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For
anyone who is trying to use TBS and Flash together in their
content creation workflow, this thread will contain some tips
and information that we have learned at TGRS in our transitional
efforts.
Problem: We often need to quickly and easily moving
assets from Flash to TBS (either prior Flash work assets or
newly created Flash assets that you choose to create in Flash
for use in TBS)
Obvious method: publish FLA content to SWF for your movie
and then import the SWF movie into TBS. At that point to acquire
specific assets for future use, you have to hunt for them in the
exposure sheet and move them to a library. Can become very
tedious at best particularly for large numbers of assets because
you bring over significant additional stuff and it is all over
the place in the exposure sheet because of how it was imported.
Easier method:
(i) Make sure all the Flash assets you want are in symbol form
in your Flash library.
(ii) Copy the desired symbols into the library of a "new" Flash
document (this step is needed if you are only moving some of the
library symbols and just want an easy way to insure you get all
the symbols you want into your import movie)
(iii) Create a single layer timeline with some number of blank
keyframes (you will eventually want one frame in your time line
for each symbol asset you want to move to TBS)
(iv) Starting with the first frame of the time line, drag the
first symbol from your library into frame one (approximately
centered in the frame. If the symbol is larger than the stage
area, you should open the symbol for editing and scale the
actual source art to be able to fit inside the stage.)
(v) Repeat this process frame by frame until you have each
symbol on stage in its own separate frame. You have basically
created a sequential movie of your desired symbols library ready
for TBS import. It is like a symbols slide show, one frame per
symbol.
(vi) Publish the SWF for this time line. (name your SWF
something simple like f1.swf or whatever you choose as that is
the way the element in TBS will be named on import.
(vii) Open a new animation set in TBS and import your desired
SWF that you just created
(viii) You now have an exposure sheet with two elements, one
called "drawing" which is empty and one called "f1" or whatever
you named your SWF file. You can delete the empty "drawing"
element just to get it out of your way.
(ix) Now you can do one of several things depending on how you
want to use these assets.
(a) You could just select the whole "f1" element and drag it
into your desired global library in one step. This moves all
your newly imported symbols into the library together inside
that element. And they are now available to reuse in your future
TBS production work.
(b) If you prefer to subdivide the assets into several different
library catalogs based on the nature of each asset then you can
drag them one at a time from the exposure sheet into your
desired library catalog.
(x) Once you have put all your imported Flash assets into their
chosen library and catalog, you can set the library view to
"thumbnails" and go through and appropriately name each template
for future reference. (I like the thumbnails feature as it makes
the library look like a "contact sheet" where you can scan all
your assets comparatively.)
Even for a Flash library of several hundred symbols this process
is relatively fast and you now have those assets available to
use in your TBS work. the symbols came from Flash but the
animation can be done totally in TBS.
This is a much easier method then trying to strip selective
pieces out of prior Flash movies . It works really well and
opens up being able to use Flash for appropriate content
creation like things that need shape tweening or 3D props you
brought in from Swift 3D through Flash etc.
Workflow Note: (The
TBS into Flash import process is nearly seamless but the Flash
into TBS import process is not. You can work in Flash and move
symbols to TBS where you can do additional work and animation
and then for action scripting and interactivity you normally
want to complete all the work in TBS and then import to Flash
and after adding interactivity you just publish your content from
Flash.)
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