[Sumaleth]

Anyone familiar with Flash? I need to pick your brain.

I've done some lipsync animation using this approach:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uh3jhbCPbw

And now I need to motion-tween that whole thing around the screen, in a way that doesn't affect the existing lipsync keyframes.

If I simply add motion keyframes to that symbol, when I tweak the motion keyframes they mysteriously move the lipsync keyframes too. What's the trick to setting this up? Seems to be some big secret.
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[Ian Jones]

It's pretty straightforward actually, but not an obvious thing. That is one of the worst aspects of Flash, the interface is pretty abysmal.

What you need is to parent every small object / tween to something else so you can move it all around as one. The way you do this is by placing it inside another symbol.

Create an empty movie clip, this will be your parent object (EG face or head). Create the tweens inside this movie clip (double click it, and it opens its own independent timeline and layers). You may have difficulty copying the existing tweens inside a new symbol, I can't remember exactly how to do this easily (yes I know, it should be easy in theory... but flash can be retarded somtimes). So you end up animating the mouth inside the face / head movieclip. Then you animate the face / head by returning to the main timeline (there is a breadcrumb trail at the top of the timeline which shows / navigates the scope you are working in).

[Sumaleth]

I tried your method today, but it didn't fix my problem.

I can sort of see what's causing my problem now, though I don't get the logic.

The tweens turned out to be a red-herring. Essentially I have a symbol with its own keyframes that I want to start playing at frame 1 of playback and continue uninterrupted to the end of the animation.

But when you select that symbol and put a "position" keyframe on it, that also puts a keyframe on its "Play Once" value. So if I keyframe at frame 10, for example, then it sets a keyframe of 10 on "Play Once" too. Now that's fine, unless I later drag that keyframe somewhere else. For example, if I drag it from 10 back to 5 it goes out of sync because that "Play Once" value is still 10 -- so it's starting at 5, but is playing from 10 in the symbol.

That is as hard to describe as it is to fathom.

It doesn't seem to matter how many Graphic symbols I hide the animation down, the same thing always happens.

And it's the reason your Movie Clip idea doesn't work, because if I double-click on the MC and put the keyframes in there it is still adding keyframes for the Graphic's Play Once value.

Although I do wonder if I could now put the movement keyframes on that MC symbol back on the stage. A MC doesn't have the "Play Once" value, so those keys shouldn't affect the Graphic's keys. And I can probably make the MC play from the start with an action (Graphic's automatically play).

Something to play with. Thanks for the info anyway, definitely got me thinking. But that scenario you describe, where the keyframes for each bit is hidden inside a hierarchy, is pretty unappealing.
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[Ian Jones]

hmmm, I'm completely confused by what you are describing.

You know you can animate objects within the moviecip, then animate the movieclip itself from outside... not affecting the inner objects keyframes.

[Sumaleth]

Yeah, I think a Movie Clip is what I should have used since the start. But that tutorial I was working to used a Graphic inside a Graphic, and Graphics don't seem so separate from the stage.

I did try putting it in an MC at one point, but couldn't figure out how to make it play. Actionscript has changed a lot since I last used it, and not for the better I'd have to say.
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