SWiSH 2

The real beauty of sprites is that each can have its own independent timeline and animation - a movie within the movie. This is crucial, for example, if you want to create animated buttons that spring to life as the user moves the mouse over them. To do this in SWiSH, all you have to do is drill down through the hierarchical Outline window to the button's Over state and convert this to a sprite. To be able to achieve the same effect with Flash itself, you'd need to be an expert confident with the idea of creating and nesting a movie clip within your frame-based button symbol.

Sprites are essential for creating advanced animations, but how do you bring an object to life in the first place? This is where SWiSH's effects-based approach really comes into its own. All you have to do is select an object or group and choose from the range of effects available from the drop-down list next to the Timeline. Common staples include the ability to automatically slide objects into or out from the scene, to set up fade-ins and fade-outs and to apply vector blurs.

More powerful and eye-catching sequences are available through SWiSH's 'complex effects', which can now be applied either to individual objects, to the individual words or letters in a line of text, or to groups of objects. The complex effects include 2D options such as Squeeze, which stretches or compresses components over time, and pseudo-3D options such as Explode, which blows up grouped components and sends them spinning to the ground as if a bomb has gone off next to them. Two completely new options are the Snake effect, which lets you create looping 2D and 3D orbits, and the rather more mundane Repeat Frames effect, which lets you pick out a sequence of frames and repeat them a set number of times.

Level of control

In each case, the level of control over the effect is comprehensive, and for most effects you'll find a range of presets provided as a starting point. The new Snake option offers 19 variations, ranging from rocking in place to a mad rollercoaster ride, each of which can be previewed on screen before you commit. You can also minutely fine-tune each effect so that the Explode effect, for example, lets you set the strength of the bomb, its placement and even the strength and direction of gravity.

As well as setting those parameters that are unique to each effect, the newly tabbed Effect Settings dialog also lets you manage settings common to all effects. The Motion tab lets you set the position, scale, rotation, transparency and colour of the object at the end of the effect, for example; the Cascade tab lets you manage the order in which grouped components are animated; and the Easing tab lets you control the rate of change over your effect. Once you've got the animation just right, you can save it as a preset for future use.

This level of precise control over effects is impressive, but it can become intimidating, and at times SWiSH 2 can seem almost as daunting as Flash. SWiSH recognises the danger and does what it can to make life easier. Using the new Motion Path tool, you can simply select an object and drag it to create a motion path, with SWiSH adding frames to the object's Move effect as necessary. If you decide that you want the effect to be quicker or slower, you can simply drag to extend or shorten the effect in the Timeline (this is true for all effects). Once you've set up a motion path, you can also interactively scale and rotate the object on its final keyframe and these changes are automatically incorporated into the effect. You can even drag on an object to which you've applied another effect to combine the best of SWiSH's effect-based approach with Flash's interactive tweening system.