Feature summary | Animate | 2018 releases

For a summary of features introduced in earlier releases of Animate, see Feature summary | earlier releases.

New in the October 2017 release

As a 2D game developer, when you want to introduce parallax scrolling, add heads up display, or introduce camera at runtime, you require advanced layers. Animate now introduces layer depth along with enhanced camera tool to help you create such engaging content with ease. 

You can create illusion of depth in your animations by placing assets in different planes. You can modify the depth of a layer, tween it, and introduce camera in layer depth to create parallax effect. You can also zoom the camera into the content on a specific plane. 

By default, camera can be applied to all the layers in Animate. If you want to exclude any layer, you can lock it by attaching that layer to camera. For example, you can use this feature when you are creating animations for heads up display. 

Animate also let you manage the camera and layer depth at runtime. For example, interactive cameras in games. 

For more information, see Creating layer depth using advanced layers and Creating parallax effect using camera and layer depth.

Timeline enhancements

  Enhanced in the October 2017 release

The timeline in Animate now has many enhancements that make it easier to use for designers and Animators. Timeline is modernized with the following enhancements:

• Display time along with the frame numbers
• Extend or reduce time for a selected frame span
• Scale frame span with frames per second (fps)
• Convert blank spans to 1s, 2s, or 3s
• Pan through animation on stage

For more information, see How to use the timeline in Animate.

Actions code wizard

New in the October 2017 release

If you are a new Animate designer or an animator, who is not familiar with writing code, actions code wizard is just for you. When creating animations for HTML5 canvas, you can add code using actions wizard without having to write any code. To open the wizard, click Windows > Actions and click Add using wizard button in the Actions dialog box. For example, when you want to start an animation at the click of a button.  

For more information, see Using actions code wizard

Enhanced ease presets

  Enhanced in the October 2017 release

As an Animate designer, you want to customize the easing presets and reuse them for other projects to reduce manual effort and time. With enhanced custom ease presets, now you can manage the speed and size of your animations with ease. Preset and custom ease presets are now extended to property-wise easing. You can save your custom ease presets at property level for classic and shape tweens. 

For more information, see Creating ease presets or custom eases for shape tween and Apply custom ease in/ease out to classic tween animation

Texture atlas enhancements

  Enhanced in the October 2017 release

As a game developer, you want to import the same color effects and layer masks of native animation from Animate to your game engine. Unity plug-in now supports color effects for Animate generated texture atlas files. The plug-in also supports masking through layers. The masking feature is applicable only for Unity 2017 release onwards. 

Animate developers can orchestrate animations and export them as texture atlas to Unity game engine or any other favorite game engines. Developers can use the sample plug-in for Unity and also customize it for other game engines. For more information, see Importing texture atlas to Unity

Convert to other document types

  Enhanced in the October 2017 release

Most often, you want to design your animation once and use it widely across multiple devices and platforms. Now, you can use easy-to-use document type converter to convert your animation from one document type to other document type as per your device requirement. 

Convert Animate projects from one document type to other document type by using File > Convert To user interface. If you have custom scenarios in which you want to convert files to other document types, then you can use the JSAPI. For example, you can use the JSAPI method to convert many files at a time into other document types. 

For more information, see Convert Animate projects to other document type formats

Component parameters panel

New in the October 2017 release

As an Animate designer, you can import external components to Animate and use them to build animations. To make this workflow easier, Animate now provides component parameters properties in an exclusive panel.

In this release, Show Parameters button is added in the components Property inspector dialog box. You can open the component parameters panel using this Show Parameters button. 

For more information, see Using the component parameters panel