Working with Live Swif

Welcome to the LiveSwif help blog!

On this page you will find information about the LiveSwif program. The dynamic tutorial for the swif lite porgram will be posted soon- for now you will find a list and description of the tools and howto perform basic functions. If you do not have the Live Swif FLASH animation program, please click here
*Note* on download page be sure to download the lite version- the full version is only a 30 day trial.

If you have already downloaded the program and want to see some advanced tutorials click here to visit the flash links blog or enter the url: http://flashtutorial.blogspot.com

Download Tips

If you are not as tech savvy as the everyday person wearing nerdy t-shirts with binary code talking about some video game you've never heard of-here are some simple tips for downloading and installing the software.

1.Save to a nearby directory like the desktop-when you download the software a window will pop up giving you locations of junk on your computer. Select the desktop icon,usually appearing on the left of the screen.This way the setup or installatio file is easy to find and easy to delete.

2.Install the program-double click-and follow instructions

3.If you are having trouble launching the program from the start menu, or local drive, find that person with the nerdy t-shirt and ask for help.There is usually somebody in close proximity who knows their way around a computer.True nerds are always willing to help.If all else fails you can always contact me by clicking here.

Okay the program is installed, you're ready to play so lets get on with it.

Animation, be it flash or almost any other computer type is based on a sequence of frames, objects, and commands. Flash animation allows you to cut corners in creating an animated sequence and assign simple behaviors to objects-filling in the frames for you. So instead of working in each individual frame you can create one frame skip ahead to the last frame in your animation and give the computer instructions on what to do in between. This saves you a lot of time and allows you to focus on getting creative with your project. I will go over basic animation movements and behaviors and leave it up to you what you do with them.Creating motions with shapes changign layers,importing sound, and working with key frames.

If you would like to see a quick example of what LiveSwif can do please click here.

So let’s get to work!

Learn The Basics & Tools

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Layers-
Animation programs work with layers Such as your foreground and background. This way you only have to design the background once and have your object move through it. The more layers you have the more complex your animation will become. Adding more layers allows you to have motions in the background moving such as trees waving, or grass flowing, all moving independently of your other layers. The layer with the higher number will be the foremost layer seen-your foreground. The layer with the lowest number will be in your background. You can create new layers in Live-Swif Lite by clicking on the new layer button. The new layer button is a yellow button towards the top of the screen just below the tab marked layer 1.


Here is the layer window-notice the tabs highlighted in red-these are the layer tools including delete mask and new layer-visit the layer link to learn more about links, layers and masks
To learn more about layers, masks, foreground and background, click here.


Here is the toolbar for Liveswif- the description of the tools is described below in order from top to bottom


Tools-
From top to bottom the tools are:
The select tool-allows you to select, manage, and edit objects.
The freehand tool-allows you to create a unique shape or path.
The curve tool-allows you to curve objects, stretch text, or create a motion path
The draw shape tool- allows you to draw simple shapes such as circles and squares.
The spline tool-allows you to create curved selections of paths
The fill tool-allows you to paint an object or create gradients-light to dark-or between colors.
The contour tool- allows you to manipulate the contour or size of your objects.
The disfigure tool-allows you to warp shapes ,objects, and paths
The magnify tool-allows you to zoom and edit from an enlarged or minimized view
The text tool- allows you to type text

The Insert command at the top of the screen allows you to insert animation types such as shape transformation, and motion animation.

Below the frame workspace area is another text area. This is the action script field. You can use previously created sripts to do advanced animation without all the hard work. To see some action scripts, or to copy some, click here.

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Curve tool
You can use curve tool to edit shape, text object's along path and path motion's path, Essentially, there is no difference between these objects for curve tool. After choosing curve tool, the editable path will be highlighted.
Liveswif provides per-handle tip mechanism, The status bar displays tip when you move mouse over the tool handle (path, path node, fill point....).
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Draw path.
1. Choose the Curve Tool
2. Move the mouse to where you want to start. Click to start the path.
3. Move the pointer to the next position along the path.
4. Either:
drag to add a bezier curve segment and shape it,
or click to add a straight segment.
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Edit path.
Before editting path, You need to select it with select tool and then choose Curve tool.
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Extend a line.
You can extend a path if it is not closed:
1. Click the start or end point of the path.
2. Either:
drag to add a bezier curve segment and shape it,
or click to add a straight segment.
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Delete path node.
Select the node, Hit "Delete" key.
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Insert path node.
Move mouse onto path, click to insert new node.
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Reshape path.
Move mouse onto path, drag to reshape it.
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Others
Click buttons on the options panel to Break up a path, splite path or reverse path.

Shape Tool
The shape tool lets you creates shapes including rectangle, round-rectangle, circle, ellipse, star, and supershape.
The shapes created by shape tool are path-editable.
What's a Super shape?
A Belgian Biologist named Johan Gielis discovered a formula that can create a vast diversity of natural shapes. By tweaking four parameters it can produce everything from simple triangles and pentagons, to stars, spirals and petals. more info can be found at: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/curves/supershape/
You can define super shape parameters at options panel.
Spline Tool
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Add control node.
1. Choose the Spline Tool
2. Move the mouse to where you want to start. Click to start the spline.
3. Move the pointer to the next position along the spline path.
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Delete control node.
Select the node, Hit "Delete" key.
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Append control node.
1. Select the spline object (not closed) you want to append to with the Select tool.
2. Choose Spline Tool.
3. Select the start or end node.
4. Move the pointer to new position and click, new control node will be added.
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Tip: Spline objects are not curve tool ready, to edit it with curve tool, you need to convert it with command "Tool" "Convert to shape"

Contour Tool
Contour tool lets you create new shape around the edges of objects, inner or outer.
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To create contour.
1. Select the object(s).
2. Select the contour tool.
3. Drag any of the contour handles.
Text Tool
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To create new text object.
1. Choose Text tool.
2. Set text properties in the options panel, "Font", "Size", "Bold"....

3. Either:
Click on the canvas.
Or drag (With or without CTRL) to set column.
4. Type.
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To edit existing text object.
1. Select the text object with Select tool.
2. Choose Text tool.
3. Either:
Set new properties in the options panel and apply them.
or Move onto the text object, Click when cursor changed to enter text input mode. You can use arrow key, HOME, END key to set cursor position; BACKSPACE or DELETE key to delete char.
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To make "Text along path" effect.
1. Select a shape object with Select tool; this shape object will provide the path.
2. Choose Text tool.
3. Move onto the shape, Click when cursor changed .
4. Type.
You can use curve tool to edit the path at anytime, the text object will reformat automatically.