The Tween object allows you to create sophisticated animations with ease by letting you decide on the appearance and location of your object at just a few key positions. Then Opus automatically generates the frames of the animation in between. These "between" frames give the process its name shortening in-betweening to tweening.
In Opus the Tween object is basically a frame with it’s own timeline. This timeline displays below the editing window in the same panel where the Notes View is also located. It lists the objects in the tween and lets you add and move keyframes for each.
You can place object(s) in the tween frame and then set one or more keyframes in the timeline. At each of the keyframes you can decide the size, shape, position and colour of the object and Opus will automatically create the intervening frames.
Most of the normal visual Properties of an object can be tweened – the object can be dragged to a new location and can resized, skewed or rotated using the relevant control handles just as with any other object.
The fill and pen colours of vector objects can be changed even if gradient fills are used and you can even tween the outline styles.
Note:
When using an object with a gradient fill use a gradient fill at both ends. If you want to tween to a solid colour keep the gradient settings but change all the colours to the single colour to appear one solid colour. The tween process can then tween the colour change too!
However, background and border styles cannot be altered. Neither can effects, blends or textures. If you edit these properties at any keyframe the change will be applied to the object throughout the tween.
Note:
Some effects such as shadow and flare can only be used for individual objects in tweens when publishing to standalone .exe and will not work in Flash even though you can apply these effects to static objects in Flex publications. However, if appropriate, you can apply such effects to the whole tween object but this will apply the effect to ALL the consituent elements.
Text cannot be edited in a tween and only the position and rotation can be tweened. If you wish to perform more complex tweens on a piece of text you can convert it to a vector and then apply the changes to properties you require.
For vector objects you can even edit the position of the constituent nodes so that objects can morph their shape. This can be particularly effective for morphing text which has been converted to vectors or for animating one object into another.
If you don’t quite like the automatic result at any particular point you can select any of those intervening frames and set them as keyframes to modify the object at that point too.
TIP:
You cannot play a tween timeline backwards but you can always edit the object in the first keyframe whilst leaving it intact in the last. (Don’t forget to add the final keyframe to the timeline before you start editing at the first keyframe)
TIP:
You cannot play a tween in one direction and then reverse it. If you want the object to return to its original state simply create at least three keyframes one at the beginning and one at the end where the object is untransformed and then add another keyframe in between in which the required transformation takes place. When played back the object will transform and then change back again. Or cut and paste the initial keyframe to the end.
You can place a tween object within another tween object and thereby have an animated object animating in another way. As an example you may create a tween of a butterfly flapping its wings (but stationary) and then animate that animation around the screen to simulate flight.
Note:
Tweens of complex objects or tweens which are nested or subsequently animated may require a lot of computing power and this should be taken into account when designing your publication. Plan your publication sensibly and test on as many different computers as possible.
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