Graphic issues when exporting .SWF

[Megan5EEA]

Hi! I was trying to export a .swf image from Animate, and when I opened the .swf up again to test it in the same program, all of the achor handles had been disabled-- so all of my curves for the vector images were now sharp.
info:
- The initial art was made in a trial version of the current Illustrator CC, and was imported into the current trial version of Animate
- There was no animation- just a still image
- It seemed almost all of the anchors were affected, whether or not they were graphics, movie files, symbols, or broken down to the lowest tier where all the colors and shapes are combined to one layer
- The .swf would not open in a previewer (SWF file player), I could only view it inside Animate. When I tried to open it in a previewer I only got a an old flash icon in the middle of the screen, with an rollover- it didn't do anything when I clicked on it though.
- I was not given any options when I exported the .swf
- I thought maybe I didn't have the .NET framework, but I do

Any help with this would be really appreciated- I've worked with Flash/Illustrator/SWFs a lot in the past, but it was before Adobe discontinued the old Flash systems (about 4 years ago), and this has never happened before.

[kglad]

1. it doesn't make sense (to me) that you would export a swf file (which is not an image).

2. it may make sense to publish (file>publish) a swf but then i don't know what you would use to "open" it.

so, what are you trying to create?  a mobile app?  a html5/canvas page?  an image?  a video? something else?

[Megan5EEA]

It was an art test- the company uses .swf for animated assets to use in the engine (Unity), but the test did not require animation. I want to know why the art did not translate properly when it was exported, so that I can avoid it pre-emptively in the future.  Ultimately whether it's animated or not shouldn't matter-- I've used .swfs for game engines previously (last engine used flash), for both still images and animated assets, and this never occured before- they all previewed properly regardless of  how they were previewed- in this case, I opened it in Flash to test it.

[Megan5EEA]

I will also stipulate that I have no say in the company creation pipeline, so I cannot give an alternate file type, or create the image in another program etc. It has to be something that can be fixed in either Animate or Illustrator, and it has to be a .swf

[kglad]

what do you do with the swf once it's imported into unity?

[Megan5EEA]

I don't know- it was an art test, I did not use Unity, I just know the company uses it. This issue came up while previewing in Flash, I've given as much info as I can on the process, do you happen to know of any issues that may have been in the flash file to cause the handles on the anchor points to be disabled upon previewing?

[kglad]

you stated, "Hi! I was trying to export a .swf image from Animate, and when I opened the .swf up again to test it in the same program, all of the achor handles had been disabled-- so all of my curves for the vector images were now sharp."

what program did you use to open the swf?

[Megan5EEA]

I used the trail version of Adobe Animate- (apologies if you were confused by me saying "Flash"- force of habit)

[kglad]

don't open the swf in animate.  open the fla.

[Megan5EEA]

I was trying to test the .swf to see if the .swf would show up properly on their end. The .fla was fine, I'm trying to figure out what broke between the .swf and the .fla

[kglad]

the swf is not designed to be editable.  i'm not sure what they're doing in unity with the swf.

do they have a unity plugin?  are they really looking for a spritesheet and not a swf?

[Megan5EEA]

I was not trying to edit it, I just wanted to view it, but it would not open in a program meant to open .swfs (which people have been using to play/use .swfs since flash plugins were discontinued). I was able to import the .swf into Animate, so that I could test it, so that is what was used.
It doesn't matter what they are using it for in Unity, this is not relevant to my question- yes they asked specifically for a .swf, I have worked for companies that have used .swfs in their games.
My question does not involve anything on their end- just on my end. I can't give information for their internal code and use, because I do not have access to it, and I would be under NDA if I did.
Thanks for your time anyways- hopefully someone will have an idea of what went wrong, but if not I'll just play around with it.

[Mario_CR]

Are you using a third party swf player to view the file? Maybe that's the problem.  Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Animate 2021\Players double click on FlashPlayer.exe and try opening the file from there.  Set that player as the default for opening swf files.

[Megan5EEA]

I did try to download an official Flash Player from Adobe, but every time I tried to run the .exe it would redirect me to a page saying Flash was being discontinued-- it seems what you posted is different though, so I will give that a try thanks = )

[kglad]

if you just want to view the swf, open the fla in animate and test.  that opens the swf in the flash player.

[Megan5EEA]

I forgot they had the test function- thank you, I will check for that as well.

[kglad]

you're welcome