Ghosted view of a flat plane in a 180º revolution across the stage.
Performance
Flash has always been known for being the best solution for creating and exporting video files with a light-weight data stamp. Even though the default frames-per-second has changed from 12 fps to 24fps, there has been very little, if any, change in the exported shockwave file size. There is even an improvement of the playback on the stage as you are checking your work. (I found out that this is because the programmers in the Flash department actually completely rewrote the scripting inside of Flash so that the preview uses only Flash to render it, as opposed to a visual programming language that was used for previews in the past. This means that the preview is as smooth as the exported movie will be, so you have complete confidence in how your film will look.)
The only noticeable hesitation I notice happens when I’m using the 3D Transformations. I must stress that the Mac test system I was using didn’t have the recommended 2 Gigs of ram, so I think that it’s still amazing that everything works really well despite the lack of memory resources. So whether you have an up-to-date system or a computer the lags behind by a few years, you can still use Flash in confidence that you can get your work done efficiently.
The properties palette has a new vertical orientation to easily view all your options.
Value
As stated in the previous article of Adobe Flash CS3, Flash is a very necessary tool for people that want to post video online. Whether it’s preparing your movies to go online or creating animated shows, Flash is the top choice to get the job done. If you already have CS3, you might want to explore the trial version and see if it’s worth the upgrade. But if you haven’t purchased Flash, or are a few versions behind, then you owe it to yourself to check out the trial and really take in all the great features. Tools like the motion editor, 3D transformations, and the Bones tool are so revolutionary for the Flash community, you would be hard-pressed to try and wait any longer.
Final Comments Adobe Flash CS4’s new features are really amazing when you consider the evolution of the software over the years. Anyone that is used to the way they animated in Flash will need to make some minor mental adjustments when deciding how they are going to move their creations. That’s not to say that Adobe has done away with the old tried-and-true methods. Not at all. But instead, you have a few more options at your disposal in order to choose what best suits any particular task. Actionscript 3.0 is still a bit harder to get used to, and longer to write, than the previous version, but, despite that, it has opened doors to do things through code that we were not able to achieve before. It just takes some getting used to. All in all, Flash has dramatically improved and offers substantially more to its users than ever before.
Ease
of Use
9.0
Depth
of Options
10.0
Performance
9.0
Value
9.0
Overall Score
9.3
Michael Muwanguzi is a graphic artist and web designer currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Apart from working on print ads, web-related advertising, and 3D design work, he is currently working on new film production work and is designing a 3D adventure game from scratch.
