Flash MX 2004 Games : Art to ActionScript

Flash MX 2004 Games
A higher setting will delete more curves. The curves are all checked and reduced based on a
sophisticated algorithm. If the animation is usually shown at a small size then optimizing the frames
will make a great difference to the size of the file and improve the performance. The final result is
shown in Figure 4.20 and can be seen as ‘Scene 2’ of ‘Examples/Chapter04/FatCatCG.fla’. The
file size for this version is 188 K, huge by comparison to the bitmap version. Bitmaps traced in
this way often result in large file sizes.
Figure 4.20 Trace Bitmap animation sequence
Hand tracing a computer animation
The slowest method for getting data out of a computer animation program is to import the bitmaps
as before, then in a new layer hand trace the images one by one. This is a very slow process but
results in by far the smallest files. Once the images have all been traced and coloured remember to
delete the bitmap layer. A single image in the cat animation uses just 2634 bytes when hand traced
and 12 274 when Trace Bitmap is used. If file size is the most important issue and production time
is available then hand tracing cannot be bettered.
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