Flash cs4!! - Is there a way to put multiple animations on one layer without just “extending” the original one?

Not sure what you are trying to do, but you can put the animation in a movieclip and place that on the main stage.

i think i figured it out. let me know if this is wrong

if i create for lets say just “text.”—i can animated like 2 seconds of text..put some blank frames after that…then animate more text on that same layer, right?

this sounds kinda obvious now whn i type it out. hah

sorry…if i create a LAYER for just text…

Sure you can, but it’s still not making any sense to me :) You can put a hundred things in one layer if you want, it’s just not very recommended.

ok heres what i’ve been doing (im just trying to figure out if theres an easier way)

theres a voiceover guy speaking about something..and Im making an animation where everyword the guy speaking says pops up on the screen as he says it, and follows his voice. and its like after 5 words the animation kinda shifts over and the new words start appearing. (so its like a continuous stream of text).

but ive been putting each word on a seperate layer and theyre building up fast as you can imagine.

so if there are words being animated at the same time on the stage…i need seperate layes because theyre overlapping. but i cant really use those layers again later on because then i’d have completely unrelated random words on the same layer and it would get unorganized.

hahah ya really need to see my project to understand maybe. its a mess

heres another video (i didnt make it) but its exactly what im trying to do

http://vimeo.com/4505339

its tough because its not seperate like “scenes”...like if it was a movie it would be one continuous shot

Ah I see, it’s simply a matter of inconvenience. If it’s simply vertical scrolling you want to save (through all those layers) you can make collapsible folders to place all the layers for your first animation, a second folder for you second animation, and so on.

But what I said about movieclips is still valid. For instance in the video every tip could be a movieclip. You create all your animations inside the movieclip, place the movieclip in the timeline on your mainstage and as long as the movieclip is visible it will show the animation. So if the timeline inside your movieclip is 100 frames, it would have to be on 100 frames visible on the main timeline. Tip #2 could be another movieclip that also sits on the timeline but in a different layer, result: you just saved dozens of layers on your main timeline.

There are a number of advantage to this method. For instance the rotating effect shown in the video could simply be accomplished by tweening the movieclip on your main stage. That way you don’t have to rotate all the objects inside that movieclip manually.

wow that sounds extremely helpful. i just got butterflys in my stomach when you said i wont have to rotate all the objects manually. haha

how to i edit it as a movie clip? and can i convert the layers ive already made into a movie clip?

If the animation gets too large you may have issues with the timing on your voiceover as well. (You can find a wealth of information at flashkit that will help you in your projects.

good point. thanks alot man

also…how do i take this question down once i have the answer? lol

and how about that movie clip thing? how do i do it

It’s been a long time since I’ve used Flash, and even then it wasn’t for animating. But I think you can right click a layer and copy it. Open the movieclip you just created and paste the layers.

Think of a movieclip as nothing more than a holder, in fact think of the main stage as a movieclip. Nothing is different inside a movieclip, except you can back to the parent container it lives/sits/placed in.

Ps. Why would you want to take this question down? Fluther doesn’t work like that, it’s a way to share knowledge, not get your fix and remove it (others could benefit from it, you’re not the only one that never worked with Flash before). I guess we won’t be seeing you back either.

oh no sorry…this is the first question i ever put up on here lol. i didnt know the routine. ok ill leave it up. thanks alot man youve been really helpful. im excited to try it.

but how do i create a movie clip, so i can drop all my layers in it?

You can select the item you want to be a movieclip and press F8, and there is also an options in the menu which I forgot right now.

alright thanks alot man. ill give it a try

Oh wait I do have it installed, go to insert > new symbol (ctrl + F8). The object you create will be in the library (which you can access by pressing ctrl + L). Just drag it onto the stage from there.

awesome. thanks.

I couldnt get it to play on the stage as a movie clip…but it seems to work fine if i convert it to a graphic. will that still work for me in the long run?

I wish I had a good answer for that, but I don’t. The last time I dabbled with Flash was cs3, right before AS3.0 was introduced. Having said that, I just quickly and poorly made a graphic and a movieclip and it both could be tweened. Here is my test file. Animating is much more easier in CS4 btw.

@markyy You da man!