Symbol - Play Modes & Time Remapping Module

Hi,

I would like to know if Harmony’s symbols have different play modes (Single Frame, Play Once and Loop) like there are for symbols in Flash.

Using symbols in combination with these different play modes can be handy when you want to cycle an animation without having to duplicate the keys of the animation itself.

I ask this question thinking that these play modes don’t exist. But, I would like to have a confirmation from the official site. :slight_smile:

Cheers,

stefman

Good afternoon Stefman,

The Harmony symbols are only of the Graphic type. We do not have the MovieClip and Button types.

You could have your cycle un a symbol and expose it in the timeline. Using the Paste Cycle command you can then copy and paste the symbol frames. The animation keys themselves are not duplicated. if you modify the content of the symbol, each time the modified frames are exposed, they will display the updated content without having to re-expose them in the root timeline.

I hope this helps.

Marie-Eve

Hi Marie-Eve,

thank you for your reply and good to read you again.

The method that you describe is indeed the way I would use symbols to loop their content.

I asked to be sure that the other two play modes (‘Play Once’ and ‘Loop’) that a Flash Graphic type symbol can adopt really do not exist in Harmony. I wouldn’t have liked to miss the existance of these play modes which would have made the creation of cycles a bit more handy and the timeline more “readable”.
e.g. If there was the posibility to change the symbol’s frames to ‘Play Once’ one would only have to repeat the first frame of the cycle. This would have the advantage that one could instanly see where the new cycle begins. Do you know what I mean?

I know that symbols do not fit to the recommended workflow in Harmony and that thus there certainly is little chance that the developement team will spend time and money to push them futher.
I normally do not use symbols neither as they make me loose the advantage of having acces to all the scene elements within the same timeline and node view level.

The only reason what I use symbols for is that they offer the possibility to ‘re-expose’ or ‘(time)-remap’ an animation without having to modify its original keys.
That’s why I wonder if there was the possibility to implement another separate module offering the same time-remapping possibilities like a symbol, but which, in the node view, would rather work like a composite module.

And if this module had the two additional play modes… Holy peg! This would be amazing. :slight_smile:

stefman

Another approach for the re-expose module could be that it would work like an Image-Switch module, switching or interpolating frame exposures instead of port indexes.
This would be a more After Effects-like time-remapping tool.

Here is an example file showing what I mean:
http://wikisend.com/download/677256/TIME_REMAPPING.zip

stefman

P.S. To see the module’s (held and interpolated) key values, uncollapse the Image-Switch layer at the bottom of the timeline.