Features summary | 2016 and early 2017 releases

For a summary of features introduced in earlier releases of Animate, see Feature summary | Animate | 2015 releases.

  Enhanced in Animate (June 2017)

In this release, a set of standard ease presets are available for classic and shape tweens to provide flexibility to Animate designers. You can select the preset from list of ease presets and apply the corresponding ease to the individual selected property. You can also apply a custom ease to a shape tween.

For more information, see Ease presets and custom eases for shape tween and Ease presets for classic tween

Generate Texture Atlas

New in Animate (June 2017)

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 Creating Texture Atlas

Packaging, distributing, and installing HTML5 custom components

  Enhanced in Animate (June 2017)

Animate developers can package and distribute ready-to-use packaged components to designers. Animate designers can install the distributed components without coding.

For more information, see Packaging and distributing components

Camera panning controls

  Enhanced in Animate (June 2017)

In this release, Animate provides x and y camera coordinate controls using which you can pan easily. You can locate the x and y coordinates in camera section of Property inspector.

Flash Player and Adobe AIR integration

  Enhanced in Animate (June 2017)

Animate integrates latest Flash Player and AIR SDK 25. The latest Adobe AIR SDK for iOS and Android supports Norwegian, Hebrew, and Danish languages. Animate supports the latest timestamp server for signing certificates. You can add your own URL for custom timestamp server.

Improved sketching experience with the Brush tool

  Enhanced in Animate (March 2017)

The performance of the Brush tool has been improved in this release. In previous releases, there was a time lag while sketching or drawing fast with the Brush tool. In this release, you can sketch or draw fast without having to wait for the previously drawn sketches to smoothen out.

Better viewing with HiDPI support on Windows OS

  Enhanced in Animate (January 2017)

Animate automatically optimizes your settings for HiDPI monitors and lets you view icons and text in ultra-sharp detail with more pixels displayed on your screen.

 Animate uses scaling set for the main display on Windows OS.

Frame Picker Enhancements

  Enhanced in Animate (January 2017)

The enhanced Frame Picker panel offers a Create Keyframe check box that allows automatic creation of Keyframes when selecting a frame in the Frame Picker panel. Also, you can choose the following filtering options as listed in the panel:

• All Frames
• Only Keyframes 
• Only frames with Labels

You can set the looping option of Graphic symbols from within the Frame Picker panel. 

For more information, see Working with and create symbol instances

Pasteboard color

  Enhanced in Animate (January 2017)

In previous Animate releases, the Pasteboard colors were fixed based on the User Interface theme. From this release onwards, you can have the pasteboard same as Stage color to provide you an infinite canvas to work with. For more information, see Using stage tools panel. 

Support for adding Global & Third-party scripts

  Enhanced in Animate (January 2017)

Animators often use JavaScript code that is applicable to the entire animation. Previously, you could not set up global variables or scripts that are applied to the entire animation from within Animate. From this release onwards, you can add global scripts that are not frame specific. For more information, see Create and Publish HTML5 canvas documents in Animate

Mute and poster property support for HTML 5 video component

 Enhanced in Animate (December 2016)

This release of Animate introduces two new properties for HTML 5 video components: mute and poster. You can use the mute property to enable or disable the audio for your video component. And, use the poster property to select a static poster image before a video play.

Upload responsive OAMs to CC library for usage in Adobe Muse

  Enhanced in Animate (December 2016)

This release of Animate uses the current publish profile while uploading Entire Animation to CC Libraries. This feature cascades all the publish settings including responsive properties when used in Adobe Muse and Indesign. For more information, see sharing animation assets and publish settings.

Support for Typekit Marketplace fonts

  Enhanced in Animate (December 2016)

When Animate is launched, all the fonts purchased from the Typekit Marketplace are loaded and available for use in HTML 5 canvas documents.

Virtual camera support

New in Animate (November 2016)

Previously, you relied on third-party extensions of varying quality and compatibility or modified your animations to mimic a camera movement. From this release onward, you can use the following features that are integral to any motion film:

• Panning with the subject of the frame
• Zooming on the object of interest for dramatic effect 
• Zooming out of a frame to remind the viewer of a larger picture
• Modifying the focal point to shift attention of the viewer from one subject to another
• Rotating the camera
• Applying color effects using color tint or filters

To view a video tutorial on this feature, see Using the Virtual Camera in Animate.

Reusable components in HTML5 canvas

New in Animate (November 2016)

Components provide a function or group of related reusable elements that enhances productivity. Previously, Animate supported Flash components used with Flash-based targets. From this release onward, Animate supports HTML5 Canvas-based components.

Collaboration using CC Libraries

New in Animate (November 2016)

From this release onward, you can share symbols or entire animations via CC Libraries. Multiple animators can collaborate seamlessly and simplify the designer-developer workflow in game or application development.

You can use linked assets to ensure that the assets are in sync with the original assets. You can also seamlessly import the animation assets using CC Library across supporting applications such as Adobe Muse and Adobe Indesign.

For more information on symbol sharing, see Collaboration using CC Libraries

Creating and managing vector brushes

New in Animate (November 2016)

Animate introduces the ability to create and share vector brushes (art and pattern brushes) using shapes drawn within Animate. Before the introduction of this feature, you could use Adobe Capture CC app to create brushes, and sync them from CC library. This feature allows you to create custom brushes from vector assets within Animate.

For more information on this new feature, see Creating and managing vector brushes.

Pressure and tilt support for vector brushes

New in Animate (November 2016)

From this release onward, Animate provides pressure and tilt support for strokes drawn using the Paint brush tool. You can draw art and pattern strokes with variable width, dependent on the applied pressure or tilt on the stylus. For further refinement, use the Width tool to adjust the width points.

For more information, see Pressure and tilt in vector brushes.

 This feature is applicable only for drawing tablets.

Export Images and Animated GIF

New in Animate (November 2016)

From this release, Animate introduces a new workflow to export images and animated GIFs. You can also use the optimization features in the Export Image dialog box to preview optimized images in different file formats and with different file attributes.

In the Export image/Export Animated GIF dialog box, you can:

• Simultaneously view multiple versions of an image and modify optimization settings
• Preview the image to select the best combination of settings
• Specify transparency and matting
• Select options to control dithering
• Resize the image to specified pixel dimensions or a specified percentage of the original size

For more information, see Export Images and Animated GIFs.

Publish layers as SWF archive

New in Animate (November 2016)

From this release onward, Animate introduces a new publish format, .SWF archive, that packages the different layers as independent SWFs and imported to Adobe After Effects.

For more information, see Publish layers as SWF archive.

 This feature is applicable only for ActionScript and .FLA documents.

Other enhancements

Stage enhancements

Enhanced in Animate (November 2016)

This release introduces the following stage enhancements:

• Clip the content outside the stage: Crops the content flowing outside the stage.
• Stage outline: Creates a stage outline and indicates the stage boundary. 

Integration of latest Flash Player and Adobe AIR SDK

Enhanced in Animate (November 2016)

Animate supports the latest version of Flash Player (version 23) and integrates Adobe AIR SDK version 23.0.