*** From the Archives ***

This article is from November 3, 2008, and is no longer current.

Review: Flash CS4 Professional

Pros: Major new tools for 3D and inverse kinematics, Motion Editor, XFL file format, improved integration with other CS4 apps, easy authoring of Adobe AIR.
Cons: Object-based animation model can be tricky, small 3D and inverse kinematics toolsets, weak Deco tool.
Rating: 90
Believe it or not, Flash reached version 10 with CS4 — to put that in perspective, Photoshop reached version 11 with CS4. Flash is certainly now a mature application, and in Flash CS4 Professional the previous advances of ActionScript 2 and ActionScript 3 merge with a new animation structure and tools to create an application quite different from its predecessors. Flash CS4 Professional might be the most fundamental change in the application’s history.
A New Animation Engine
Flash’s animation paradigm has always been based on frames: symbols on separate frames were animated according to their properties on the start and end keyframes. This animation paradigm was easy to grasp, but it wasn’t very flexible. Changing multiple properties over the course of time required more keyframes, which made things harder to revise.
Flash CS4 Professional introduces a new animation engine based on objects rather than frames. You apply tweens to objects rather than to spans of frames, and you can modify animations by moving the playhead in the timeline and then working with the object on the Stage. Flash CS4 Professional also displays an object’s tween on Stage as a motion path you can modify like any other path. Animating in this way is intuitive and versatile.
Figure 1. The most groundbreaking change in Flash Professional CS4 is its object-based animation engine. Note the editable motion path associated with the symbol’s motion tween. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

Motion is now created with ActionScript rather than frame-to-frame interpolation — we saw this coming in Flash CS3, which could convert tweens to ActionScript. Now it works both ways: You can save tweens as Motion Presets and apply them to any symbol on the Stage, and symbols you place onto a frame span assume its animation properties. A new Motion Presets panel helps you save, manage, and apply presets.
The new animation engine takes some time to master: Changing keyframes, adding frames and such are more difficult. The Help pages on animation are a good resource when you’re learning the ropes.
One tool for tweaking tweens is the new Motion Editor panel, which is an advanced interface for modifying such properties as motion, transformation, and effects during animation. It’s a complex interface but there’s no better way in Flash to animate multiple property changes in a single tween. Users of advanced animation apps like After Effects will appreciate the new Motion Editor.
Figure 2. Flash CS4 Professional’s Motion Editor allows very fine control over an animation’s properties. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

If you prefer the old frame-based animation style, you can convert the new motion tweens to frame-by-frame animations — but each frame becomes a keyframe, which defeats the purpose of tweening. A better option is to use the “classic tween,” Flash CS4 Professional’s term for standard frame-based tweens.
The Disappointing Deco Tool
Flash CS4 Professional’s drawing and painting tools are pretty much the same as before. The one major new feature for artists is the oddly named Deco tool. It uses algorithms to produce graphics with fractal, grid, and kaleidoscopic patterns. The fractal option, called “Vine Fill,” comes with default symbols — a leaf and flower, which produce something akin to flowery wallpaper.
Figure 3. The Deco tool can create an interesting Vine Fill right out of the box, but that’s about all it can do without custom symbols. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

The grid and kaleidoscopic options (“Grid Fill,” “Symmetry Brush”) use black boxes as default symbols, which produce nothing inspiring. I find the Deco tool useful only when I need to build patterns with my own symbols.
3D Tools Are Great First Effort
Designers will find Flash CS4 Professional’s new 3D tools far more useful than the Deco tool. Unfortunately, there are only two — 3D Rotation and 3D Translation — but they cover the basics for moving and rotating symbols in a 3D space.
The 3D Rotation tool makes skew and perspective changes very easy. Before Flash CS4 Professional, I had to edit symbols in Illustrator to create the illusion of depth. The 3D tools don’t just give depth to symbols — they actually create a 3D “space” that symbols will honor when they’re moved across the Stage. This creates a lot of exciting animation possibilities.
The 3D Translation tool moves objects in 3D space, along the x-, y- or z-axis. For years Flash animators have replicated this illusion of 3D by moving and scaling symbols, so the new tool doesn’t really add new functionality to Flash CS4 Professional. I don’t use the 3D Translation tool very much, but it does do its job well and for this review I used it in my bald eagle animation. The eagle’s location and depth in space was handled exclusively with the 3D Translation tool.
Flash CS4 Professional’s 3D capabilities are still slight — it doesn’t hold a candle to products like Electric Rain’s Swift 3D — and 3D beginners might find the controls and interface hard to grasp. I had to fiddle with the Perspective Angle and Vanishing Point settings to get the results I wanted, and even then it sometimes took trial and error to achieve the motion I wanted. I’m also waiting for the Warp tools from Photoshop and Illustrator to migrate to Flash.
Long-Overdue Bones
One of the much-demoed new features in After Effects CS3 was the Puppet tool, which let users “pin” joints to an element and animate the limbs that connected to these pins. This is a long-used method of animation called “inverse kinematics” (IK), where elements are mapped to a series of “bones” and animated in a group. This can produce some realistic animations for bodies and machines that are composed of limbs or components.
Flash CS4 Professional features two new IK tools, the Bone and Bind tools. Like the 3D toolkit, this is a small set compared to what’s in other animation apps like Anime Studio Pro. The Bone and Bind tools also require a little practice if you’re new to inverse kinematics. However, I’m glad to see IK tools in Flash, and they do offer powerful animating possibilities. I was able to construct armatures and animate them with almost no fuss and in very little time.
Figure 4. Click on the screengrab below to see this bald eagle animation, which uses the 3D and Bone tools to create realistic motion. You’ll need to download the Flash Player 10 to view the Flash movie properly.

Be aware that both 3D and IK animations require ActionScript 3. If you want to include 3D and IK in your Flash movies, you’ll have to change your publish settings (File –> Publish Settings…) to allow ActionScript 3.
Fresh AIR
For the past couple years, the “next big thing” in Flash application development has been Adobe AIR, which brings rich-media Flash and Flex applications to computer desktops. Now, Flash CS4 Professional can test and produce Adobe AIR applications with ease right out of the box. The Adobe AIR publishing option is in the Player drop-down menu within the Flash tab of the Publish Settings dialog box. If you know you’ll be developing an Adobe AIR application, simply choose to create a new Flash File (Adobe AIR) in the New Document dialog box to use Adobe AIR settings by default. It’s easy enough now that, if you can create a SWF file with Flash, you can create an Adobe AIR application with Flash CS4 Professional.
The CS4 interface and XFL
Like the rest of the CS4 applications, Flash CS4 Professional’s interface has been revised. Here are some of the changes:
* The Timeline and Properties inspector, which have been above and below the Stage for years, have moved. The Timeline now resides below the Stage and the Properties inspector is in the right sidebar. This is to conserve space for the Stage, but unfortunately, the Properties inspector wastes more space now.
* Like all CS4 apps, Flash CS4 Professional resides in an application frame that organizes and tiles panels and the Stage. The application frame also has a handy Workspace switcher menu and Help search field in the upper-right.
* You can now modify many settings in various panels with “scrubby” text, as in After Effects and Photoshop. I’m very happy to see this change and wish it were in all CS apps.
Another major change you may not notice is the new XFL file format. FLA, Flash’s traditional file format, is a closed standard that other apps can’t produce. XFL is an open standard format that applications other than Flash can produce. The first example is InDesign CS4, which can export print layouts as an XFL file for quick and easy use in Flash CS4 Professional. XFL files work well in Flash CS4 Professional and even retain live text.
One major drawback with XFL is that Illustrator vector art placed in an InDesign layout is rasterized when exported to XFL. Illustrator also seems unable to properly display text from Flash CS4 Professional: Paths break up into small, straight paths and give the text a jagged look. I also tested Flash CS4 Professional’s performance when importing Illustrator files, and while it can recognize layers and multiple artboards (the latter are new to Illustrator CS4), the same jagged edges show up on fine curves, such as in text. I’m disappointed that the integration between Illustrator and Flash is not quite perfect.
After Effects CS4 also supports XFL, which creates many collaborative possibilities between video animation and Flash multimedia.
The Bottom Line
Flash CS4 Professional is a radical upgrade for such a mature application. Because it offers speedy performance, reliability, and major innovations, people who spend a lot of time designing or developing in Flash should certainly buy the upgrade to stay on top of the technology.
The decision is less clear if you don’t use much ActionScript or don’t want to change your frame-based animation methods, but I recommend the upgrade anyway. It will open up new possibilities in 3D and inverse kinematics.
 

  • peterward says:

    Link to animation not working.

  • Terri Stone says:

    Sorry for the complexity, Peter, but if you first download the latest Flash player, then click on Figure 4 after installing the latest Flash player, the Flash movie will open in a separate window and does play correctly.

    Terri Stone
    Editor in Chief, CreativePro.com

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