making multiple movieclips stay in sync

[ahurani]

Colin, This sounds like what I need, but it is not working. I have seven planets circling a star and I need the inner planets to orbit faster than the outer planets, yet all twirl around at the same speed. I can't adjust the number of frames because then the fast planets disappear while the slow planets trudge their way around the sun. I tried writing the this.framerate=5; code but the only place I can find to do that is by double clicking on the movie clip and then right clicking on frame 1 inside the movie click to bring up the Actions panel. In Gory Greg's answer, he says to put the code outside the movie clip. Where? I don't see anyplace to use the Actions panel except inside the movie clip. Do these planets need to be graphic symbols instead? Is what I want to do even possible? Thank you for any help you can give me.

[ClayUUID]

ahurani  wrote

I can't adjust the number of frames because then the fast planets disappear while the slow planets trudge their way around the sun.

This is the problem you should be trying to solve instead of fiddling with frame rates. Why are the planets disappearing? If each planet animation is in its own movieclip, each movieclip should be looping, not disappearing.

[Colin Holgate]

There are many ways to go wrong, and I think yours is a different situation to the main topic here. I have an answer, or suggestion, but I think I will branch your post into a new topic first.

[Colin Holgate]

Before getting into suggestions, do you need to use code to do what you want? Is it an animation of some number of planets orbiting a sun, that just repeats?

[ahurani]

Okay, the big problem is that I no longer remember how to use Flash. It haven't worked in it since 2010. Your second panel helped to jar loose some memories. They're still a bit fuzzy, but I realize now I should be creating separate movie clips and not putting everything on the same timeline. I forgot that I could do that. Man! It has been years. Please remind me: do I control the speed of the movie clip not by the frame rate but by the length of the timeline?

To answer your other question: yes, it is an animation of planets orbiting a sun that repeats. I tried making a css animation with the background and the planets on separate layers, but had trouble with the animation speed slowing to a stop before picking up again. Probably something to do with the planet layer being wider than tall and when it dipped off the screen, the animation sped up. It was also not responsive, the planets moving separately from the background, which made the sun no longer the center. I tried making a Photoshop animation, but there was no way to control speed at all. The planets zipped around like coffee addicts in the gif.

So, Animate. I'm hoping it will work, although so far I have not been able to get it to show up in Dreamweaver. I used to copy code from the generated html file and put it in position, but so far I am having no luck. Maybe I need to rearrange my files and put everything at the root? That kind of rings a gong.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this. I think I just need to be shaken until the memories rattle loose. I think it has come back enough that I can get the animation to work, but if you have any suggestions on getting it into DW and showing on iOS systems, that would be wonderful.

Thanks.

[Colin Holgate]

It sounds like you want the animation to work in mobile browsers, but that doesn't affect things too much.

If each planet is a movieclip you only need to make the number of frames in the movieclip be enough to make them all work together.

For HTML5 Canvas you would want to use Classic Tweens for performance reasons. After you have the keyframes needed to make one orbit, you would add extra frames to make the orbit last long enough.

If you have a version already, and you can post it somewhere, we could look at the file and see what needs to be fixed.

[ahurani]

Colin, Thank you so much for your answer. It has helped me to remember. I'm excited that I can once again use Animate because animation is my favorite. With appreciation.

[JoãoCésar]

Hi.

Here is a suggestion.

Probably not what you want but at least it will give everybody a starting point.

My setup didn't require code.

I created 7 graphics for each planet and put them in separate layers in the main timeline. All layers have a duration of 36 seconds minus 1 frame in the main timeline.

Then inside of each Graphic containing the actual planet animation I extended the child timeline to a number of seconds that when divided by the total duration of the main timeline results in an integer number. In this way all the animations can loop seamlessly.

To rotate the planets I simply moved the Transformation Point to the center of the stage and set the tween to rotate CW.

And finally each planet also has a 360 degrees rotation animation of one second.

I hope it all makes sense and that it can be useful for all of you.

Regarding to Dreamweaver, export your animation as a OAM Package and you should be good to go.

For responsiveness, the best you can do is to use the options available in the Publish Settings.

Preview:

FLA download:

animate_cc_html5_planets_orbiting.zip - Google Drive

Regards,

JC

[ahurani]

JC, That is exactly what I want to do. And cool, you even rotated the planets as they revolve around the sun. I also appreciate that you included the file you created. I will definitely look at that. It's amazing how fast a brain can delete information if it's not used. Like a hard drive. How long since I worked in that file? Ten years? Ah, delete it. Because of the help you and Colin have given me, I can now finish this job! Thank you.

[ahurani]

PS: Don't you guys ever sleep?

[JoãoCésar]

Haha

Sometimes.

[JoãoCésar]

This is excellent! I"m glad it helped you.

I'm pretty confident you'll remember everything and also will learn all the current and upcoming features.

I wish you the best in your job.

Regards,

JC

[ClayUUID]

Having every single planet line up on a regular basis looks really unnatural. Unless the intended output format is a looping animated GIF, it probably shouldn't be done this way. Just putting each planet in its own independently looping movieclip would give a much more natural-looking animation.

[ahurani]

Clay, I agree. That is what I'm trying to do. And, of course, I have run into problems. So, hombres brillantes, I am once again asking for help. The set up: I put the seven planets into seven independent movie clips. I created each movie clip with frames in multiples of 30 (for the frame rate) and let each run a different length; e.g., outer one is 240 frames, next one is 210 frames, etc. On the main timeline I put an instance on each movie clip on its own layer. I extended all layers on the main timeline out to 240 frames. And it looks wonderful! Until it hits frame 240. While the outer planet continues on, all the others jump back to their frame 1 origin position and start up again.

I had to turn on the looping function in the play bar area because this needs to run forever. That is the only difference I can see between my file and JC's file. His works beautifully. Mine sucks.

I've tried everything I can think of and the only thing that eliminates the jump is to make all the movie clips 240 frames. Or put all the planets into one movie clip, although this means they won't revolve correctly. If that's the only option, I'll take it.

Thank you for any brilliance you can give me.

[ClayUUID]

Movieclip timelines run independently of their parent timeline. So put them all on a timeline that's a single frame.

[ahurani]

Clay, Is that the main timeline? I tried making that one frame long and the animation wouldn't run at all. I remember having to extend the main timeline out to the longest movie clip, but things might have changed. That was a long time ago. Should I put all the movie clips on the same timeline instead of separate layers? Thank you for your help.

[ClayUUID]

It doesn't matter which timeline. The planet movieclips are restarting because the timeline they're in is restarting. If you put them in a timeline that's not restarting, they won't restart. It could be a single-frame timeline, or a longer timeline with a this.stop(); at the end, whatever.

I must stress that this only works if your animations are in movie clip symbols, not graphic symbols.

[ahurani]

And of course I used a graphic symbol. Thank you clearing up my confusion. Back to work on this animation. I hope I get it this time. Thank you Clay and thank you Colin and JC for all the help you've given me.