User Guide

Chapter 11378

Animating objects and text

To animate objects for display in the Flash Player, you place the objects on layers

using the Animate > Release to Layers Xtra. You can animate blends or groups, as

well as objects attached to a path. To animate a text block, you ﬁrst convert the

text to paths.

The Release to Layers Xtra ungroups blends, groups, or objects attached to a path,

creates a new layer for each object, and assigns each ungrouped object to a new

layer in consecutive order (New Layer, New Layer-1, New Layer-2, and so on).

The Xtra places the ﬁrst object (or object in a group) on the current layer, and the

last object on the top layer. Releasing text to layers converts each letter in the text

block to paths and places each letter on a separate layer.

You will achieve the best results by designing the frames of your movie to animate

upward from the bottom layer to the top layer.

You can preview or export your animation as a SWF ﬁle using commands in the

Controller or the Control menu. For more information, see “Using the Controller

or Control menu with SWF ﬁles” on page 384.

You can also create your animation by placing objects on separate pages and

selecting Animate Pages or Animate Pages and Layers when you export the

FreeHand document as a SWF.

To prepare a text block for animation:

1 Select the text block containing the text that you want to animate, and position

the text block where you want the animation to begin.

2 Choose Text > Convert to Paths. For more information on converting text to

paths, see “Converting text to paths” on page 371.

3 With the text block still selected, choose Modify > Join.

4 Choose Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste to create a copy of the converted text block.

5 Use the Pointer tool to drag the copy of the converted text block to the position

where you want the animation to end.

6 With the Pointer tool, Shift-select the original and the copy of the converted

text block.

7 Choose Xtras > Create > Blend.

For information on animating the blend, see the following procedure.