Customize Camera Behavior?

[MichaelMiles]

Adobe Support threw me to the forums for help here.  I enjoy the idea of the Camera view to Pan/Zoom for my animation, saves an enormous amount time.  Except that I also need buttons on the animation to control it.  Play and Continue.  The animation zooms into a detail, stops and explanation is listed for the detail.  When user is done reading, they would then click 'continue'

Issue is!  The Camera zooms/pans all elements, all layers.

Wouldn't it be great if you could have a layer that isn't affected by the Camera?

Anyone have a clue how to customize (Adobe Support's words, not mine) Animate to do this?

[kglad]

i don't understand the problem, but you can't control individual layers.  layers don't exist in the published files.   they exist for content creation convenience.

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

The thing that gets zoomed around is MainTimeline. That has a parent of Stage. I tried this:

this.parent.addChild(box);

where box was something on the main timeline. If I scrub the timeline the box gets zoomed and panned with everything else, but when I test movie, the box stays where it is.

That could be a work around.

[Asymetrical]

You're genius Colin!

[MichaelMiles]

Thanks so much for the help! 

If I'm reading that correctly, this.parent is equal to Stage, then addChild(box); is making 'box' a child of Stage instead of being a child of MainTimeline.

Currently, this isn't working for me. 

You are applying the script to a frame of the Timeline, correct?  Or, where am I missing the ball on this one.

Anymore insight is greatly appreciated!

[Colin Holgate]

Your code is different to the code I gave. Doing addChild(box) would do nothing, other than make the box be the top most object on MainTimeline, which is where the code goes. this.parent.addChild(box) would add the box to the parent of where the code is, and the parent of MainTimeline is Stage. So, this.parent.addChild() is much the same as stage.addChild(), which does also work.

It could be that stage.addChild(box) would be a safer way to work, that way the code can live anywhere.

[ClayUUID]

Man, thar thread title is not at all descriptive of what you actually wanted.

[MichaelMiles]

What would have been a better title so I can do a better job in the future?

[Colin Holgate]

I think your title was ok, given that Adobe support had told you that it was custom camera behaviour that you wanted. Your first post explained things well.

[ClayUUID]

One that actually describes what you want. Like in this case, "Exclude clips from camera zooming". Or "Overlay clips on camera view".

Y'know, you don't even need the camera to do what the camera does. It's just a convenience for animators. You can nearly as easily put your content in a movie clip, then put that clip on the main timeline and use tweens on it to pan/zoom/whatever to your heart's content. That way you retain full control over where all your other clips are displayed.

[MichaelMiles]

Colin and Clay, thank you both.  ClayUUID I didn't think of that approach and will try, that may solve a lot of hassle in the end.