Once you’ve downloaded and installed the new version, you should see a button at the bottom of the SmartMouth panel that says Advanced…

New Advanced Features

The Advanced button will bring up a window with 2 new options.

Looping

Loop settings allow you to control the loop setting applied to the outputted symbol instance(s). This can be applied if you want to animate each mouth shape, rather than use static images.

Keyframe Frequency

Keyframe Frequency allows you to control the frequency of keyframes that are automatically generated (1s – every frame, 2s – every other frame, or 3s – every third frame). You can use this setting to animate your mouth at a frame rate lower than that of the rest of your animation. For example, your animation might be set to 30 fps, but you want your mouth to animate at 15 fps, so that the mouth doesn’t look frantic. In this case, you could select 2s.

The image below demonstrates the different outputs generated by altering the Keyframe Frequency.

These new features are based on user requests. Please let us know what you think!

Hope to see you there!

So, I wrote this script as a potential antidote to that problem. When the script is run (by opening with Flash Pro), it will allow you to either back-up or restore all of your configuration files for that installation of Flash Pro.

In certain specific cases (no guarantees)—where the machine, the username, and the Flash version remain consistent—this could be used to maintain a SmartMouth activation (as well as other extensions and settings) through a Flash, CS, or OS reinstall.

The script is pretty experimental at this point, so please use with caution.

Download
backup_restore_Flash_config.jsfl (right-click and choose Save Link As…)

Dave Logan has a wonderful command called Enter Graphic At Current Frame that resolves this issue. Many Flash animators use graphics symbols  so much that they would prefer “entering at the current frame” to be Flash’s default behavior when they double-click to edit a symbol. A number of these users have sent me requests through the Extension Request Form. So I put together this panel to essentially make “entering at the current frame” the default behavior. The panel simply has to be open for the behavior to work (the Auto jump box is checked by default). There are some extra buttons for some added fanciness.

This is a total freebie, but donations are appreciated (donate button located in the right-hand column).

Download
(Compatibility: Flash 8 & up)
FrameAim.mxp

• Upped the Flash Player timeout limit from 15 to 45 seconds for files that take a long time to process.
• Added a warning for files that exceed Flash Professional’s 16,000 frame limit.
• Fixed an error that was occurring when serial numbers were entered incorrectly.
• Upped to the trial limits to 4 100-frame attempts per document.

These updates should help with issues encountered on larger files, as well as allow for more testing with the trial version. We still plan to release some new features to the extension in the near future.

Also, if you didn’t see the previous post, note that 50% of SmartMouth sales for the rest of this month will be donated to the California State Parks Foundation.

So far, I’ve only found one purchase location. I’ll post more links as they become available. Hopefully Amazon will have some links in the near future.

Animation with Scripting is an intermediate-level guide that covers a gamut of Flash animation topics in step-by-step detail, including: lip-syncing, walk cycles, visual FX with ActionScript, controlling a character with ActionScript, building an online portfolio, publishing to mobile devices, and automating tasks in Flash.

This is your chance to get your hands on a free copy! Find out how to enter below…

Ways to Enter:

1. Tweet about this post. 1 point
2. Post a comment on this entry.  1 point (Be sure to include your email address, it won’t be shown publicly, but we will use it to contact you if you win)
3. Subscribe to our newletter. 2 points
4. Blog about this post. 2 points

If you choose all 4 options, you’ll have 6 chances to win.

The winner will be announced on Monday, April 25th. Good luck everyone!

If you’re interested in this book, you might also be interested in Chris’ How to Cheat in Flash books.

Update (4/25/11): The competition is now closed. Congratulations to Cécile for winning the giveaway! Thanks to everyone for entering! Honorable mention to Alexis for also upping his chances by earning all 6 possible points!

Here are a couple items we’re considering. We’d love to have your feedback so that we can determine where to best apply our resources.

1. Additional languages. This would only apply to the user interface at the moment (and not the help documentation).

2. Keyframe Frequency Control. This would allow you to limit or reduce how many keyframe are produced in Flash Pro by SmartMouth. Some people have noted that by default, SmartMouth outputs a lot of keyframes. This is fine if you’re animating on 1s (24-30 fps), but if you’re animating on 2s (12 fps), the mouths move too quickly in relation to the rest of the animation. In response, we released the Convert to 2s and Convert to Ns extensions to convert keyframes to different frequencies. These extensions can be used with or without SmartMouth. This proposed new feature, however, would be built into SmartMouth and would choose which keyframes to omit based on how unlikely SmartMouth believes they are to a match, rather than just arbitrarily removing keyframes.

It might look something like this:

Update (11/16/2011):
The Keyframe Frequency feature has been added in version 1.1.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Extension Manager

Extension Manager (EM) is a free application that is automatically installed when you install any of the Adobe Creative Suite applications, including Flash Professional. If you have Flash installed, you have EM installed, whether you knew it or not. You can install extensions using EM, as well as package them.

Packaging an Extension

When you package an extension with EM, all of your extension files are collected into a single file or package. That package can then be distributed. Double-clicking on the package will automatically launch EM and begin the (brief) installation process. Before packaging your extension, you’ll need to create an MXI descriptor file.

The MXI file

An MXI file is a special XML file that contains information about the extension (title, author, version, copyright, license agreement, which files it includes, where to install the files, etc.). Here’s sample text from an MXI file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<macromedia-extension
name="Sample Extension"
version="1.0.0"
type="command">
<author name="Your Name" />
<products>
<product name="Flash" version="7" primary="true" />
</products>
<description>
<![CDATA[
This extension does A and B.
]]>
</description>
<ui-access>
<![CDATA[
The command can be found in ‘Commands > Sample Extension’
]]>
</ui-access>
<license-agreement>
<![CDATA[
]]>
</license-agreement>
<files>
<file source="Sample Extension.jsfl" destination="$flash/Commands" />
</files>
</macromedia-extension>

I generally start from an existing MXI, and make any necessary changes. In the sample text above, you’ll (minimally) want to change the following items: the name and version attributes in the root tag, the name attribute in the author tag, the files tag(s) (and attributes), as well as the description and ui-access tag content. The version attribute in the product tag determines the oldest version of Flash in which your extension can be installed (7 = MX 2004, 8 = Flash 8, 9 = CS3, 10 = CS4, and so on).

The version you choose will depend heavily on which JSFL commands your extension uses. Note the Version heading at the top of the each page within the Extending Flash documentation; that will tell you the earliest version in which a particular object, method, or property is available. The ui-access tag is an area where you can provide instructions to the user on how to launch your extension. Both the ui-access and description will appear in EM once the extension has been installed (see the image at the top of this page). Note that both tags also contain CDATA wrappers. The CDATA tags allow the content inside to be interpreted as plain text instead of XML content.

The MXI file can be edited in a simple text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). You should have a file tag (inside the files tags) for each file used in your extension. For example, a basic tool, like the one in the previous tutorial, would require at least 3 file tags:

<files>
<file source="TestTool.jsfl" destination="$flash/Tools" />
<file source="TestTool.png" destination="$flash/Tools" />
<file source="TestTool.xml" destination="$flash/Tools" />
</files>

The source attribute should reference the location of the source file relative to the location of the MXI file, so that EM knows where to look for the files when packaging. For this reason, it’s easiest to keep the MXI file in the same directory as your source files. Note the use of $flash in the destination attribute. This is a handy-dandy way to reference the location of the user’s Flash Configuration directory, regardless of their version or language. The version of EM that the user (or their system) opens will determine which version of Flash that receives your extension.

Generating the package

After you’ve edited your MXI file in a text editor, open it in EM. It will ask where you want to save your packaged file (usually I opt to keep it with my MXI and source files). Once you’ve given your file a name and location, EM will package all the files referenced in the files tag of the MXI file and include them in a single MXP (or ZXP for CS5-specific extensions) file. You can now post this extension to your website or the Adobe Exchange and share it with others. All potential users of your extension have to do (after downloading ) is double-click your MXP file and they’re off and running.

Where to Go From Here

That wraps up this series on creating Flash extensions. Thanks for reading!

There’s a wealth of cool extensions already available on the web, including a few on our site. You can always learn from comparing your JSFL to that of others on the web. If you’re interested in learning more JSFL, don’t forget to check out (my shameless plug of) Chapter 4 in Animation with Scripting, the book that I co-wrote with Chris Georgenes. There’s also a nice intro to JSFL, contributed by Dave Logan, in Chris’ How to Cheat in Flash series. And, don’t forget about the excellent Extending Flash MX 2004 book.

If these tutorials helped you to create any extensions, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Also in This Series

• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 1: Introduction
• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 2: The DOM
• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 3: Manipulating the Library
• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 4: User Interaction
• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 5: SWF Panels
• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 6: Custom Tools
• Creating Flash Extensions — Pt. 7: Distributing to Others