Ulead GIF Animator - Seamless Animation Using Tweening
At times, an animation can look awkward, especially when it seems to "jump" abruptly from one scene to the next. Ulead's GIF Animator 5 features Tweening, which smoothens the transition between frames to create a smooth flow of motion in your animation. You need only to specify the start and end positions of objects between two frames; the Tween function will take care of adding frames in between to animate the movement sequence.
Below is a simple exercise on using the Tween function. Try to animate the two objects (snail and red dot) as shown in the sample animation below.
| BEFORE YOU START: Download the file tween_project.uga, which contains the objects you will be using in the tutorial. |
First, set the start and end positions of the objects.
1. Open the file tween_project.uga.
2. Select the big red dot (Obj. 1) on the Object Manager Panel and click Hide 
3. On the Frame Panel at the bottom, double-click Frame 1. Set the delay time to 20. Then in the Frame title, rename it "Initial Position."
4. Click Duplicate Frame 
5. In the "Second position" frame, move the snail and the red dot from their initial position to the next.
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| Frame 1: Initial position | Frame 2: Second position |
In Frame 1, the snail and the red dot are in their initial position. In Frame 2, we move the snail and the red dot to the left. | |
To accurately position each object, select the object, right-click, and select Object Properties. Then, click the Position and Size tab and specify the Left position. (In this exercise, enter a value of "61" for the Left position of the snail and "5" for the red dot.)
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6. Now, duplicate a frame based on Frame 2 (Second position). Drag the snail and the red dot to their next position, which is upward for the snail and downward for the red dot. Again, double-click the new frame, set the delay time to 20 and rename it "Third position."
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| Frame 3: Third position |
| Snail: 58, 55 Red dot: 4, 80 |
7. Repeat step 6 until you have established 6 frames, using the following coordinates to determine the snail and dot's position for each frame:
| Frame 4: | Snail: 56, 11, Red dot: 84, 79 |
| Frame 5 : | Snail: 33, 10, Red dot: 85, 19 |
| Frame 6: | Snail: 33, 10, Red dot: 44, 20 (the red dot and the snail are in one place) |
Rename each frame using their corresponding position (example: Fourth Position, Fifth Position, etc.)
NOTE: You may also specify a transparency setting for each object. This makes your objects gradually fade while in motion after the Tween function is applied.
We now have a set of frames with our objects in various positions. If you preview this animation, you will notice that the sequence looks jumpy.
Now apply the Tween function to have a smoother transition between these frames.
8. On the Frame Panel, click Frame 1 (First position). Select the snail and the red dot in the workspace, then click Tween 
9. In the dialog box that opens, select the starting and ending frame (in this case, Frame 1 and Frame 2, or First and Second position) on the Frame tab. Also type in the number of frames (for this exercise, enter a value of "3") that you want GIF Animator to insert between Frame 1 and 2. (This will generate a smooth movement sequence of the snail and the red dot from Frame 1 to Frame 2 by automatically inserting a few frames in-between to animate these objects.) Enter "10" in Frame Delay to provide a small delay between frames.
10. On the Objects tab, select Currently selected objects. Also select Position. Then click Start Preview to see how the tweened objects look.
11. On the Frame Panel, you now have 4 frames before the Second position frame. This will be your first set of tweened sequence.
12. Repeat the Tweening process for the following frames:
Between Second Position and Third Position
Between Third Position and Fourth Position
Between Fourth Position and Fifth Position
At the end of this step, you should have a total of 18 frames, with three "tween" frames in between all frames named with Position.
13. For the finale, hit the snail. Duplicate the last frame, hide the small red dot and display the big red dot. Then move the big red dot on top of the snail. Also, double-click this frame and set Delay to "50".
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| Frame 18 |
Click the Preview tab to view the whole animation. Your animation should look like this:
surse: Ulead GIF Animator
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