Circular guide layer

[FLAbergasted]

Stupid question. I'm making an animation which shows the orbit of a planet. Doing this with a simple motion tween on a circular guide layer. The problem is that the "planet" seems to want to pick the shortest path between 2 positions. I want it to start at x position and end at x position, then continue looping over those frames. How can I make this smooth without adding a bunch of keyframes to the timeline to make sure it goes in the right direction? Thanks.

[senocular]

you can do it with 3 fine enough. But if 3 (4 if including the last keyframe) is still too many, just take a tiny little nick out of your circle path so its not a complete circle. Then you can animate it from one end to the other - each end being more or less on the same spot.

[FLAbergasted]

thanks. yeah I'll do it with keyframes. Would've been nice if they added some sort of directional "hints" thing like you can do with shape tweens for those of us who are AS inept.:D

[senocular]

well thats basically what the keyframes are ;)

[FLAbergasted]

:rolleyes: you're right. My brain is mush. Planets look great now though. thanks.

[senocular]

but I think you were on the right track of thinking - there could be more control with closed paths by allowing an option of direction when going from one keyframe to another. New versions of Flash don't seem to focus much on enhancing your control over the timeline though, so it doesnt seem like a feature we'd be seeing anytime soon :rolleyes:


:D