Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Classroom In A Book | Page 199

Morphing with Shape tweens
Shape tweening is a technique for interpolating amorphous changes between
shapes in different keyframes. Shape tweens make it possible to smoothly morph
one thing into another. Any kind of animation that requires that the contours of a
shape change—for example, animation of clouds, water, or fire—is a perfect candi-
date for shape tweening.
Both the fill and the stroke of a shape can be smoothly animated. Because shape tween-
ing only applies to shapes, you can’t use groups, symbol instances, or bitmap images.
establish keyframes containing different shapes
In the following steps, you’ll animate the gently undulating surface of the ocean
beneath the crane with a shape tween.
1 Continue with the file of the crane animation called 05_workingcopy.fla.
2 Lock and hide all the layers except for the water layer. The water layer contains a
transparent blue shape at the bottom of the Stage.
3 Move the red playhead to frame 50 in the water layer.
4 Right-click/Ctrl-click on frame 50 in the water layer and select Insert Keyframe.
Or, choose Insert > Timeline > Keyframe (F6).
A new keyframe is inserted at frame 50. The contents of the previous keyframe
are copied into the second keyframe.
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Lesson 5
Articulated Motion and Morphing