Feature summary | Animate | 2019 releases

Google AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is a highly performant platform for mobile web browsers adopted by all the major news outlets. Using Animate, you can now create highly performant and secure ads for the mobile web pages. 

AMPHTML ads plugin for Animate is an initiative led by Google in collaboration with Adobe. This plugin helps to redefine and improve the way advertisements are delivered on the web. 

AMPHTML plugin is built using Adobe Animate’s Custom Platform SDK support. This plugin consists of two main parts:

• Document type to ensure that the creation process conforms to high-performance requirements of AMPHTML Ads.
• Publisher type to translate an Animate document into a full, standards-compliant, and ready to use AMPHTML document.

For more information, see AMPTML Ads Plugin (Beta).

You can now apply blend modes at layer or frame level like other layer effects such as filters and color effects. Earlier, this was applicable only on movie clip symbols.

When you apply blending on layers or frames, blending gets applied to all of its contents including shapes, drawing objects, and graphic symbols.

To apply blend modes, turn on the Advanced Layers mode (default).

For more information, see Using blend modes in Create timeline layers with Animate.

Adobe Animate now provides with an option to pin a symbol to Frame Picker so that you can work with Frame Picker tool even without keeping the symbol selected. The pinned symbol is remembered as long as an instance of that symbol is available on stage, even after moving to another frame.

With these enhancements in frame picker, you can work with multiple symbols and pin them in different frame picker panels. A symbol once pinned is remembered as long as the symbol exists in the library or it is unpinned explicitly. This symbol is remembered even after moving to another document.

For more information, see Frame Picker in Create symbol instances in Animate.

Eraser and Brush tools are now enhanced to work in a synchronized manner.

All the sub settings such as pressure or tilt settings, nib size, and nib shapes are synchronized in Brush and Eraser tools. These settings are remembered even after quitting and relaunching Animate.

1. In Brush Options, if Synch Settings with Eraser is checked, then, current settings of Eraser tool (E) are mirrored in the brush tool. 
2. In Eraser Options, if Synch Settings with Brush is checked, then, current settings of Brush tool (B) are mirrored in the eraser tool.

Eraser tool has a new option to erase only on the active layer.

For more information, see Synchronizing settings in Brush and Eraser tools in Custom Brushes and Reshape lines and shapes.

Texture atlas is a collection of textures as a single large image/ multiple images of desired dimension. Few new export options have been added to Texture Atlas.

• Resolution: You can choose to export to different resolution varying between 0.3-3.0 range.
• Optimize dimensions: 
  • When Optimize dimensions option is checked, it removes empty pixels from bitmaps and dimensions are not in power of two (default option). This is applicable for all the bitmaps generated.
  • When Optimize dimensions option is unchecked, bitmaps are generated based on the selected dimensions.

The exact dimension of each bitmap is displayed on the top right corner of each bitmap.

• Export to Multiple sprites:

You can choose to export the symbol into multiple bitmaps based on the dimension.  For assets exceeding the size of selected image dimension, a warning is displayed.

• Optimize Animation.json file:
  • When Optimize Animation.json file option is checked, this option removes indentation, decomposed matrix and shortens the names used (default option).
  • When Optimize Animation.json file option is unchecked, this option exports with indentation and meaningful names.

Identical frames are optimized (consolidated) in Animation.json file always by default.

For more information, see Creating a texture atlas in Export animations for mobile apps and game engines.

You can now incrementally save your Animate documents (FLAs and XFLs) with ease and with better performance. This in turn reduces save time for auto-recovery mode and helps in quicker save operation for complicated data.

Now you can export all imported images from canvas document as it is by unchecking the Export As texture and Combine images into Spritesheet options from Publish settings dialog. Compressed images are also be exported without any change in size.

For more information see, Texture publishing in Create and publish HTML5 Canvas documents in Animate.

Enhanced asset warping now enables you to have better control over handles and warp results.

For more information, see Asset sculpting for vector and raster content in Transforming and combining graphic objects in Animate.

With this version of Animate, you can split audio which is streamed into multiple parts by retaining its effects. 

To split an audio clip on your timeline:

1. Select File > Import > Import to library. 
2. Select the audio clip and import it to the library.
3. Create a new layer on your timeline and add the audio clip to the layer. 
4. Under Properties > Sound, select the effect. 

For more information see, Splitting a sound on timeline in How to use sound in Adobe Animate.

• Optimize advanced layer features for After Effects   This option generates a compatible SWF that can take Camera effects, layer depth and parenting to After Effects. Also, this option is enabled by default when FLA is dragged drop into After Effects to preserve these advanced layers feature as it is in After Effects. For more information, see Specify publish settings for Animate (.swf) files.
• Optimize SVG for Character Animator  Animate now has an option to Export SVG that works well with Character Animator. This option is also added in Publish Settings dialog. For more information, see Exporting SVG files.    
• Frame Rate control in Start screen and in New document dialog  Frame Rate can be specified at the time of creating a Document from the Start Screen or in the New Document dialog using the Frame Rate control. For more information, see Work with Multiple File Types in Animate.
• glTF publish changes.
• Adobe Fonts domain dependency removal.