Joseph Labrecque - Adobe Animate 2022 for Creative Professionals: Implement professional techniques and create vivid animated and interactive content with Animate, 2nd Edition

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Early Access Publication: Adobe Animate 2022 for Creative Professionals

Early Access Production Reference: B17998

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ISBN: 978-1-80323-279-9

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1. A Brief Introduction to Adobe Animate
2. Exploring Platform- Specific Considerations
3. Settling into the User Interface
4. Publishing and Exporting Creative Content
5. Creating and Manipulating Media Content
6. Interactive Motion Graphics for the Web
7. Character Design through Layer Parenting
8. Animating Poses with IK Armatures
9. Manipulating Warped Objects through Advanced Rigging
10. Working with the Camera and Layer Depth
11. Developing Web-Based Games
12. Producing Virtual Reality Content for WebGL
13. Building Apps for Desktop and Mobile
14. Extending Adobe Animate

We will now spend some time exploring the various target platforms that are natively supported by Adobe Animate. To be successful with Animate, you must understand the underlying technologies involved in each platform and when to use one over another, as they each have their strengths and weaknesses. This understanding enables sound decisions when selecting a target document type when starting a new Animate project.

Well begin with an overview of the major platforms supported natively as publish targets within Animate. Following this, we can then explore the variety of document types that support and target different aspects of these platforms for a greater understanding of why you might use certain document types over others.

After reading this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

• Understand the set of platforms native to Adobe Animate
• Explore best practices around ActionScript 3.0, HTML5 Canvas, and AIR document types
• Employ recommendations around beta document types, including both Virtual Reality (VR) and WebGL (standard and extended)

You will need the following software and hardware to complete this chapter:

• Adobe Animate 2022 (version 22.0 or above)
• Refer to the Animate System Requirements page for hardware specifications: https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/system-requirements.html

While Flash Professional was, for years, focused entirely on the Flash Platform, Adobe Animate seeks to define itself as a platform-agnostic software application. This basically means that any target platform is welcome to be part of the publish pipeline even those not traditionally associated with the software.

Even though Animate seeks to play well with any platform that wants in on the game, it does support a number of important platforms natively:

Today, Animate comes pre-packaged with a number of target platforms for common usage. These include ActionScript 3.0, AIR for Desktop, AIR for iOS, AIR for Android, HTML5 Canvas, VR 360, VR Panorama, and WebGL glTF (in both standard and extended flavors). Some of these target platforms are still Flash-based, but most newer platforms that have been added as target native web technologies such as the HTML canvas element with JavaScript and include specifications such as WebGL and glTF to achieve some pretty neat stuff!

You can see all available document types by choosing File | New from the application menu or by choosing Create New or More Presets from the Home screen and then choosing the Advanced category of the New Document dialog:

The Advanced category of presets allows you to create a new document based upon a specific publishing platform, while the other category presets tend to only allow the choice of ActionScript 3.0 or HTML5 Canvas.

Tip

Within the New Document dialog, document types are listed under Platforms and Beta Platforms. You may need to scroll down to see them all. Any third-party platforms that have been enabled will show up even farther down the stack.

Well next proceed through an overview of the major platforms available in Animate today. These are all based upon the Flash platform runtimes, native web technologies, and a set of beta platforms that extend these technologies.