MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX-USING DIRECTOR MX, Use Manual

Page: 193 / 624

Animation 193
Frame-by-frame animation
To create animation that is more complex than is possible with simple tweening, you can use
a series of cast members in frame-by-frame animation. Sprites usually refer to only one cast
member, but they can refer to different cast members at different times during the life of
the sprite.
For example, an animation of a man walking may display several cast members showing the man
in different positions. By placing all the images in a sequence within a single sprite, you can work
with the animation as if it were a single object.
A single sprite can display several cast members.
Sprite animating
Use this approach sparingly for movies that will be downloaded from the Internet, because all cast
members must be downloaded before the animation can run. As an alternative to this type of
animation, consider using vector shapes, rotation and skewing on bitmap cast members, or a
Flash movie (see Chapter 11, “Using Flash and Other Interactive Media Types,” on page 293).
You can create multiple-cast-member animations in a variety of ways in Director. The following
procedure explains a basic approach. The Cast to Time command provides an effective shortcut;
see “Shortcuts for animating with multiple cast members” on page 195.
Note: The best way to prepare cast members for use in multiple-cast-member animation is with onion skinning in
the Paint window. For more information, see “Using onion skinning” on page 234.
Single sprite in the Score
Cast members in the sprite