Placing 2 or more animations in one graphic

 

Actually this is quite a simple and painless process. This tutorial is the next step after you learn how to make a simple animated graphic. And for this project, you will need two animated graphics with all their layers intact, or you can use the two that I am using in this tutorial. Download them here. Make a folder and unzip them to that folder.

 

Ok, now open image2, image3 and image4 in psp8. For this files to work in Animation Shop 3, I had to save them to be recognized by PSP 7. As you can see in fig. 1, when you go to save a pspimage file, you hit the option key which puts up a menu letting you chose the format to save in, which is PSP 7. (Once this option is chosen, it stays chosen till you change it so you don't have to do this every time you save a graphic)

Figure 1

 

As you can see in figures 2-4, when you open those images, the layers are intact. They must stay intact. Actually, we could have skipped opening them in PSP 8 and just opened them in Animation Shop 3, but I wanted to make sure you understood that the layers must be intact and that the files must be saved as PSP 7 compatible to work in AS3.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Open AS3 and load in those three images and this is what they should look like. (see fig 5) A note here, you need the same amount of layers for each graphic. If for instance, you only had 3 name layers and 4 rose layers, you could expand both graphics and then select the second name frame and copy it to the first empty frame after you last name frame. To do this, you would select the last name frame, right click, and follow the menu in fig 5a.

Figure 5

Figure 5a

 

Notice the blue red color around each graphic. That shows that that frame is selected. If you click on a graphic and hit ctrl A or got into edit and hit select all, it will select all the frames in that graphic. What i want you to do now, is to select all frames in each graphic, one at a time and after you select all frames in each graphic, right click on the that graphic to get the menu in fig 6 and select Frame Properties and when the next window comes up, change 10 to a number between 15 and 20 (I chose 15). This tells AS3 how fast to run the frames. The higher the number the slower it runs.

 

Figure 6

Now I will explain the purpose of the blank graphic. We are going to use this as our blank canvas, so to speak. This allows us to place the other two graphics exactly where we want them. But to avoid this step, once you get the hang of it, you can always make one of your graphics larger than necessary there by just using two graphics. What we are going to do now is copy our two animation graphics to the blank one. First take the flower animation and hit ctrl A again just to make sure its selected (its a bit redundant but it keeps you from messing up if for some reason things became unselected). Go to edit and hit copy. Now select all on the larger blank graphic then right click and follow the menu you see in fig 7.

Figure 7

If your image doesn't show up after you save it, move your mouse around till it shows up. (Usually it is only out of the picture, but if that doesn't work, then try to save again.) Place the graphic where you want it. Now do the same with the name graphic or what graphic you choose. Once you have done this click the crop button which is shown depressed in fig 8 and the outline the graphic to the size you want and then double click within the selection and it will crop to the size you want. It will then open all the frames as shown in fig 9.

 

Figure 8

Figure 9 (there is a 4th frame, but it is not showen here)

 

Now click the animation button in the upper right menu (a slice of film) and you should get the follow animation.

 

 

I hope this tutorial is helpful and don't hesitate to ask questions.

jaa copywrite @1999