What this book covers
Chapter 1, Exploring Adobe Animate, provides background and context around the history and capabilities of the software. We’ll also take a look at all the new features available in Animate 2023 and even jump right into creating animation with a quickstart project.
Chapter 2, Creating and Animating Shapes, covers the fundamentals of Animate drawing and tweening workflows, including the creation of content with various vector shape tools and the use of related tweening mechanisms within the software.
Chapter 3, Animating with Symbols, Classic Tweens, and Motion Tweens, explores the use of symbols and symbol instances within Animate and covers how to apply motion to symbol instances with classic and motion tweens, along with the application of easing presets.
Chapter 4, Enhancing Animations Using Advanced Layers Mode, dives into an exploration of the Advanced Layers mode and uses the document camera as a means to animate an entire scene that is otherwise fairly static. We even tap into layer depth manipulation and the use of layer effects and filters.
Chapter 5, Setting Up Characters Using Layer Parenting, further explores Advanced Layers mode and the ability to rig character animations across layers using layer parenting mechanisms. We’ll also see how to create automated lip-sync animations through the power of Adobe Sensei!
Chapter 6, Physical Motion with Inverse Kinematics, explores a more refined and controlled way of rigging an armature through the use of the Bone tool and IK armatures with full joint constraints and the management of poses across the timeline. We’ll also see how to share completed rigs and related assets through the use of Animate Asset files and the Assets panel.
Chapter 7, Creating and Manipulating Warped Objects, expands on rigging concepts explored in the previous two chapters with the introduction of the Asset Warp tool, mesh deformations, and animating these changes through the use of warped objects.
Chapter 8, Modern Rigging Techniques, explores additional aspects of Warped Objects in the creation of armatures that consist of hard bones, soft bones, and flexi bones as part of brand-new, modern rigging workflows.
Chapter 9, Making Interactive Art with Creative Coding Techniques, is an all-new chapter for the third edition of this book, in which we develop a small, web-based generative art program using nothing but JavaScript code and the CreateJS libraries available within HTML5 Canvas documents.
Chapter 10, Developing Web-Based Games, explores the construction of a playable web-based game targeting HTML5 Canvas using CreateJS JavaScript libraries as we build out the logic for our entire game bit by bit across the timeline and through the use of global scripts.
Chapter 11, Producing Virtual Reality Content, explores the VR document types within Animate through the assembly of fully interactive virtual reality environments using scenes, textures, and additional imported assets.
Chapter 12, Building Apps for Desktop and Mobile, focuses on the AIR document type, through which we will build a small utility application for browsing photographs using ActionScript 3.0 as a programming language and the Adobe AIR SDK as a development platform for desktop and mobile platforms.
Chapter 13, Extending Adobe Animate, examines a set of options available to extend Adobe Animate through the creation and execution of custom in-app tutorials, the use of the JavaScript API to automate actions, and an overview of the Custom Platform Support Development Kit.