Flash, After Effects and Maya practice - July 26, 2009
Visual Effects, Animation, and Motion Graphics

  1. The first part of the video was created using Flash and demonstrates a bouncing ball. One bouncing ball has no ease in or ease out applied to the drop to the floor (ease in) or the bounce up (ease out) from the floor. The ball on the left has no easing. You should be able to see that as you watch the video. It plays twice.

  2. The Flash SWF file could not be used as footage for Adobe After Effects. The bouncing balls and the shape tween morphing from circle to square and back was done in Flash, but the File menu > Export command had to be used to create a resource that could be used as footage and imported into the After Effects project. I chose the .avi (AVI) format from the Flash File menu > Export dialog. Very strange that the Flash produces SWF, but we had to export AVI to use in AE, but when the AE project was all finished. it was exported out as FLV.

  3. The last part of the entire animation was done using Autodesk Maya. The squash and stretch of the ball that was trying to become a snowman was done by using the Aussie Steven Murdoch's video tutorial on Rigging a ball for squash and stretch deforming, which will be covered during class on Monday, July 27th.

  4. The snow effect was done with After Effects. Effect menu > Simulation > CC Snow Effects. You received a handout about this and we did it in class early in the 2nd to last week of class (Snowfall and rainfall special effects day - After Effects).

  5. The following two text animations were done using Flash:
    6. FLASH Shape and
      Motion Tweens   
                    Moving up and down the Flash stage
                    Movie Clip symbol animated by main timeline
Flash
                    Twirling symbol with its own built-in timeline
                    Changes size and opacity and color
                    8 instances of this symbol on the stage
    All of the other Text animations that you see in the video were done using Adobe After Effects Text layers instead of using Flash symbols.

  6. Further details on using the Final Project ideas shown on this page. Also, Friday email note links and Storyboard information.

  7. Inspiration for the animated rectangles comes from this popular TV show introduction sequence.

  8. more later...

  9. ...