Basic Animate questions

[southwestform]

1. Is Animate an updated version of Flash or is it a whole new application built from the ground up?

2. I'd like to create animations and interactive animations that many years ago may have been delivered via .SWF embedded on .HTML pages. Will animate enable me to create the same types of animations that could have previously been done with Flash, including interactive content that can be exported into some universal format that all browsers and mobile devices can view without a plugin?

3. Regarding animation, is there a strong reason to use Animate vs. After Effects?

Thanks in advance.

[kglad · Accepted solution]

1. Is Animate an updated version of Flash

yes

2. I'd like to create animations and interactive animations that many years ago may have been delivered via .SWF embedded on .HTML pages. Will animate enable me to create the same types of animations that could have previously been done with Flash, including interactive content that can be exported into some universal format that all browsers and mobile devices can view without a plugin?

yes, use a canvas/html5 project, not as3.

3. Regarding animation, is there a strong reason to use Animate vs. After Effects?

after effects is for video creation which is typically, not interactive.  flash/animate would be more suitable for interactive content, though there is some overlap.

[southwestform]

1. How consistent of an experience will users get when viewing an Animate designed canvas/html5 project across desktop and mobile browsers on Mac, PC, iOS and Android?

2. Can animations designed in Animate be exported in a high quality format, and later imported into Premiere to be edited with other footage?

Thanks for your help.

[Colin Holgate]

1. It would certainly be easy to make something so demanding that only a high end desktop computer can play it, but if you set out to make it good for mobile, it'll be at least as good on desktop. There are security issues that only show up in certain browsers, or just on mobile, mainly to do with requiring a user action before sound is allowed to play.

2. Yes. You could export 4K video if you like. If you're making an animation just for video you would want to use an ActionScript 3 FLA, it has much better sound sync options, and many more filters that work. You can export with an alpha channel too, if you want the animations to appear on top of other video.

Also, and again when working with AS3 documents, there is an option to publish a SWF Archive file, which produces a zip file of SWFs, one for each layer, so you could bring a multi layer animation in as separate tracks in After Effects. I haven't tested if that works with Premiere.

[kglad]

and to add to 1 above, you'll have the compatibility issues that html5 has.  which means it's supported by modern browsers but not older ones and there's some inconsistency among browsers.  you'll have to try it with browsers you want to test to see if any of that applies to your application.

[Colin Holgate]

Character animation is another example, few people would use AE to do frame by frame character animation, but a lot do use Animate for that.

AE's main advantages are that you can do 3D animations, and you can add correct motion blur.