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Motion Myth

For some reason lots of people seem to think that ActionScript animation creates smoother animation than the Flash timeline. This is simply not true. The timeline is just as capable of creating “smooth” animations as ActionScript is.

On the timeline, if you want a smoother animation, use a framerate around 30fps and put more space between your keyframes.

ActionScript vs. Timeline

Students sometimes ask me when to use coded animation and when to use timeline animation. The answer is more complicated than you might expect. Here’s a basic set of rules:

TIMELINE ANIMATION IS FOR:
- animation that is always the same (static animation)

ACTIONSCRIPT ANIMATION IS FOR:
- interactive animation
- random animation
- animation driven from an outside source like an rss feed
- complex, static physics simulations that would be hard to animate on the timeline
- complex interactive physics simulation
- time-based animation—that is, animation that always runs at the same speed independent of framerate

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One way to achieve this is by creating a custom class that uses Library elements as assets. To increase flexibility (for swapping skins, for example), you can create each graphical element of your check box, store them in your Library, assign a linkage class name to each element, and then pass those linkage class names into your custom class.

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Related Content

• The Power of Relative Positioning

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Related Content

• Grids: Arranging Clips
• More Properties (Blend Modes and Filters)

If you’re a student using Learning ActionScript 3.0 in a class, please let us know what kinds of class resources you think would be useful, and tell your instructor we’re looking for input!

Related Content

• Looking Forward to Flashbelt

We’re very happy to announce that I’ll be conducting a workshop on ActionScript 3.0 at this year’s Flashbelt conference in Minneapolis. It’s a full-day workshop based on the book, teaching the fundamentals of AS3 with lots of examples and, of course, free source code.

This will be my first time at Flashbelt, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve heard very high praise about the show—praise that grows year over year—and I dig Flashbelt’s El Hefe, Dave Schroeder. In addition to putting together Flashbelt, Dave is also the brains and talent behind Pilotvibe, a groovy place to get you some Flash sound.

From everything I’ve heard, Flashbelt is a happenin’ gig, that has an intimate feel and a stellar group of presenters. This year is no exception. Presenters include Mark Anders, Julian Dolce, JR Fabito, Richard Galvan, Moses Gunesch, Joshua Hirsch, Robert Hodgin, Mario Klingemann, Tali Krakowsky, Dan Lacivita, Lisa Larson-Kelley, Seb Lee-Delisle, Andre Michelle, Stacey Mulcahy, Erik Natzke, Paul Ortchanian, Danny Patterson, Todd Perkins, Robert Reinhardt, Rich Shupe, Geoff Stearns, Mate Steinforth, Zach Stepek, Craig Swann, Jared Tarbell, Dustin Tauer, Jeremy Thorp, and Philip Van Allen.

This year, the event is June 8-11, and I hope to see you there.

Related Content

• AS3 Teachers Wanted

This post contains a few short exercises that will put your knowledge of properties to the test.

As a guide, here are the properties that you will need to be familiar with:

x
y
scaleX
scaleY
height
width
rotation

For each example you’ll need to use the properties in conjunction with an enterFrame event:

addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop, false, 0, true);

function onLoop(evt:Event):void {
  // change properties over time
}

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In the process, I happened upon TxEff from Jumpeye Components. TxEff is a spectacular text-effects component with a really great configuration utility that allows you to easily modify all the effects without writing any code. You can also configure the effects without the utility using XML. Written in AS3, it performs really well and Jumpeye did a great job, soup to nuts. You can even add on to the component with additional effects.

I haven’t been able to try any of the additional effect libraries, but I decided to try a simple test that fits in well with the first post in this series. I wanted to see how easy it would be to create a simple effect using the online utility. I wanted to create something that anyone could do, right out o the box. I was pretty impressed with how easy it was to adjust the many parameters and found myself with the problem of too much goodness to choose from. Then I decided to test the defaults of one of the new effects, 3DCamFocus. Here it is:

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addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop, false, 0, true);

function onLoop(evt:Event):void {
	graphics.clear();
	graphics.lineStyle(1,0x000000);
	graphics.moveTo(100,100);
	graphics.lineTo(mouseX, mouseY);
}

Copy this into your timeline if you’re not sure what it does.

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