Flash vs Animate: PIVOTS

Pivots in ANIMATE are a little more complicated than they are in FLASH. In Flash, when you edit a Symbol pivot in order to reset a rotation/scale point, you enter the Symbol, select the pivot and drag it into place, and that's pretty much all there is to it.

It took a lot of trial and error (and I had to re-do a lot of messed up animation) for me to realize that there are "Pivot settings" in ANIMATE to pay attention to. Not only this, there are Drawing Pivots, Symbol Pivots and Peg Pivots and with Symbol Pivots, there are two levels of editing involved.

1. To reset the Symbol Pivot (for rotation/scaling) when you drag a Symbol's pivot to a new position in the Camera View, this is only a temporary change that applies to that one action. The pivot doesn't actually change position. It's still there.To set a new permanent Symbol pivot, click on the Pivot Tool in the left-side toolbar first, before dragging that pivot. All instances will now have the new pivot position. *This is done on the top level, not inside the Symbol.

2. You can also reset the Drawing Pivots inside the Symbol. These pivots are not linked to the Symbol Pivot unless if you Copy Pivot to Parent Symbol after editing each pivot. Note that your Drawing Pivot and Symbol Pivot will now be the same, and I find it less confusing to work this way especially when I need to add new drawings to my Symbol.




When editing pivots inside the Symbol, note the Set Pivot For All Frames option. If this is enabled, your new pivot will apply to the entire layer of drawings inside the Symbol. If you disable this first, each drawing can have its own pivot position. This is important when the drawings (eg, hands or legs) inside a Symbol are positioned all over the place and they don't share the same pivot position.

And then using the Library Drawing Substitution Feature, when I swap between different drawings, even though they are not drawn registered together, when I am in the Top Level/Camera View, they will appear registered in the right place.

A little word of warning: If a Symbol's pivot point is reset, all CHILD SYMBOLS attached to this Symbol will also be affected.

I hope this makes sense...

Any tips? Questions? Solutions? Please share!

Flash vs Animate: SYMBOLS

In ANIMATE, Symbols do pretty much the same thing as what they do in Flash, but there are some differences.

Here are the similarities:

In both FLASH and ANIMATE, Symbols are like containers that live in the Library and can be dragged out and reused. They have their own internal timelines and nested layers. You can have Symbols within Symbols. Symbols are important if you intend to use motion tweening or effect changes to a drawing over time. To edit a Symbol, double-click on it to be taken inside the Symbol. All instances will be edited too.

Off the top of my head, here are the main differences that I have noticed so far:

In FLASH: Symbols can be easily swapped out for other symbols. (select > properties >swap)
In ANIMATE: Symbols cannot be easily swapped for other symbols. You have to delete a symbol from the timeline and drag out the other symbol from the Library.

In FLASH: Symbols can be reused across different Scenes.
In ANIMATE, each file is ONE Scene (no multiple scenes per file) and the Symbols only exist in that scene and cannot be accessed from any other scene. If you want to reuse a drawing for another scene, you have to save it as a Template (.tpl) - which can contain Symbols. If you create a bunch of Symbols in one scene, save them in a .tpl and drag that .tpl out into another Scene, you can then access those Symbols, however.... ANIMATE will make a copies of those symbols in the Library. This can be useful or confusing.... like finding multiple identical copies of a Symbol in your Library....

Question: Is it safe to delete duplicates in the Animation Library? Will my other scenes will be affected?

In FLASH: When you convert a drawing on the stage to a Symbol, it appears in the Library becomes a Symbol right there and then. To convert several frames/layers to a Symbol you have to "Create New Symbol" and copy/paste those frames into the new empty Symbol and then make sure the Symbol is in the correct position on stage. There are different ways to do this.
In ANIMATE: Life is much much easier!!!! You can drag anything (one drawing or multiple frames/layers) from the timeline into the Symbol Library to Symbolize. One difference though is that the drawings and layers in your timeline don't get Symbolized right there and then. You have to delete what's on your timeline, and drag the Symbol out of the Library onto the timeline. Notice that the drawings automatically appear in the same position where they were created.

In FLASH: When you "break apart" a symbol, it becomes a Drawing Object. If you have multiple layers in your symbol, they all appear on the same layer when broken apart. You lose your symbol's timeline too.
In ANIMATE: When you "expand" a symbol, the internal layers and drawings are expanded on the timeline underneath the original symbol, with timeline intact!

In FLASH: Symbols can be positioned anywhere on the stage, with pivot points that you can edit knowing that other instances won't be affected.
In ANIMATE: Every symbol is registered to the position on the stage where it was created. This is useful when you are rigging a character and want body parts to always have the same placement to each other. It's not so useful if you accidentally move a symbol (without creating a keyframe) which could screw up your animation. All instances will shift out of place.

In FLASH: Instances of Symbols can be modified by the same tools that you use to modify all drawings. Scale, Skew, Flip ... you can also change Alpha and Tint.
In ANIMATE, Symbols are not visible in the program's Drawing View, only in the Camera View. This is kinda frustrating when you are constructing a character and want to use Symbols. (In the manual they suggest that you do ALL your drawing first, before converting to Symbols.. but this isn't really feasible to me.) To modify or move a symbol on specific frame, insert a keyframe on the timeline. With no keyframe, you will risk modifying the source symbol and all other instances of it on stage. (I learned this the hard way!) Similarly if you want to move the Symbol's pivot point for one frame, make sure you insert a keyframe first.

In FLASH: there are Graphic Symbols and Movie Clip Symbols. By default, these all "loop" when played.
In ANIMATE: All Symbols behave more like Flash's Movie Clips. They have their own layer (nothing else can exist on a Symbol's layer). They don't loop. You have to copy cells from the timeline and "Paste Cycle" to create the loops.

In FLASH: Using Symbols is efficient practice and keeps your file size down.
In ANIMATE: File size isn't affected whether you use Symbols or Drawings. Via this forum thread: "you can call back drawings that were previously made and this won't create anything new in the file structure (basically it will simply call an existing drawing regardless of it being in a symbol or not)."