Tweening shapes

By tweening shapes you can create an effect similar to morphing, making one shape appear to change into another shape over time. Flash can also tween the location, size, and color of shapes.

Flash can shape-tween as many shapes as you place on a layer, but placing a single shape on each layer usually produces the best results. Use shape hints to control more complex or improbable shape changes. Shape Hints control how parts of the original shape move into the new shape. See Using shape hints.

To tween a shape:

1	Click a layer name to make it the current layer and select an empty keyframe in the layer where you want the animation to start.
2	Create the image for the first frame of the sequence.
	Use any of the drawing tools to create a shape. The shapes you want to tween must be on the same layer. Flash cannot tween the shape of groups, symbols, text blocks, or bitmap images.
3	Create a second keyframe the desired number of frames after the first frame.
4	Create the image for the last frame of the sequence.
	In addition to changing the shape, you can also change the color and position.
5	Double-click the first keyframe in the sequence to open the Frame Properties dialog box. Or select the keyframe at the beginning of the sequence and choose Modify > Frame.
6	Click the Tweening tab in the Frame Properties dialog box and choose Shape from the Tweening pop-up menu.
7	Choose an option for Blend Type:
	Distributive creates an animation in which the intermediate shapes are smoother and more irregular.
	Angular creates an animation that preserves apparent corners and straight lines in the intermediate shapes. Angular is appropriate only for blending shapes with sharp corners and straight lines. If the shapes you choose do not have corners, Flash reverts to Distributive shape tweening.
8	Set the Easing slider.
	Drag the Easing slider toward Ease In to slow the beginning of a transition, or toward Ease Out to slow the end of the transition. The closer the slider is to the end of its range in either direction, the more pronounced the acceleration or deceleration. When the slider is closer to In, the change begins slowly and gets faster at the end. With easing left in the middle, shape tweening occurs at a regular rate through all frames. By default, the rate of change through tweened frames is constant. Easing creates a more natural appearance of acceleration or deceleration in motion by decreasing the rate of change toward the beginning or ending frames of the tween.