Motion Tween

The key difference between motion tweening and shape tweening is that motion tweening operates on grouped objects or Symbols, where shape tweening requires non-symbol, non-grouped graphics.

So, once you've decided what type of graphic - grouped/symbol or ungrouped - you want to animate, the basic steps are very similar. Do the following to create a motion tween.

Step 1

Step 2

Highlight both the shape and its outline and select Insert | Convert to Symbol from the menu.

Step 3

In the Convert to Symbol dialog, select Graphic for the symbol behavior and give the symbol an identifying name.

Step 4

Select frame 20 in the timeline. Select Insert | Keyframe from the menu. This copies the contents of the previous keyframe (in this case, frame 1) to frame 20.

After you've inserted the keyframe, you will see a filled circle in frame 20, indicating it's now a keyframe containing content.

Step 5

Select frame 1 and in the Property Inspect choose Motion from the Tween drop-down menu. You cannot use a Shape tween here, because the object you're working with is a symbol.

Step 6

The tween is displayed on the timeline. However, we have not yet made any changes between frames 1 and 20. If you tested your movie at this point, it would play for 20 seconds but nothing would happen.

There must be change of some type between keyframes for tweening to take effect.

Step 7

The change we're going to create is for the circle to move across the stage to the right and disappear.

To do this, select frame 20. Then, select the circle on the stage and drag it to the right. This accomplishes the first type of change, location, which will translate into movement to the right when the movie is played.

Next, with frame 20 still selected, select Alpha in the Color drop-down menu and choose 0%. This will cause the circle in its last position to be completely transparent.

Step 8

Test the completed movie by pressing the Enter key or selecting Control | Test Movie from the menu.