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Tutorials » Animation

Shape Tweening for Control Freaks
Author: Timothy Boronczyk

Go to frame 1 of ShapeTw and select (in Flash MX) MODIFY>Shape>Add Shape Hint or (in Flash 5) MODIFY>Transform>Add Shape Hint. A small, red, circle labeled with the letter A appears in the center of the screen—this is the Shape Hint!

Make sure that the Snap to Objects option is active (VIEW>Snap to Objects) and move the Shape Hint onto a line of our camel. Now go to the frame containing our penguin where you will see another red circle labeled with the letter A. Remember “insert tab A into slot B?” Well, this is it… only it’s going to be “match point A to point A.” Move the Shape Hint into it’s desired corresponding position along the line of our penguin.

Once matched up, the Shape Hints will turn green. If we were to return back to our camel screen we would see that those Shape Hints have turned yellow. If we were to move a Shape Hint off of it’s line, it would turn red.

To remove a shape hint completely we could either select and drag the Shape Hint off of the stage area or we could use the context-sensitive menu item Remove Hint (right click for PCs, control+click for Mac). To clear all of the hints select (in Flash MX) MODIFY>Shape>Remove All Hints, (in Flash 5) MODIFY>Transform>Remove All Hints, or the context-sensitive menu item Remove All Hints.

I’ve found that sometimes fewer Shape Hints are more productive. Don’t try to create a 600-dot connect-the-dots game with them; there’s only 26 letters in the alphabet and so you’re only going to have a maximum of 26 Shape Hints. And there comes a point where excessive shape hinting actually causes undesired consequences (although some of these quirks can create pretty interesting effects that would be to difficult to draw in any other manner). Just drag the playhead across the timeline to see how each Shape Hint matching affects your tween and adjust accordingly before adding the next hint.

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