Lee Brimelow over at www.gotoandlearn.com just released a video tour of some of the new features in Flash CS4. All I can really say is WOW. First of all, the whole interface has changed. However, no need to worry…it’s changed for the better. It’s actually similar to the interface of After Effects. The two main features that really got me excited were the new animating features and especially the Inverse Kinematics (bown tool) feature. The bone tool feature is just nuts, there is a whole Actionscript 3.0 API behind it. You can drag points from one instance of a movieclip to another, and it automatically links them together so the user is able to interact with them and/or you can custom animate it. It is simply awesome.

Despite that awesome new feature, I was more excited to see the new animation features. Animation in flash will be 10x more easier now. Animation is more similar to After Effects now. Every tween you create is automatically given a motion guide property, where as before you had to create a motion guide layer and link the movieclip to the guide layer. Not anymore. Once you create a motion tween, it automatically extends the frames out to whatever you have your FPS set to. And your animations are easier than ever to manipulate now. Lets say you want to cut or extend an animation. All you need to do now is drag the end keyframe to another keyframe and it interpolates the rest, so you don’t need to adjust any other keyframes you have within that Tween! What I love the most about the new animation features though is the motion editor. You now have more control over your animations; you can apply different easings to different parts of your animation…it’s just awesome. You aren’t limited to just Ease In or Ease Out. You can apply bounce easings, elastic easings and more now.

Just watch the video.
www.gotoandlearn.com