timeline animation, simple animation of vector shapes going from one side to the next (a rolling christmas ornament). SERIOUSLY chunky, and I have no idea why - I've done way more complex animations than this in flash and have never seen this kind of crap.

I tried a super-simplified version of the same, basically a sphere with a gradient and a rotating stripe on the layer above it to create the impression of rolling - classic tween from left to right with some scaling.

There's no alpha stuff going on fwiw.

Have I discovered the sekrit "flash can't render a rotating spherical object without shitting the bed" feature?

I will happily email the sample file to anyone that wants to look at it but in the meantime, anyone have any idea why this might happen?

I can look at it if you want.....make no promises. It's just Adobe being Adobe probably.

can you post it? sometimes I can't get attachments on my web-based email if they're over a certain size. info ATT storm HYPHENATOR studios DAWT CALM

Sadly I can't as I'm at work and it's a SEKRIT WORK PROJECT so I shouldn't post it anyhow. Files are wee, I emailed you... any suggestions and or observations would be immensely appreciated.

got it...yes they are wee files.

choppy for sure......give me a few minutes to go through them. Hopefully someone else can have a look at them too. I guarantee no answers.

What version of the player are YOU viewing them in though? There were some timelines issues in earlier v10 players.

I'm not positive but I'm fairly certain I've got the most recent players installed. 10.1.85.3 - I've been viewing the html tests in-browser.

In another even more simplified test I just have a plain circle moving across the stage and it's doing the same choppy business. Weird.

I find no 'cause' but as I usually say 'stupid Flash you never used to be like this' and then people get mad at me because I rail on Adobe so much.

But....with that said, I find a combination of two factors with no real cause for you to craft a solution to.

The animation is jumpy. Even using the bitmap cache has no effect on the animation. I 'TSA'ed' it for you (deep introspection and strip down) and the animation would still appear to 'drop' two frames in each sequence regardless of how many times it played.

Now before jumping all over Adobe though, the stroke on the layer with the squiggly line doesn't line up properly with the ball it self and since you're changing angles for the appearance of consistent light, your two animations increase the jumpiness because you see the stroke appear as a separate line. On that I'd say Bad Ian. But like I said....still jumpy with just a circle.

The other thing I noticed is that same ol' Illustrator to Flash thing where it creates the appearance of a shape but has a mask on it in lieu of an actual vector shape with gradient. You drew these in Illustrator.....didn't you?

I'd like if someone else had a look at it too.

Oh and your HTML files don't work on my browsers.....FF nor IE 8.

the alignment is rough, still testing. I noticed that the stroke wobbles some, too. And yeah, test1's pretty stuff is is drawn in illustrator.

test2 is created entirely in flash, though, no funny illustrator business or outlines or anything... I'm still seeing the jumpiness and stuttering...

Maybe we're not seeing the same thing? What I'm seeing looks like the circle isn't rendering properly, like there's a horizontal line refresh rate that's messing up - instead of a circle, I see actual stripes of the circle rendering out of alignment. And the playback stutters, but less so if I draw everything in flash.

The html is straight flash publish swf/html output. I'm sure it stinks. :|

then we're probably not seeing the same thing....mine's not that rough and both versions appear the same. I also never TSA'ed v2.

Huh, interesting. What player version do you have?

10,1,85,3

if I condense the test2 file down to just a ball I only get any horizontal flicker on the first run. If I use cache as bitmap I don't get any flickering.

The latest is: 10.1.102.64

Hm, interesting. I wonder if that coupled with a preloader would solve things. We're using the same player version. Thanks for your help! cache as bitmap does seem to help things a fair bit.

it could help

np

I know this is no help, but just a reminder that you should never use cacheAsBitmap when your object is scaling. It'll hurt performance much more because it needs to resample the bitmap every frame.

hm. Good point... though it does seem to help to some extent. I'll preload it like Storm suggested when I go back in tomorrow and see what I can do to fix it, there must be a better solution.. Like I said, I'm surprised as I've done lots of complex animation in the past and have never seen this. maybe it's too easy and Flash is being scornful.

I created a new fla. I tried the x and y position change with scale up using a simple square as well as a jpg. I also used new style tweens and even converted the tween to keyframes.

I got the same choppy result everytime.

:shrug:

good point lith

FWIW, I was publishing in CS5. I'm guessing we're all the same on that end?

Aye. In the end, I recreated all the graphics in flash, removed the scale on the tween, built in a preloader, and it looks a shitload better.

Well, now Marketing Communications has decided Christmas ornaments are too religion-specific. Kill me now.

oh pour le sake de fuck