Using Director > Animation > Tweening other sprite properties

 

Tweening other sprite properties

In addition to tweening a sprite's path, Director can tween the size, rotation, skew, blend, and foreground and background color of a sprite. Tweening size works best for vector-based cast members created in the Vector Shape window or Flash (bitmaps can become distorted when resized). Director can tween all of these properties at once.

To make a sprite fade in or out, you can tween blend settings. To make sprites spin or tilt, use rotation. To create gradual shifts in color, you can tween color settings.

For an animated demonstration of tweening color, see the Tween color movie.

Note: To prevent Director from tweening a certain sprite property, choose Modify > Sprite > Tweening and turn off any of the tweening options.

To tween sprite properties:

1

If the Score isn't open, choose Window > Score.

2

Position a sprite on the Stage and make sure it spans all the frames in which you want the sprite to change.

3

Select the start frame of the sprite in the Score.

4

To tween size, scale the sprite or resize the sprite on the Stage. See Resizing and scaling sprites.

5

To define the beginning property settings, click the Sprite tab of the Property Inspector and do any of the following:

To make the sprite fade in or out, enter a blend setting in the Property Inspector (in List view). Enter 0 to make the sprite fade in or 100 to make it fade out. For more information, see Setting blends.

To tween rotation or skew, manually rotate or skew the sprite to the beginning position on the Stage or enter an angle in the Property Inspector. See Rotating and skewing sprites.

To tween color, use the color boxes in the Property Inspector to open the color menu for foreground and background color, or enter the RGB values for a new color in the boxes at the right.

6

In the Score, select the end frame of the sprite.

7

Choose Insert > Keyframe.

Note that the end frame is not a keyframe unless you create one there.

8

Make sure only the keyframe is selected (not the entire sprite), and then enter the ending values of the sprite properties you are tweening.

For example, if you entered a blend setting of 0 in the first frame, you could enter a blend setting of 100 in this frame.

9

If necessary, create additional keyframes in the sprite and enter new values for the tweened properties.

10

To make the property changes defined by a keyframe occur at a different time, drag a keyframe in the Score to a new frame within the sprite.

To view the tweening, rewind and play the movie. Director gradually changes the value of the tweened property in the frames between the keyframes.