Motion Guide

The motion guide in Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional CC) helps you enhance the animation you create by defining a path for the objects you animate. This is helpful when you are working on an animation that follows a path that is not a straight line. This process requires two layers to carry out an animation:

• A layer containing the object that you are about to animate
• A layer defining the path, which the object is supposed to follow during the animation

Motion guide works only on Classic Tweens.

For more information on Motion Guides, see Working with classic tween animation

Motion Guide based on variable stroke width

You can animate an object based on the variable thickness of the stroke of the guide path.

Apart from the keyframes for the initial and final positions of the object, you do not need any other keyframes to denote the variation in stroke thickness.

1. To animate an object based on variable stroke width, create a path and animate the object along the path as explained in the previous section of this document. 
2. With the first keyframe of the tween selected in the timeline, select the options Scale and Scale along path check boxes in the Property Inspector. Now the object is ready to follow the scaling based on the stroke thickness.

3. Define the thickness of the stroke using one of the following methods:

• Choose the Width Tool (U) from the Toolbox, click anywhere on the path, and drag to vary the thickness of the path.

• Select the path using the Selection Tool (V) from the toolbox and in the Property Inspector, choose a width profile for the stroke from the Width drop down option.

For more information on variable width stroke, see Variable Width Strokes.

Once you have a variable width stroke defined as a path, if you run the motion tween, you can see that the object not only follows the path, but also changes its size based on the relation to the variation in the thickness of the stroke.

Here is an example that uses Motion Guide with variable width stroke:

A motion guide path can have multiple segment with each connected segment having a different variable width profile specified as shown below. With no additional keyframes for the object, each segment's width profile is considered during the animation.

Motion Guide based on the stroke color

Motion Guide also enables you to tween an object along the path, by changing the color of the object based on the color of the guide path itself. To bring about this variation, you need at least two segments in the path, that is, three minimum nodes or points as part of the path. To achieve this, while creating a Classic Motion Tween and drawing a guide path as described in the previous section of this document, use the pen tool and draw a guide path as shown below. This path has four nodes/points in three segments.

Apart from the keyframes for the initial and final positions of the object, there is no need to create any more keyframes to denote the variation in stroke color.

1. Once you create Classic Motion Tween, select the first keyframe of the tween in the Timeline. In the Property Inspector, check the Color along the path check box. Your object is now ready to follow the color variation as per the guide path.

2. Now, using the Selection Tool (V) from the toolbox, click and select the second segment of the guide path and choose a different color. Repeat the same for the third segment of the path too.

Run the animation now to see the color influence of the guide path on the object itself in the course of the tween. You can see that the influence is not just on the color, but also on the alpha/opacity value of the stroke segment in the guide path.

Here is an example that uses Motion Guide with color variation: