Waving Flag Animation

[Al_Dugan@adobeforums.com]

I have a project where I currently have a flat Illustrtor artwork of a Flag. What I would like to end up with is a realistice Flash animation of the flag waving in the wind.

Before I go and start tracing video frames, is there any plugin or secret out there for doing this?

Thanks.

[hitpawz@adobeforums.com]

Nothing aside from 3D packages that I've personally heard of.

[jonf@adobeforums.com]

Don't know if it will suit your purposes, but the envelope distort tool in AI might help make your task a little easier.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Yes use the envelope distort and do each one on a separate layer and then export as a swf animation.

What you might want to do is use the frames from a video as a template.

[hitpawz@adobeforums.com]

Agreed, the envelope distort is the only way to do this successfully. It will keep the artwork on the flag flowing along it's shape. It's really going to depend on how realistic you want to get as to wether you should trace each frame though. You won't be able to recreate realistic overlaps and new folds and things without additional objects. But like Jon said, it depends on your goal.

[Al_Dugan@adobeforums.com]

Thank You everybody. I will be playing around with this soon.

Thanks for the input.

[James_Talmage@adobeforums.com]

Because of its emphasis on live effects (you can blend between instances of Symbols, and different rotations of 3D Effects, etc.)AI is actually pretty handy for working with Flash when you need to make vector frame-by-frame animations.

Here's one way to do a waving flag:

<http://www.illustrationetc.com/AIBuds/AIFishFlag/FishFlag.html>

This is "quick & dirty", but it shows the basic steps. The SWF is 4 frames and weighs 46K, but that's before bringing it into Flash, which I almost alway find reduces the size dramatically.

Usually, AI is more efficient in doing this kind of thing. But in this instance, I had to apply the mapping to each of the four extruded paths individually because AI's 3D Extrude does not necessarily result in the same number of faces even though the number of points is the same on each path. Also, I trimmed the base paths by hand in the first few steps, because AI is maddeningly goofy about reversing path directions. It was quicker than trying to get a blend to act right.

Still, it boiled down to 10 fairly quick steps. Again, this is just for the basic idea. If you want more realism, you can elaborate a bit on the number of frames, alterations of the base paths, and using a perspective view in the Extrude dialog.

JET

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Hey but that looks like a waving flag?

Very nice James!

[Joe_Ciaramella@adobeforums.com]

I had this same exact issue come up and I tried every possible way to get this to work (and look natural) in Illustrator - no luck!! :(

What I wound up having to do was brring your flag into AfterEffects and use the Wave feature - this created a very realistic flag wave. I then exported to a SWF and all was good.

Dont know if you even know AE, or if you have it - but if you dont have it, you can download a free demo from Adobe's site - wich is fully functional for 30 days.

Hope this helps!!

- Joe.C

[Al_Dugan@adobeforums.com]

I do have After Effects and I will try what you suggest. But I will also play around with all the other suggestions as well.

Thank You all for your help. I appreciate it greatly.

[Al_Dugan@adobeforums.com]

So I ended up trying a lot of different things, The After Effects approach was the simplest but the wave effect only allows bitmap outputs as oppsed to keeping vector artwork.

I think I'm going to go with Jame's approach because that looks really nice and fairly simple to do. The only problem being I am working with Illustrator 10 and his method uses CS. Think I might just upgrade.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

You'll like it but I keep 10 loaded just in case.

[James_E._Talmage@adobeforums.com]

"Think I might just upgrade."

I'd highly recommend your upgrading from AI10 to CS if you are doing much stuff with Flash. (Or even if you're not, for that matter.)

As mentioned above, AICS has several key advantages over even FH in working with Flash:

1) AI can blend between Symbol instances. You can then attach the blend to a path and release the Blend-On-Path to Layers (for SWF Frames). Similar things can be done in FH, but AI has the advantage of the Symbolism tools (particularly the Stainer) which you can apply to the key steps of the blend before releasing.

2) You can blend between 3D objects. FHMXa also has a crude Extrude tool, but to use it for generating frame-by-frame SWFs, you have to tediously make a separate Extrude object for each frame. Often, a 3D spin or flip that would take hours to build in FH can be accomplished in minutes in AI because of this.

3) AI's 3D Effect includes the all-important option for zero perspective (parallel perspective, or axonometric). This is the most versatile kind of perspective for Flash because the same images work at any "depth" in the movie. Inexplicably, FH's Extrude tool does not accomodate it. Even more unbelieveably, neither does Swift 3D (unless they have added it in a recent version of which I'm not aware).

For these reasons, I find myself in the peculiar position of still preferring FH's Bezier drawing tools over AI's, but I prefer using AI over FH for working with Flash. It's a strange world.

And though I had only just got my feet wet in it, I wish Adobe had not so soon given up on LiveMotion.

JET

[Mordy_Golding@adobeforums.com]

Very nice work James (as usual)... :)

I still use LiveMotion 2 all the time.

:) Mordy

[James_E._Talmage@adobeforums.com]

Al (and interested others),

On the subject of leveraging AI Blends and such to generate SWF frames; did you know this?:

AI won't let you Blend between Envelopes.

1) Set some text. Apply an Envelope distortion to it.

2) AltDrag a copy of it. Make some change in the shape of the copy's Envelope.

3) Try to create a Blend between the two. The Make command of the Object>Blend menu is grayed. Rats.

4) Select each distorted object and Object>EnvelopeDistort>Edit Objects.

5) Now try to make a Blend. Still won't work. Double Rats.

But now do this:

1) Drag the first Enveloped object to the Symbols pallet.

2) Drag the other Enveloped object to the Symbols Pallet.

3) Drag an instance of each onto the page.

4) Make a Blend. Egads, it works!

It gets better (and stranger):

1) DirectSelect one of the base objects of the Blend. Try to edit the shape of its Envelope. No cigar. You can't select the Envelope's points because they are contained in a Symbol Instance.

2) DirectSelect the base object. In the Symbol Pallete's option menu select Break Link To Symbol.

3) Select the other base object and similarly break its link to the Symbol.

4) Now DirectSelect a point on one of the Envelopes and change it. Cigar! Moreover, even though the Blend is no longer a Blend between two Symbols, and even though you can't Blend between two Envelopes, this "impossible" Blend is still live, and the intermediate steps update according to your changes. Have another cigar!

Stranger yet:

Do the whole thing again, but this time with two entirely different Envelopes. For example, use Make with Mesh for one of the original objects, and Make with Warp for the other. Yes, different Envelopes with different numbers of points. Oddly/delightfully, in my experiments so far, the results are not at all unpredictable or screwey.

Just think of the SWF possibilities!

:-)

JET

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Mordy how do you like Live Motion 2 I never upgraded I guess since it works in OS X. I should probably wonder if it is available?

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

I guess it is not available.

[Gary_Newman@adobeforums.com]

James - Great detective work! I tired blending between envelopes and was surprised when it didn't work, and gave up. I'll be experimenting with your new information today. Thanks for sharing.

[Mordy_Golding@adobeforums.com]

I'm sure you can find LiveMotion on eBay or something...

You won't find it from Adobe, that's for sure.

:) Mordy

[Al_Dugan@adobeforums.com]

Hey James,

I am trying your cool method but am having problems with the map art part. It just isn't working. I follow the directions then click scale to fit but nothing happens to my artwork.

Am I missing something?