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Hi guys! I've searched above and beyond, and haven't found any solution to this.
I made a puppet in flash, using layers and symbols for every body part. I keyed out all the poses necessary, and started adding tweens.
Now at every tween, it moves to a position close to the keyframe it's moving to, and then on the actual keyframe it snaps to the pose it was meant to go to. Which creates this really janky, choppy look on my character animation. I've tried converting every frame on a tween into a key F6, didn't work. I made sure all the pivot points are the same, I made sure to not use custom eases, I tried copying and pasting frame A over frame B and then reposing it with the same frame- none of this worked.
I'm really frustrated because it's majorly messing with the quality of my animation! This is an assignment for school, so I can't work around and use something other than Animate CC either.
I hope so of you guys can help me!
Hi again, mate,
Unfortunately, I can't give you one simple solution or even a simple answer.
The tween problems are caused by a combination of factors, the most important one being the terrible implementation of Layer Parenting and other issues such as rounding of calculations which accumulate and produce exponentially worse results further down the hierarchical chains.
I focused my investigation on the tween between frame 80 and 94 in your FLA as it looked simple enough to study with the same sy
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Wonderful work, mate!
From your post it seems that you have done everything correctly.
Only if you provide your FLA for inspection someone might be able to help you.
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Thank you so much!
Apparently I can't attach the FLA file here- how can I provide it?
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You can post a link to the file, uploaded on google drive (or similar service).
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SX0CG0jd8Gdij1JH9KQXTGB2PebreNR-/view?usp=sharing
There you go!
This is my first time doing puppetry in Flash so the organization of it all is really messy. I hope you can navigate regardless.
Thank you so much!
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Got it, mate!
I'll get back to you in an hour or two.
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Alright, no rush! I really appreciate the support.
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Hi again, mate,
Unfortunately, I can't give you one simple solution or even a simple answer.
The tween problems are caused by a combination of factors, the most important one being the terrible implementation of Layer Parenting and other issues such as rounding of calculations which accumulate and produce exponentially worse results further down the hierarchical chains.
I focused my investigation on the tween between frame 80 and 94 in your FLA as it looked simple enough to study with the same symbols on both ends.
I removed all layer parenting and re-registered the symbols, based on your Transformation points and the results instantly improved. You can see that here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ddoqXZhpRfBCjgTIyi06J7J-tQRMbVKE/view?usp=sharing
There are however multiple issues with the structure of your file which make it nearly impossible to be fixed.
They are fundamental.
For example your character timeline is unnecessarily complex - all facial features should be placed inside one head symbol on a synced timeline. You can have the back part of the hair separately behind the torso, but that is pretty much all that you need.
All variations of the mouth should be put inside a mouth container; all variations of upper arm should be frames inside upper arm container and so on.
Have a look at this article which I wrote some time ago:
https://flash-powertools.com/character-rigging-for-flash-animation/
You're obviously extremely talented and hard-working, that is why I want to give you the best advice I can.
To be able to really progress with cutouts in Flash you will need solid understanding of Symbol Registration and nesting.
Look into Smart Magnet Rigs. It is a much more polished and flexible system than Layer Parenting or Animate bones.
Very little can be done to save your file the way it is at the moment.
I don't want to give you suggestions as that will probably confuse you, and may not be what your teacher would approve.
I wish you luck and success in this profession as obviously you have all the necessary skills and talents!
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Oh wow, that's really frustrating! Parenting is the way our teacher explained it to us, which didn't sit right with me either because I am aware of nesting, just not of how to do it.
I'll probably just have to find a way to cheat it then so that I have something presentable by next week! Would you have any suggestions of how to go about this (without having to redo the whole thing) that could at least complete the animation in a presentable way? It doesn't really matter if it's what the teacher approves or not, as long as it looks okay.
Also thank you so much for the extensive reply, the kind words and the time you put in! I'll refer back to these links for my next assignment for this class, to finally learn actual flash rigging. I really appreciate it!
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Yeah, I know. It is extremely frustrating and most of it is not your fault in any way - just a combination of roundings and inaccuracies that accumulate to produce this result.
And since you've already done so many poses restructuring or changing the approach is literally impossible.
Just keep going the way you have and point out that the glitches are technical - they really are. Tweens should tween well and they don't. This is all Animate's fault and not yours. Your poses, acting and timing are excellent and you are a student, so a technical glitch should not affect your mark.
Unfortunately even if unparenting everything could improve the situation, there is no way to unparent everything easily, as it is not actually 'layer' parenting, but rather keyframe parenting, which makes it practically impossible.
In the long term if you need to redo the whole thing, you can export your poses as bitmaps, put them underneath as guides and then restructure the rig as a simpler Smart Magnet Rig with proper nesting and replicate the poses. But you won't be able to do this in a few days as there are quite a few new things to learn before you can actually do something of such complexity.
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Hi.
Really amazing work! Congrats!
Nick's advices are the way to go. Hopefully you will be able to improve your workflow/structure and also overcome Animate's limitations.
Regards,
JC