Flash Alternative/Quicktime Animation?

[Schut]

I really want to learn Flash, but I find that it has a horrible interface and non-existant ease of use. So does anyone out there know of a good alternative flash application that is easier to use and runs on OSX.

Also, i noticed that the .Mac site has a cool quicktime animation of some sort at the top of the page, does anyone know how to create one of those?

thanks

I have found this flash application, but it only runs on windows

 

[angelneo]

Are you talking about Macromedia Flash the application being user unfriendly? There's quite a number of application that can export to flash such as adobe illustrator, Fireworks, Poser so on. There are also third party software like the one you stated and some such as swift 3D so on. But ultimately, if you need to master flash, you will definitely need to use Macromedia Flash.

For the .Mac animation, you can actually do that with Macromedia Flash (it can export to quicktime animation). Other poster might recommend different software.

 

[munkle]

Rather than looking for a Flash alternative I reckon you would be best off trying to learn Flash. It's a very good app, with lots of depth but yes the learning curve is high.

The layout is similar to that used by Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc with the panels along the sides. I think the confusion comes in cause you don't know your way around the application and it's not really an app you can easily pick up just by playing around.

Try finding a good book, personally I find it easier to learn visually and found Lynda.com a great resource.

 

[iGav]

I really want to learn Flash, but I find that it has a horrible interface and non-existant ease of use. So does anyone out there know of a good alternative flash application that is easier to use and runs on OSX.

Flash has always been clunky with regards to it's interface, I was always puzzled why they didn't just simplify the vastly superior to use timeline (score) from Director.

You don't really have that many options I'm afraid, to learn the basics of Flash should take you a day. At the Uni I used to lecture at, on open days I had novices doing animations and such in Flash within 2 hours, it's really not that difficult to learn once you get your head around the clunky interface.

Apart from that your choices are limited, Adobe After Effects can export animations as SWF files, although if you wanted to make those animations interactive you're screwed, the After Effects timeline is far more elegant than Flash, but it's motion graphics not interactive based.

Adobe did have LiveMotion a year or so ago, I'd recommend you tracking down version 2 of that, it runs in OS X and the stability is pretty damn good. I still run it, because I find for certain bitmap animations it still pisses all over Flash for quality, it's interface is also exactly 1000x more elegant and easy to use than Flash, and such is the similarity to After Effects that once you've mastered LiveMotion it really won't take you at all long to figure out After Effects... Adobe are masters when it comes to GUI's, ease of use and product integration.

The only other viable alternative is to use Director, which isn't as good as Flash for vector animation, but it kills it in pretty much every other area. The only issue you'll come across is that you can't export as SWF, you can only do Shockwave and QuickTimes of course.

But apart from those... nothing else springs to mind, atleast any which are mainstream enough to be recognised in the new media industry.

 

[mcarvin]

I tried Corel's RAVE, which was bundled with their Graphics Suite 10 and 11. Didn't much care for it, but the UI was similar to Flash 3/4 which I found somewhat easier to use. Don't go expecting it to do much in the way of ActionScripting.

For learning ActionScript, I've found kirupa.com to be essential. They have clearly written tutorials covering a wide range of topics from basic tweening to object-oriented scripting.