Excerpt from Adobe Flash CS4
Professional Digital Classroom

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• Additional Resources for Learning Flash

What’s New in Adobe Flash CS4? - continued

The 3D Rotation and 3D Translation tools

A significant new addition to Flash Player 10 and the design toolset is 3D support through the 3D Rotation and 3D Translation tools. You can now rotate and transform movie clip symbols along an x-, y-, and z-axis, and all aspects can be animated and edited using the Timeline and Motion Editor.

Any 2D content can be rendered into the 3D realm, which opens the door for stunning and realistic perspective and camera pan effects with graphics, type, and even bitmap images. In addition, all 3D aspects can be programmatically controlled with the addition of several new ActionScript 3.0 classes and commands.

Animation techniques and 3D tools are covered in Lesson 5, “Advanced Tools,” and Lesson 7, “Advanced Animation.”

You can now rotate and animate any 2D object in the 3D realm with new 3D support and drawing tools.

Inverse Kinematics: The new Bone and Bind tools

A concept very familiar to 3D artists and traditional animators is Inverse Kinematics (IK), which determines how a chain of jointed or connected objects are positioned relative to one another when one object in the chain is moved. Think of your own arm: When you move your forearm, your hand and upper arm both reposition themselves according to how the three are jointed together. Animating this type of motion in Flash has historically been very involved and difficult—until now.

You can now join together shapes and symbols to build IK objects, create poses, and animate those poses along the Timeline. The Bone and Bind tools allow you to draw virtual bones to join objects together and edit their connections, opening up unlimited possibilities for traditional animators and new Flash users alike.

You’ll discover more about joining objects together and animating poses in Lesson 5, “Advanced Tools,” and Lesson 7, “Advanced Animation.”

You can now join together shapes and symbols to create and animate poses with IK behavior.

Improved library management

When creating symbols or converting existing content to a symbol, you now have the ability to sort all new symbols into new or existing folders at creation time. In addition, you can search the library for assets or symbols by name using the new Search field at the top of the Library panel.

New CS4 interface

The most apparent change in Flash CS4 is the new interface and workspace, which repositions some key panels (such as the Timeline and Property Inspector) and makes organizing your workspace easier than ever. You will also find many new workspace presets, including a Classic preset that resets panel and Stage positions back to their traditional CS3 positions.

Many panels now benefit from the better organization and grouping of features, such as the Property Inspector, which now appears vertically in your workspace and includes dedicated sections for Color, Sound, and Filters. Panels can be collapsed to space-saving icon view or expanded for more detail, and panel sections can also be collapsed.

Experienced Flash users may notice the absence of the Parameters and Filters panels—the functionality of these panels is now included in the Property Inspector.

The new CS4 interface is cleaner and easier to use, and includes several useful presets right out of the box.

New F4V video format

Flash’s new F4V video format promises higher-quality video at lower bit rates, with new support for MPEG-4 video and AAC audio to Flash. F4V supports encoding using the h.264 codec, an industry standard for the delivery of HiDef content online and on Blu-ray disk. In addition to h.264 support, F4V also supports HE-AAC audio, the higher-quality successor to MP3.

F4V encoding can be achieved through the video import process in Flash (File > Import > Import Video) or through the Adobe Media Encoder.

Adobe Media Encoder

Replacing what was previously known as the Flash Video Encoder, the Adobe Media Encoder helps you streamline common video encoding tasks. You can batch convert video into .flv and .f4v video format for use with your Flash movies or interactive projects, and even add sequences from Premiere and After Effects compositions.

Save presets for common settings, or choose from one of many pre-packaged presets.

The Adobe Media Encoder helps simplify and speed-up many common video encoding tasks.

And, you’re off!

Now that you’ve had a glimpse of the new and improved Flash CS4 features, it’s time to see them in action. Head now to Lesson 2, “Flash CS4 Jumpstart,” where you’ll dive right in and start working in Flash CS4 Professional. You can find more specific information about each of these capabilities throughout the lessons in this book

Adobe Flash Training Class Locations

AGI offers regularly scheduled and private Flash classes at our training centers. Adobe Flash Training in or near Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Orlando, and London, England. Learn Flash with a Flash class from AGI. Visit our Adobe Flash training class locations page.