Working with and create symbol instances in Animate

After you create a symbol, you can create instances of that symbol throughout your document, including inside other symbols. When you modify the symbol, Animate updates all instances of the symbol.

You can give names to instances from the Property inspector. Use the instance name to refer to an instance in ActionScript. To control instances with ActionScript®, give each instance within a single timeline a unique name. 

To specify color effects, assign actions, set the graphic display mode, or change the behavior of new instances, use the Property inspector. The behavior of the instance is the same as the symbol behavior, unless you specify otherwise. Any changes you make affect only the instance and not the symbol.

Create an instance of a symbol

Apply a custom name to an instance

Each symbol instance has its own properties that are separate from the symbol. You can change the tint, transparency, and brightness of an instance; redefine how the instance behaves (for example, change a graphic to a movie clip); and specify how an animation plays inside a graphic instance. You can also skew, rotate, or scale an instance without affecting the symbol.

In addition, you can name a movie clip or button instance so that you can use ActionScript to change its properties. For more information, see Objects and classes in Learning ActionScript 3.0. To edit instance properties, you use the Property inspector (Windows > Properties).

The properties of an instance are saved with it. If you edit a symbol or relink an instance to a different symbol, any instance properties you’ve changed still apply to the instance.

You can make a symbol instance on the Stage invisible by turning off the Visible property. Using the Visible property provides faster rendering performance than setting the symbol’s Alpha property to 0.

The Visible property requires a Player setting of Flash Player 10.2 or later and is only compatible with movie clip, button, and component instances.

Each instance of a symbol can have its own color effect. To set color and transparency options for instances, use the Property inspector. Settings in the Property inspector also affect bitmaps placed in symbols.

When you change the color and transparency for an instance in a specific frame, Animate makes the change as soon as it displays that frame. To make gradual color changes, apply a motion tween. When tweening color, you enter different effect settings in starting and ending keyframes of an instance, and then tween the settings to make the instance’s colors shift over time.

To display a different instance on the Stage and preserve all the original instance properties, such as color effects or button actions, assign a different symbol to an instance.

For example, suppose you are creating a cartoon with a rat symbol for your character, but decide to change the character to a cat. You could replace the rat symbol with the cat symbol and have the updated character appear in roughly the same location in all your frames.

Assign a different symbol to an instance

Replace all instances of a symbol

To redefine an instance’s behavior in a Animate application, change its type. For example, if a graphic instance contains animation that you want to play independently of the main Timeline, redefine the graphic instance as a movie clip instance.

To determine how animation sequences inside a graphic instance play in your Animate application, set options in the Property inspector.

An animated graphic symbol is tied to the Timeline of the document in which the symbol is placed. In contrast, a movie clip symbol has its own independent Timeline. Animated graphic symbols, because they use the same Timeline as the main document, display their animation in document-editing mode. Movie clip symbols appear as static objects on the Stage and do not appear as animations in the Animate editing environment.

Fame Picker helps you to visually preview and choose the first frame for a graphic symbol. In previous releases, you could not preview the frames without getting within the symbol in Edit mode. This feature enhances user experience for animation workflows such as Lip-Sync.

Frame Picker panel offers a Create Keyframe check box that allows automatic creation of Keyframes when selecting a frame in the Frame Picker panel. You can also set looping option of Graphic symbols from within the Frame Picker panel.

You can invoke the Frame Picker panel by selecting a Graphic symbol > Properties Panel > Looping > Use Frame Picker button to display the Frame Picker or by selecting Window > Frame Picker.

Animate offers filtering options for the frames listed in the panel. You can choose to filter by, 

• All Frames - displays all the frames.
• Keyframes - displays only key frames as selected by you.
• Labels - displays only frames with labels.

Auto lip-syncing allows easier and faster method of placing appropriate mouth shapes on Timeline, based on the chosen audio layer. You can achieve this using an existing list of mouth poses, drawn within a graphic symbol. When you apply auto lip-syncing on a graphic symbol, key-frames are created automatically at different positions matching with the audio visemes, after analyzing the specified audio layer. Once completed, you can make any further adjustments if needed, by using regular workflows and Frame Picker.

A viseme is a generic facial image that can be used to indicate a sound. 

Follow the steps as mentioned below to start creating a Lip-Sync:

To break the link between an instance and a symbol and make the instance into a collection of ungrouped shapes and lines, you break apart the instance. This feature is useful for changing the instance substantially without affecting any other instance. 

Changes to the source symbol for an instance do not affect an instance after it has been broken apart.

The Property inspector and Info panel display the following information about instances selected on the Stage:

• In the Property inspector, view the instance’s behavior and settings—for all instance types, color effect settings, location, and size; for graphics, the loop mode and first frame that contains the graphic; for buttons, the instance name (if assigned) and tracking option; for movie clips, the instance name (if assigned). For location, the Property inspector displays the x and y coordinates of the symbol’s registration point.

• In the Info panel, view the instance’s size and location; the location of its registration point; its red (R), green (G), blue (B), and alpha (A) values (if the instance has a solid fill); and the location of the pointer. The Position and Size section on the Properties Inspector displays the x and y coordinates of either the symbol’s registration point or transformation point. You can toggle to view coordinates of either the registration point or transformation point.

• In the Movie Explorer, view the contents of the current document, including instances and symbols.

  View any actions assigned to a button or movie clip in the Actions panel.

Get information about an instance

View the symbol definition for the selected symbol in the Movie Explorer

Jump to the scene containing instances of a selected symbol