Using the Toon Boom Studio™ importer for Macromedia Flash MX

Now that you have maximized using Toon Boom Studio™ by creating cinematic content, you’re ready to turn to Macromedia Flash MX to add text and interactivity.

Toon Boom Technologies and Macromedia created a bridge between their programs with the Toon Boom Studio™ Importer plug-in, TBSi, for Macromedia Flash MX. TBSi gives you full-control of the import process. With TBSi, you can:

• Select the scenes, elements (layers) and frames, you want to import.
• Decide how you want to import sound. You can choose to have TBSi edit sounds with effects you added (to ensure synchronization) or you can choose not to import sounds at all.
• Preserve the layering order of your animation, or collapse layers into one to keep the effect of elements changing their relative front-back position in the 3D scene-planning space.

In addition to providing expert control, TBSi logically organizes your content in Macromedia Flash MX as follows:

• The transfer to Macromedia Flash MX layers preserves element names.
• All of your animation content – sounds, bitmaps and drawings – are organized automatically in your symbol library so that you can make the most of your content.
• It places sounds in their own layer.

Now that you know why TBSi is beneficial, let’s bring your Toon Boom Studio™ movie into Macromedia Flash MX and add some interactivity:

1. Start Macromedia Flash MX and open Shadow_Rough.fla. You’ll see that there are already several scenes in the project.
2. Open Scene 3. You will import the scene we worked on into the existing Scene 3.

3. Select File > Import, browse to the location of the ShadowDialog_Rough project folder and select ShadowDialog_Rough.tbp. The Import dialog box opens.

   Note: If you do not see the Import dialog box, you probably do not have the latest version of TBSi, which works with V2. Download the latest version of the plug-in from: http://www.toonboomstudio.com/product/tbsi_plugin.php

   

   View screen shot (wil open in new window)

4. From the Scene list, select Scene 3 and import all of the elements and frames.
5. Select Preserve Layers. Although we used a camera move in this scene, no element layers swapped positions in the scene, so we can keep the scene’s element organization without loosing any of the multiplane action on the camera.
6. De-select “Create new scenes” so that TBSi will add the content to the current scene.
7. Click OK. TBSi works to import your animation into Macromedia Flash MX.
8. TBSi adds frames to the end of a scene. If you find you have extra frames, select those frames and select Insert > Remove Frames (or press Shift+F5).
9. Save your animation.

Now you are ready to add the scripting in the next section.