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Animate an armature – Adobe Flash Professional CC 2014 v.13.0 User Manual

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The number of frames between poses in the pose layer.

The total number of frames in the pose layer.

The number of frames between the final pose and the last frame of the pose later.

Additional resources

Video:

Working with IK Spring properties

(7:50, Adobe TV)

Video: (Length: 4:29, Includes: Add bones, contrain joint motion, add poses, animate with spring properties. AdobeTV.com)

Spring for Bones

Article:

Exploring the Spring tool in Flash Professional CS5

(Adobe.com)

Animate an armature

You animate IK armatures differently from other objects in Flash. With armatures, you simply add frames to the pose layer and reposition the
armature on the Stage to create a keyframe. Keyframes in pose layers are called poses. Because IK armatures are typically used for animation
purposes, each pose layer acts as a tween layer automatically.

However, IK pose layers are different from tween layers because you cannot tween properties other than bone position in the pose layer. To
tween other properties of an IK object such as location, transform, color effects, or filters, enclose the armature and its associated objects in a
movie clip or graphic symbol. You can then animate the properties of the symbol using the Insert > Motion Tween command and the Motion Editor
panel.

You can also animate IK armatures with ActionScript 3.0 at runtime. If you plan to animate an armature with ActionScript, you cannot animate it in
the Timeline. The armature can have only one pose in the pose layer. That pose must be in the first frame in which the armature appears in the
pose layer.

The following additional resources demonstrate how to animate an armature:

Video:

Animating bones (inverse kinematics) (2:41)

(Adobe TV)

Video: (Length: 4:29, Includes: Add bones, contrain joint motion, add poses, animate with spring properties. AdobeTV.com)

Spring for Bones

Article:

Character animation with the Bone Tool in Flash

(Adobe.com)

How to use the Bone tool (5:12)

(YouTube.com)

How to animate symbols with the Bone tool (3:26)

(YouTube.com)

Animate an armature in the Timeline

IK armatures exist on pose layers in the Timeline. To animate armatures in the Timeline, insert poses by right-clicking a frame in a pose layer and
selecting Insert Pose. Use the Selection tool to change the configuration of the armature. Flash Professional automatically interpolates the
positions of the bones in the frames between poses.

1. In the Timeline, if needed, add frames to the pose layer of the armature to make room for the animation you want to create.

You add frames by right-clicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Macintosh) a frame in the pose layer to the right of any existing frames and
choosing Insert Frame. You can add or delete frames later at any time.

2. To add a pose to a frame in the pose layer, do one of the following:

Place the playhead in the frame where you want to add the pose and then reposition the armature on the Stage.

Right-click (Windows) or Option-click (Macintosh) the frame in the pose layer and choose Insert Pose.

Place the playhead in the frame where you want to add the pose and then press the F6 key.

Flash inserts a pose into the pose layer in the current frame. A diamond-shaped pose marker in the frame indicates the new pose.

3. Add additional poses in separate frames to complete the animation to your satisfaction.

4. To change the length of the animation in the Timeline, hover the mouse cursor over the last frame of the armature until the Resize cursor

appears. Then drag the last frame of the pose layer to the right or left to add or remove frames.

Flash repositions the pose frames in proportion to the change in duration of the layer and reinterpolates the frames in between. To resize the
armature span in the Timeline without affecting the location of the pose frames, Shift-drag the last frame of the armature span.

When you finish, scrub the playhead in the Timeline to preview the animation. You can see the armature positions interpolated in between the
pose frames.

You can reposition the armature in the pose frames or add new pose frames at any time.

Edit the location of poses in an armature

You can edit the location of poses in the following ways:

To move a pose to a new location, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) a pose and then drag the pose to a new location in

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