Stone Design Forums

I have been looking round the web for an animated giff/Flash application. There is plenty at the top end but what about the ammeter user? iDraw (cocoa) now has flash and animated giff output or you are at the mercy of Macromedia. Apple's Motion (reasonably priced for what you get but you need loads of horse power) can output a quicktime movie which Quicktime pro can then output as a flash animation I think (can anybody verify this). If Quicktime can produce a Flash animation can you utilise this from Create? and is there an advantage over an animated giff? Could a Flash animation be displayed on a create page in the same way an animated giff is? and then placed in the HTML? I think there is room to exploit this area of the market.

One of my clients provided me with Flash for me to learn it so I could make them Flash content for their site and future projects. It was amazingly hard to get even the simplest animation done.

I then tried a thirty day demo of Adobe's LiveMotion. In that thirty days I did enough work to pay for the full version (the same way I bought my first Create license by the way).

Sadly LiveMotion is not the most stable Mac OS X program I've ever seen and Adobe has discontinued it. This isn't a problem for me as I already have it, but for others I been recommending using the Export to flash feature added to ImageReady CS. It uses the same feature that you would use to make an animated GIF file while out putting a flash (SWF) file.

While I think this could maybe be added to something like GIFfun, I doubt it could be done at GIFfun's price (FREE). I think there might be some additional license fees Macromedia asks developers for.

Major differences between GIFs and SWF files are in size (SWF tend to be smaller) and quality (GIFs are limited to 256 colors while SWF are JPEG and vector based and can use thousands).

Can SWF be used in place of GIFs... yes. As someone who wants to ensure compatibility with viewers browsers, I tend to keep my SWF in the range of Flash 4/5 compatibility so people aren't forced to go find a plug-in to view my sites (these days most systems have at least those versions preinstalled).

You can add SWF files to Create, though you won't see it in Create. You can use the embed tool feature (I use it for quicktime movies). You'll need to add additional tags, these are grabbed from some of my sites:

QuickTime:
Code:
<embed src="splash.mov" BGCOLOR="#999999" width="320" height="255" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" AUTOPLAY="TRUE" VOLUME="100" CACHE="TRUE" align="BOTTOM">

Flash:
Code:
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" height="450" width="600">
         <param name="movie" value="splash.swf">
         <param name="quality" value="best">
         <param name="play" value="true">
         <embed height="450" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="splash.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" quality="best" play="true">
</object>

I think that is all the additional code you would need (modifying it for size and file name/location), it has been a while since the last time I made anything beyond the standard page with pictures. It takes some getting used to, but it puts out a nice result.

Hope that helps.


Oh, and thanks for the complement on my posts. I have fun writing them and it is even better knowing that people find them helpful.

I find them Very very helpful! Well, done.

What program can I use to create vintage 3d type animation? I know very little about 3d animation, but i'd like to create very basic 3d animations for example, the video from Dire Straights, Money for nothing with the 2 3d movers. I figure doing something this simplistic can't be that difficult, so if any one could point me in the right direction, i'd be happy!
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I'm very fond of Anime Studio Pro which is a professional tool to make Animation even for cinema, it's 140 bucks or so, but they also have a cheaper version Anime Studio which might be your choice, it can export to SWF and QuickTime (and other formats).

http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/anime/index.html

Then there is also a slew of animation software from ToonBoom (Studio, Animate etc.) all of which can export to SWF (and "normal" video). THese tools take a more traditional approach wich mich appeal more to the seasoned animator, though.

http://www.toonboom.com/main/

that helps a lot, thanks for sharing