In this tutorial you're going to learn how to add a motion blur effect to your animation, using a third party software.
Since Flash Doesn't allow us to add blur to our objects, we're going to use Adobe Photoshop.
The trick involved here is to import 2 images to Flash, one is the normal image, and the other one is motion-blurred in Photoshop.
By applying motion tween to our motion-blurred image, we can make our object look as if it is actually accelerating! Just like our little UFO :)
1:
Alright, let's get started
- The First step is to open your image in Photoshop (or any other photo editing software with motion blur effect) and apply the desired motion blur amount to your image.
Good, now we've got 2 images, the original, and the motion-blurred image.
You can save your images as *.jpg format, however, if quality of image in your flash movie is going to be important, then it is highly advised to save as *.png. It is important to note that your flash file size will be larger with .png format though.
Ok, let's go go to Flash now :)
2:
Run Flash and go to File>Import and import the 2 images.
Additional info on image optimization in Flash, you can skip this if you want:
- Go to Windows>Library (or F11), right-click your image and go to Properties.
If you saved your images as .png in the previous step, it is important to select "Lossless (PNG/GIF)". Otherwise, leave it as JPEG and flash will compress ur file according to the value set in File>Publish Settings.
3:
Good, your images are ready to be used now by flash.
- Now place the two images on different layers.
- Apply the desired Motion tween to the original image. Once you get to the point where you need to apply the motion blur, end the original frames and start the blurred image from the same position, as shown in Fig2.
That's basically it, replacing your original image with the blurred image, making sure the blurred image starts from where the original was left out.
Conclusion:
What we did:
- Used Photoshop to add "motion blur" to our image.
- Imported the original and the motion-blurred image to flash.
- Optimized the images for better quality and file size.
- Created 2 layers, the original on one layer and the motion-blurred on another.
- Applied motion tween to our images, and stopped the original image at a certain point, for the motion-blurred image to resume.
Well done :) hope you enjoyed the tutorial.
Download *.fla
More Flash & Swish: 
