporting to different file formats. Now, I remember back in the Flash MX days and even Flash 3 (i think) when you export a flash movie as an avi (for example) it renders it without the code. Therefore you might end up having a movie that does not cue up the next sections as the code is not executed.

I know Adam was able to export waterlollies as a different file format and still render out his action scripted firefly effects, so he might be able to shed some light on this.

Unfortunately, for me, the way to go is to add the frames into flash, which sucks if you re-edit the clip in toonboom to make it shorter or smaller. I could be wrong though and someone my explain a better way.

One other method I just thought of would be to do 2 things.

1. Add each new clip onto a new line so you have full blocks of frames separate from each other. Gives you the freedom to move long lines of frames without overlapping onto other frames.

2. Add about 2 or 3seconds of dead air (blank frames) to either side of each clip so if you edit the clip and re-import it you will have empty frames to compensate a longer clip. And simply cut them out when you are done.

Hope this gives ya some ideas at least. Hopefully others can shed more light. I would be interested too

Welcome aboard bro.

[adzy-2k6]

Adam rendered water lollies basically by using a peice of software that plays it in the flash player and records the clip (similar to how screenshotting software records what you are doing). This will allow scripted effects to work, even the ones that he would use to change clips. However, code for buttons etc wont work

[gombul]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Any ideas on what s/w Adam captured Waterlollies with? I'm curious because the vectors are still intact - when I first looked at it I was guessing only the script/firefly part was captured as raster (ie: turn all other layers off) then comped back into the timeline with mask or something...

Anyway... perhaps there's no silver bullet for comping lots of Animate clips into Flash then. The timeline method works, just gives me that "am I the only one doing it this crap way?" feeling

[Juggleballz]

sorry for the late rply.

One piece of software I have used is called SWF to AVi converter and its free, and it is essentially the same thing that adzy described above. Check it out. It might help.

[Jaehl]

Any ideas on what s/w Adam captured Waterlollies with?

FlashAnts SWF2Video Pro