The above Flash animation was created using 3D Flash Animator.
We will spend a few hours learning how to make animations like this (once you
know what you are doing you can make this type of animation in less than half an
hour). 3D Flash Animator is a free program that can be downloaded from www.insanetools.com
(you cannot include working buttons, however, unless you pay the
registration fee).
Here is another demonstration of an animation created with 3D Flash
Animator (copyright Nigel Ward July 2001):
3D Flash Animator is much easier to use (and much cheaper!) than
Macromedia Flash, but you will still find it difficult to master since Flash
animations are based on vector graphics, not bitmaps. Bitmaps (in which
the color of every pixel is recorded) are not very suitable for animations.
Animations made with bitmaps (such as the 'animated gif' below) tend to be small
and jerky. In vector
graphics, objects are made up of straight lines, curves and fills. The straight
lines and curves are defined by mathematical equations (don't worry - you'll
never see them!). This has the advantage that the graphic can be enlarged with
no loss of quality (whereas enlarging a bitmap gives jagged 'artifacts'). The
disadvantage of vector graphics is that they usually look cartoon-like, rather
than photo-realistic. Vector graphics are also hard to draw, and also hard to
import from other programs - you need to create your vector graphics within the
program itself.
Flash animations run much bigger and more smoothly than
this 'animated gif' image.
Unlike Macromedia Flash, 3D Flash Animator does not require the use
of a 'timeline' to fix the timing of events in the movie.
Instead the duration of each event is specified in seconds. Recent versions of
3D Flash Animator do allow the use of timelines however. Macromedia Flash is
more reliable than 3D Flash Animator and also much more sophisticated in many
ways such as in its
scripting (programming) capabilities.
Like Macromedia Flash, 3D Flash Animator is based on JavaScript
and thus gives a helpful introduction to Object Oriented Programming (OOP). In
OOP, objects have not only properties but also actions or 'methods' associated
with them. This is not a difficult concept, for we humans also have properties
(height, skin color, weight...) as well as actions that can be associated with
us (walk, run, swim...).
This tutorial only introduces the most basic features of 3D Flash Animator -
check the Help system to learn more...
