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Creating Adobe Animate/Flash Extensions — 7-part How-to Tutorial (Archive)

Posted byJustin
This is a legacy article. I no longer create or support Animate/Flash extensions, but these articles are preserved here as a reference for anyone to use.

The ability to create extensions is one of my favorite features in Flash Pro. You can extend Flash to include new features and automation in the form of Commands, Panels, and Tools. This series of tutorials will show you how to create your own extensions for Flash. There is a special scripting language that allows you to control Flash, and it is known as JSFL.

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Flash Extension: Convert animation to any frame interval

Posted byJustin

This extension converts selected frames that contain frame-by-frame animation, classic motion tweens, or shape tweens to keyframed intervals, just like Convert to 2s, except that you can set up any frame interval (3s, 4s, etc).

Note: When I tested this in Flash CS5 (Mac) it ran perfectly. In CS3, not so much. So use with caution. Same goes for Convert to 2s. I’m not sure where the discrepancy comes from, looks like a Flash bug, but I’ll fix it if I can.

Download
(Compatibility: MX 2004 & up)

Convert to Ns.mxp

Flash Extension: Convert to 2s

Posted byJustin

I’ve had a few requests for something like this recently. This extension converts selected frames that contain frame-by-frame animation, classic motion tweens, or shape tweens to every-other-keyframe (aka ‘2’s). Traditional animation uses 2s for content that doesn’t need to be animated at high speeds. Some animators also employ this technique in Flash.  This extension is similar to ToonMonkey‘s Tween 2 Keys, except that it also converts frame-by-frame animation as well as tweens.

This extension can be used to convert SmartMouth automatic lip sync output to 2s (as requested by a user).

Convert to 2s - Before & After

If you want to convert Motion Tweens (in CS4 & up) or Armatures, you’ll need to take one extra step before running this command: right-click on the tween or armature and select Convert to Frame by Frame Animation. I haven’t found a way to script this step yet, but I’ll continue to look into it.

Convert to Frame by Frame Animation

Download
(Compatibility: MX 2004 & up)

Convert to 2s.mxp

Update (11/16/2011):
The Keyframe Frequency feature  is built into SmartMouth as of version 1.1.

FrameSync 2.0 Now Available

Posted byJustin

FrameSync is a Flash extension, originally released nearly 2 years ago, that allows you rapidly lip-sync your characters with an audio track. With this newest release, you can sync your characters even faster and easier than before.

In the process of putting together a Flash CS5 animation book with Chris Georgenes, I started looking at new features that could be added to FrameSync based on the updated extensibility layer in Flash Professional CS5. In addition to that, I had a few requests from users about displaying label-less keyframes in the FrameSync panel. While I was under the hood making these changes, I made a few other improvements as well. Hope you enjoy!

New Features!

The new features for version 2.0 are as follows…

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