Guides

Guide and Guided Layers

Now you may delete your butterfly movie from the stage – it will stay in the library.

We will create a free curve motion tweening that is called “Guide” in Flash design

• Extend the main timeline to 100 or more frames
• Add one more layer. Call the top layer lrPath and bottom – lrButterfly
• In the layer path draw the curve, which will represent the trajectory of the butterfly flight. Use the smooth pencil option. Start and end of the line must be close to each other but should not merge. If line ends accidentally snap to each other, use the eraser to make a gap. Color of line doesn’t matter – it will be invisible on the stage
• Place a butterfly movie symbol somewhere on the stage in the bottom layer
• Double click the icon to the left of the lrPath name – you will invoke Layer Properties panel.
• Change the layer type to Guide. The layer icon should change to the Hammer (that means under construction)
• Open Layer Properties panel for the lrButterfly. Change it’s type to Guided. Now the path icon changed to the icon with the curved line.
• Highlight the butterfly and accurately port it to the one end of the path line. You may fill how it “sticks” to it. While dragging the butterfly you will see the small circile inside it – it’s the point what is going to snap to the path
• Now place a keyframe at the end of the main timeline at the butterfly layer
• At the last keyframe drag the butterfly to the end of the line and snap it.
• Insert motion tweening between butterfly layer keyframes

Butterfly should move approximately as our example. Don’t worry that it always “looks” at one direction – we will fix it soon.

If you work with guides the first time you may need to adjust to the process of “porting” symbols to the path. Move your red hairline cursor along the timeline. If symbol “jumps” from the path it means it was not properly snapped.

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