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Object Animation: Creating a Simple Animation

The Simple Animation is Simple - DUH

The simple animation can be something as simple as an object moving from a point here to a point somewhere else. You can even create some complex animation by combining transformations. The example on the right may look complicated to do but, a person can create this is about 10 minutes. We are going to show you how.

To create an animation you need to fulfill one requirement, you need to have a begin and end point. These points in Adobe LiveMotion are called Keyframes. Two Keyrames in one transformation type makes an animation.

Here Goes - How We Did It

With this basic knowledge you can create more complex animations. By adding more Keyframes to a transformation type you can create more complex animations. Change the length of time between Keyframes make it longer and the animation slows down and making the length smaller makes the animation faster..

This timeline shows what we did to create the animation shown above. The simplest animation is two keyframes, one at the beginning and one at the end of each of the five Transformation types in the timeline. Remember that to animate something you need to have at least two Keyframes set for each Transformation

The first thing we have to do is click on the twisty by the object you want to animate. The twisty is the triangle shaped icon next to the object.

To select a Transformation you need to click on the clock next to the Transformation. When you click on the clock you will see a Diamond at the Frame you are presently at.

So, to set the the beginning of our animation move the CTM to 00 (This point is up to you but in our example we started at 00.).

NOTE: If you have more than one object with the same animation you can do this quickly and easily by selecting all of the objects. (These objects need to be visible.)

First Let's Look at the Transformation Palette

The majority of the animation is created right here using the Transformation palette. Looking at the graphic on the right you see four of the five transformations which we used.

Position Transformation - The X and Y fields set the Position or location on your canvas. Changing the X and Y coordinates will move the object from Point A to Point B.

Coordinates at the
Beginning Position 00 - x=-26, y=5
Ending Position 02 - x=22, y=53
See Note Below

Rotation Transformation - You can set the Rotation by using the Rotation Wheel or you can type in the angle you desire. You can use negative angles (going Counter Clockwise) as well as positive angles (going Clockwise).

Rotation at the
Beginning Position 00 - Angle=0
Ending Position 02 - Angle=180

So as you can see from the Transformation Palette we have set four of the five basic transformations. These setting can be set all at the same time. Pretty neat and simple isn't it. Well, we have four out of the five transformations set we will now look at the fifth transformation Opacity.

Transformation Palette
settings for Keyframe 00

Transformation Palette
settings for Keyframe 02

Note: The coordinates shown are located at the Anchor Point of the object. So you need to be careful if you move your Anchor Point you change the coordinates of the object. You should be OK as long as you are not keying in the coordinates calculated based on the original Anchor Point.

The Opacity palette has two settings.
Object Opacity - This sets the transparency of the object in your animation
Layer Opacity - This sets the transparency for use in custom rollover states.

You don't want to get these two settings mixed up because you will not get the result you want if you set the wrong setting for your transparency. In an animation you want to use the Object Opacity so you can change the transparency over a period of time. The Layer Opacity is used to set the changing of your effects on your rolover states i.e. Normal (Visible) to Invisible or Normal (invisible) to Visible.

For our example you will notice we are using the Object Opacity because we are using it in an animation. Here are the settings that we used for our animation:

Keyframe 00 the Opacity is set to 100%
Keyframe 02 the Opacity is set to 20%

This is how you create a simple animation in Adobe LiveMotion. But with this basic example you can create different animations by setting your keyframes at different points in the timeline. The next animaiton uses the same identical animation but we moved just one keyframe point of one of the transformation type.

Opacity Palette
settings for Keyframe 00

Opacity Palette
settings for Keyframe 02

The Simple Animation - The Final Thoughts

To sum things up, creating a simple animation you need to set two keyframes for each transformation you want to use. You can set your transformations anywhere the object is viewable in the timeline. Below are variations of the same animation. All we did was move one keyframe in one of the five transformations to create the animation variation. So you can see that the world of animations is open to you to play with.

Original Animation

Moved the end Position Keyframe to 01.

Moved the end Opacity Keyframe to 01.

Moved the end Rotation Keyframe to 01.

Moved the end Scale Keyframe to 01.

Moved the end Skew Keyframe to 01.