Preface

Adobe Animate is a platform-agnostic asset creation, motion design, animation, and interactivity software packed full of time-tested tools and workflows. Using this software, you can target multiple platforms to produce motion design content, character animations, interactive displays, games, desktop and mobile applications, and anything else you might think of. Perhaps the greatest strength of Animate is in the diversity of its toolset, along with the unique workflows that allow developers to use it for design and for designers to use it for development. Animate is a true creative powerhouse for hybrid creative work unlike any other.

Given Animate's previous incarnation as Flash Professional, a fair amount of what the software can produce is web-based, but the past few years have really opened things up in order to target all manner of diverse platforms. We can target the native web through the HTML canvas element or via WebGL, generate rich animated content for broadcast via television and film, develop games and applications for Apple iOS, Google Android, Microsoft Windows, and Apple macOS, and even generate content for virtual reality. By the end of this book, you'll be able to produce a variety of media assets, motion design materials, animated artifacts, and interactive content pieces—all while targeting a wide set of compelling platforms.

This book will not teach you everything there is to know about Animate—as no book could possibly do that. It isn't an introductory book either as there are many such works available elsewhere. The intent of this book is to help you gain mastery of Animate through the diversity of its various workflows and platforms built upon a solid foundation of its history alongside present capabilities. I hope you enjoy the contents of these pages and take the concepts within to further the creative legacy of this wonderful software!

Who this book is for

This book is perfect for web, graphic, and motion design professionals with elementary experience in animation who want to take their existing skills to the next level. Building upon an initial understanding of fundamental animation concepts will help you to get the most out of this book and produce results that extend beyond the basic expectations.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, A Brief Introduction to Adobe Animate, provides background and context around the history and capabilities of the software. We'll also take a deep dive into all the new features available in Animate 2022.

Chapter 2, Exploring Platform-Specific Considerations, covers the various target platforms that are natively supported by Animate by exploring the underlying aspects of each platform and when to use one over another, and we'll even see how to convert between document types.

Chapter 3, Settling into the User Interface, explores the Animate interface in depth, alongside tips and tricks to get the most out of working with the software. You'll discover how to customize the entire workspace to your liking to achieve a more customized workflow.

Chapter 4, Publishing and Exporting Creative Content, explores ways of getting your content outside of Animate in a form that can be consumed by users or reused in additional ways within other software and systems.

Chapter 5, Creating and Manipulating Media Content, covers the fundamentals of Animate workflows, including both the creation of content with various vector shape tools and the use of different tweening mechanisms within the software. In addition to shape data, we also examine the use of symbols and instances within Animate and see how to apply motion to both simple shape and symbol instances, along with the application of easing presets.

Chapter 6, Interactive Motion Graphics for the Web, explores traditional motion graphics workflows for the web through the creation of an animated advertisement using both imported bitmap graphics and vector content native to Animate.

Chapter 7, Character Design through Layer Parenting, explores the Advanced Layers mode and the ability to rig character animations across layers using layer parenting mechanisms. We'll also see how to create automated lip-sync animations through the power of Adobe Sensei!

Chapter 8, Animating Poses with IK Armatures, explores a more refined and controlled way of rigging an armature through the use of the Bone tool and IK armatures with full joint constraints and the management of poses across the timeline. We'll also see how to share completed rigs and related assets through the use of Animate Asset files and the new Assets panel.

Chapter 9, Manipulating Warped Objects through Advanced Rigging, expands on rigging concepts explored in the previous two chapters with the introduction of the Asset Warp tool, mesh deformations, and rigging with a variety of bone types through the use of warped objects.

Chapter 10, Working with the Camera and Layer Depth, dives into the camera as a means to animate an entire scene that is otherwise fairly static and even taps into layer depth manipulation and the use of layer effects and filters.

Chapter 11, Developing Web-Based Games, explores the construction of a playable web-based game targeting HTML5 Canvas using CreateJS JavaScript libraries as we build out the logic for our entire game bit by bit across the timeline and through the use of global scripts.

Chapter 12, Producing Virtual Reality Content for WebGL, explores the virtual reality and WebGL glTF document types within Animate through the assembly of fully interactive virtual reality environments using scenes, textures, and additional imported assets.

Chapter 13, Building Apps for Desktop and Mobile, focuses on the AIR document type, through which we will build a small utility application for browsing photographs using ActionScript 3.0 as a programming language and the Adobe AIR SDK as a development platform for desktop and mobile platforms.

Chapter 14, Extending Adobe Animate, examines a set of options available to extend Adobe Animate through the creation and execution of custom in-app tutorials, the use of the JavaScript API to automate actions, and an overview of the Custom Platform Support Development Kit.

To get the most out of this book

You will need Adobe Animate 2022 or a later version installed on a compatible macOS or Windows computer in order to most effectively follow along with this book. A full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is the most beneficial way of doing this, as you'll get access to the Adobe Fonts service we use in certain projects and will have additional access to useful software such as Photoshop, Fresco, and Dimension or Substance 3D Stager to create content for use within your Animate projects. For the web-based projects in this book, an up-to-date web browser is highly recommended as well.

Also refer to the Animate System Requirements page for specific hardware and software specifications: https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/system-requirements.html.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code via the GitHub repository (link available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example projects, media assets, and code files

You can download the example files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Adobe-Animate-2022-for-Creative-Professionals-Second-Edition. In case there's an update to these assets, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Code in Action

Code in Action videos for this book can be viewed at https://bit.ly/3cmGUzC.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781803232799_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Locate the PondSign.png image files within your filesystem and drag each into the appropriate scene."

A block of code is set as follows:

private function photoSelected(e:Event):void {

var selectedPhoto:File = photos[e.target.selectedIndex];

PhotoViewer.source = selectedPhoto.url;

}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select More Settings from the Properties panel."

Tips or important notes

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Get in touch

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