10. Draw your (Cool web site) path, making a few curves
10. Draw your path, making a few curves or loop-the-loops, if you want. You can use any of the drawing tools: Pen, Pencil, Line, Circle, Rectangle, or Brush. You can also use the Straighten or Smooth modifiers if you re using the Pencil tool. (The path shown in Figure 9-5 was created by using the Pencil tool with the Smooth modifier.) Lock the object s layer while you re drawing the guide path so that you don t move the object by accident. Refer to Chapter 6 for further instructions on hiding and locking layers. 11. Click the first frame of the animation and drag the object by its registration point (shown by a small circle) to the place on your path where you want your animation to start; let the mouse button go when the registration point snaps to the desired place on the path. 12. Click the last keyframe and drag the object by its registration point to the place on the path where you want the animation to end; let go when the registration point snaps to the desired place on the path. 13. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) to play the animation. You should see a few moments of death-defying skateboarding (or whatever animation you ve created). You can find the completed animation, skateboarder.fla, in the Ch09 folder on this book s companion Web site at www.dummies.com/go/flash8. Getting your tween ready for prime time The steps listed in the preceding section for tweening along a path provide only the basic process. You often need to make several refinements to motion animation along a path. Not satisfied with your motion path? No problem. Here s a really great feature that lets you easily modify your path. Select the motion guide layer. Choose the Selection tool and reshape the line by dragging from any point on the line. (Just be sure not to break the line apart!) Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) again, and the skateboarder follows the revised path. Want to get rid of that unsightly motion guide? That s easy, too. Click the eye column of the motion guide layer to hide it. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) to play back the animation. (Even if you don t hide the motion guide layer in this way, the motion guide isn t visible when the movie is published.) Symbols, groups, text, and bitmap images have registration points that are usually at the center of the graphic. When you tween along a path, you might want another point to follow the path. In the section on groups in Chapter 4, you find out how to change the registration point to get the results that you want. What if you ve already got a motion guide and you want to link it to an object on a different layer? Perhaps you draw an oval and then decide that you want Chapter 9: Getting Animated 197
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