Hi All,

Any suggestions on where I should start to learn how to create a animation of
a vine growing...? Similar to the animation on the left of the following link:
http://www.adobelive.co.uk

I guess a masking effect would be one option but I want to avaiod the straight
line that a mask creates, the following shows the straight line I want to
avoid: http://tutorials.learnflash.com/tutorials/flash/lines.html

Should I be looking at (or is there any) other methods rather than the Masking
approach?

TIA
Danny

This question has been asked numerous times in the past couple months. Everyone
wants to make a growing vine. The most efficient way is to use masks. I don't
know why you think a mask makes a straight line. Masks can be any shape you
like. Simply cover the line you want to appear and, frame by frame, change the
shape of the mask in each frame.

You can also manually chop up the line. Starting with the last keyframe (full
drawing) and working backwards, chop off a little bit more in each frame. Then
you don't need a mask.

Sorry, there's no magic way to do this without manual frame-by-frame editing,
either of the shape itself or the mask.

Hi Walter,

Thank you for your reply, I feared that your explanation would be the only way to achieve this.

Cheers

Hi

'The ONLY way to do this' - seems you under-estimate the power of Flash and
your abilities to find an answer.

There is always a choice and Flash is no different, you can do exactly what
you want with Actionscript.

All you need to do is send me an email address and I will send you a .fla that
can be modified to your hearts desire.

If you want to see an example then go here:
http://members.inode.at/554689/fruit.html

It's completely random and creates a new vine every time.

Hope it helps

There is also a nice tutorial by Chris Georgenes here:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

"Click on Flash CS3 Professional", and then on "Creating animations using
shape tweens".

I am unable to view your links (I am blocked from those sites at work) so I
don't know if this tutorial is pertinent to what you're trying to do. Hope
it's useful for you.

I was going to mention ActionScript. And, Feldkircher, your example is
gorgeous. I eat my hat. But for someone wanting to create something from
scratch, even someone like me who is reasonably conversant in ActionScript, I
still think it takes about one-tenth the time to do it as a frame-by-frame
animation rather than coming up with the script. That's why I still advocate
the masking approach.

Portuguesedanny, I don't know why you're 'afraid' of the answer. Once you have
your design, doing the masking needed to reveal it will take an hour, maybe
two. Not a big chunk of your life. In general I think the best attitude is to
embrace the things that machines can't do for us automatically and rejoice that
in many situations, real artists are still required.

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]The Feldkircher[/b][/b][/i]

If you want to see an example then go here:
http://members.inode.at/554689/fruit.html

It's completely random and creates a new vine every time.
[/q]
NICE. :beer;