The Xara Xone Tutorials
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As always, we will be using Pixels as our units of measure. Right click on the screen and select Page Options... from the pop up menu. In the Units tabbed section, select Pixels for the Units and 0-255 for the Color Units. In the Grid and Ruler tabbed section set the Major Spacing to 100pix (key it in exactly like this please) and the Number of Subdivisions to 10. Press OK to close the dialog and apply the changes.

To see a tutorial on Xara Basics visit Workbook 20.

NOTE: You will notice from time to time I apply arbitrary colors to objects. I do this to make the objects easier to see. If I do not specify a fill for an object, you do not have to apply a fill or outline color.

When I show an ellipse or rectangle that has just been created, that has no fill, it is because I have set the fill to none before I exported the illustration. By default, all ellipses, rectangles and Quick Shapes have a black outline and a black fill. There is nothing wrong with your copy of Xara.

Naming Conventions. I use bold face to indicate the names of tools, galleries, keyboard shortcuts, and dialogs. Items such as unnamed icons and drop down lists, which have names when you let your cursor rest over them for a moment, are displayed in italics.

The Infobar is the context sensitive menu at the top of the screen and changes to reflect the options for the selected tool.

Some of the tool icons have changed in Xara X1, and this may cause some confusion for new users. If you are using an older version of Xara, click here to see my Rosetta Stone for translating the old buttons into the new.

New Users? I have created some quick start mini-tutorials to get you though the basics. Workbook 20, Workbook 30, and Workbook 31 cover the main things you need to know to get started.

While you should be able to create all the steps in previous versions of Xara, some of the tool icons have changed, and this may cause some confusion for new users. If you are using an older version of Xara, click here to see my Rosetta Stone for translating the old buttons into the new.


Animation Basics

For users who are not familiar with how animations work, or how Flash animations work, I will try to cover the basics.

Xara Xone - Xtreme Pro Flash animation tutorial

To create a new animation, press the New Animation icon on the Infobar or select File > New... Animation.

A new window opens that is almost identical to the normal Xara drawing window. Except a new set of animation icons appear on the Infobar. These are identified and named in the illustration above. Most of the icons are grayed out at first but become enabled when you begin. We will be using most of the icons identified in red in this tutorial.

 

Xara Xone - Xtreme Pro Flash animation tutorial

The Layer Gallery becomes the Frame Gallery and provides an efficient way to manage the frames in your animation. Individual frames can be reordered by dragging and dropping the frame in a new position. All new frames are added at the end of the list. So if you want to add a fame between two existing frames, just drag the new frame to it's new position and rename it (in the Properties section).

 

Xara Xone - Xtreme Pro Flash animation tutorial

Xara can create in-between steps (called "tweening") between two objects. All "tweened" objects have to be named. Press the Create New Name icon on the Infobar and give the object a name. Or you can just let Xara Xtreme Pro assign an automatic name such as Ellipse in the above example.

 

Xara Xone - Xtreme Pro Flash animation tutorial

Objects to be tweened must be the same object, although the object may be modified in certain ways. You can change the colors for an object, and resize, rotate, and skew an object. Objects can have Flat, 2-color Linear, and Circular fills. Tweened objects with Linear and Circular fills can have different colors but the position of the gradient fill must remain the same.

Objects can have Flat, Linear or Circular, Mix transparency only. Other transparency types other than Mix are not supported. And only flat filled objects can have gradient transparency.

If you create an animation with problems in either the tweening of objects or Flash compatibility problems, a warning dialog will appear identifying the problems when you preview or export your animation.

Creating a Storyboard

A storyboard is a set of key frames that you can create before you attempt a complex animation. A storyboard is like a set of blueprints to help you construct your frames sequence. The next two illustrations indicate the key  frames in the animation we will create for this tutorial.

Xara Xone - Xtreme Pro Flash animation tutorial

Frame 1 shows a box. In Frame 2 the lid of the box lifts and a pair of eyes look out. The lid drops down and then pops up and a round face appears.

Xara Xone - Xtreme Pro Flash animation tutorial

In Frame 5 the ribbons on the sides of the box curl up to become arms which toss some random letters into the air that form to spell out Happy Holidays.

You can sketch out your storyboard on a piece of paper or create simple vector frames. This is just for reference and is not part of this tutorial.

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