Hey guys, happy Friday. Before we go sharing the tutorial, I watnted to congratulate David Poellinger for winning the Layers TV blog contest and Paul Williamson for winning the Layers TV contest. Congrats to the both of you!!

IK with Flash CS4 and Lee Brimelow
Inverse Kinematics (IK) is a system that allows animators to set up animation constraints by laying out a structure of bones, which determines how certain pieces are allowed to move. This is heavily used in 3D modeling tools for character animation. One of the most anticipated new features of Flash CS4 is the new built-in support for IK animation as well as the ability to control these animations at runtime using ActionScript. This tutorial will walk you through the basics of creating a simple IK animation.

If you’d like to download the file used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, click on this link. All files are for personal use only.

1 OPEN THE EXAMPLE FLA
Open crane.fla in Flash CS4 and inspect the contents. This file targets Flash Player 10, but the IK features will also work in Flash Player 9. In the Timeline panel you’ll see five layers. The first four contain the supporting artwork for the dock scene. All of the crane pieces that will be used in the IK animation are held in the crane arm.

To continue the rest of the tutorial, click on this link.

Thanks for stopping in everyone. We’ll see you guys back on Monday!