Remember that in order to motion tween, we had to either group our shapes or convert them to a symbol. I recommend converting them to symbols so that you can get used to the idea that symbols are reusable elements. With shape tweening, your shapes cannot be symbols or be grouped. They have to be broken apart. What does this mean?
Breaking Apart
1. Close the 'motion_tween2.fla' movie and any open libraries.
2. Open a new movie. You can press Control + N to open a new movie or go to File>New or click on the icon for new movie that looks like a white piece of paper in the main toolbar below the menu toolbar.
2. Name your new movie 'shape_tween.fla'. We are going to use the library from class04.fla in our 'shape_tween.fla' movie. Go to the File Menu - File>Open>Open as Library and select 'motion_tween2.fla'.
When you open the library, there will be two recognizable symbols: our red circle and the mouse. Selecting a symbol's name in the library will display the symbol in the top pane of the Library window.
Now open the library for your current movie by either going to Window Menu - Window>Library or using Control + L or Command + L for Mac.
Move both libraries close to one another on the stage. Select the motion_tween2.fla library. Select the mouse text in the bottom to display the mouse graphic in the top pane. Drag the mouse from the top pane of the motion_tween library into the bottom pane of the shape_tween library. There are several ways to get symbols from one Flash movie into another.
Drag the name of the symbol in the bottom pane of one library into the bottom pane of the other library.
Drag the image of the symbol in the top pane of one library into the bottom pane of the other library.
Drag the name or image of the symbol from any library directly onto the stage and the symbol will automatically appear in the library for the current movie (we did this with the mouse when we originally dragged it from the Flash common libraries).
You cannot drag symbols from the currently open movie's library into a library whose movie is not open and active.
The advantage of using symbols from other libraries is that you can create symbols that you use repeatedly in different movies without having to recreate them for each movie. Flash also has a feature which allows you to use shared libraries. This advanced feature is not covered in this course.
Just remember to open common libraries from the Window Menu to access Flash's pre-designed symbols. Or Open as Library from the File Menu. Do not use Open as Shared Library for this course.
Drag the mouse from the motion_tween library to the shape_tween library.
Drag the circle from the motion_tween library directly to the stage. The symbol also appears in the library.
Close the motion_tween library.
Editing Symbols
We are going to break apart the mouse (sounds gory) into its original shapes so that we can tween him into the circle. To do this we could drag an instance of the mouse on the stage and break apart just that instance. This will enable us to retain the symbol in the library. We could also edit the symbol in symbol editing mode. If we edit the symbol, any instances on which the symbol is based will also be edited. I don't want to lose the mouse symbol but I want to take you into symbol editing mode to show you some things. So, I'll make a duplicate of the mouse symbol and name it mouse2 and edit the 'mouse2' symbol.
Please continue to the next section of this lesson.
