EDAP Tools and Layer Parenting

News / EDAP Tools and Layer Parenting

28 July, 2019

Tags: Adobe Animate, Advanced Layers, Animate 2020, Animate CC 2019, EDAP Tools, Layer Parenting, parented layers, v.5.0

by nick

Update: 11 Sept 2021
With the release of EDAP Tools v.6.0.0 this article is now obsolete.

Adobe introduced Layer Parenting in Animate CC 2019.
Although quite promising on paper, the system is still in its infancy and needs a lot of work to become a sturdy production-ready tool.
Regardless of this, we can see some good potential in the hierarchical layers and will aim to integrate them in the Smart Magnet Rig workflow at first opportunity.

Upon initial release none of this new functionality was exposed to JSFL and therefore was completely out of our reach.

At the moment of writing this note – July 2019 – there are some indications that with the release of AnCC 2020, parented layers will be open to modification via a new JSAPI.

When we get access to this functionality, we will analyze the possibilities and decide on the best approaches to integrating it into the EDAPT experience.

Our plans in regards to Layer Parenting are to provide avenues to our users to access all benefits of hierarchical layers in their Smart Magnet Rig workflows in the best and most flexible way.

When this becomes possible, it will be one of our priorities for the next development cycle.

Additional note: August 2020
Layer Parenting integration will be coming to v.6 of EDAP Tools.
For a quick update on this topic, you might want to check the third video on this page.

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I’m finally using your Flash Power Tools, and they’re fantastic. Just one suggestion – put a “donate” button on your site! Or a Flattr button, or something. I like to support Free software, even if it’s with just a few bucks.

The Electric Dog Flash Animation Power Tools (EDAPT for short) is a new technique for rigging character within Flash that dramatically speeds up animation workflow. ... With the old way of animating in Flash you would have to select each individual piece and move it into position on every frame. This gets even more messy if you were to add a tween to those objects. With the old method, if the arm was hanging beside the character, and he raised it up into the air, all of the pieces would move in a straight line from point A to B. ... With the Magnet rig setup all you have to do is go to one of those in between frames. Set a keyframe, and hit the ~ key and it will snap all of the objects back into place! Read More...

Amazing tools. Changed the way I use Flash from fun but frustrating, to just pure fun

Sebastian Zegers Risopatron

This looks very thorough, thanks a lot! it's very hard to find articles that are as in-depth and professional as this, great work!

I found this site by accident but I'm glad I did. Thanks a ton this will really help me. I'll be coming back!

A gift from the heavens! Next Frame in Symbol/Prev Frame in Symbol shaved eons off from the animation process!

This is one of the most useful tools for flash animation. Makes character animations a breeze. The learning curve is pretty small, and once you get used to it – you can’t live without it…at least in Flash Very good work gents, thank you!

I am an artist and a 2d animator and have been using Aftereffects and Flash for my character animations. Your toolset and this help article is AWESOME! Thanks a lot

You’re the best! Perfect Tools. Thanks!

Wow, EDAP tools is an incredible find! So many scripts that speed up my animation workflow! It allows me to focus more on my animations, and less on the technical side of character rigs! Also, the developers respond to feedback/bugs immediately! Thank you so much for creating this package! I’ll be sure to spread the word!

Great job on the Electric Dog Flash Animation Power Tools – this is one complete set of tools that I use a lot for my flash animations. I’ve tried a lot of individual plugins and they work well on their own but it’s so good to have a solid base of components in one package.

Thank you so much for this insightful compilation! I normally do 3d animation, but had to transition into 2d for a project I’m working on. This lesson probably improved my upcoming project 10-fold, and made the subsequent projects infinitely easier. Wonderful work!

David Jablonski

Electric Dog Flash power tools really make Flash work so much friendlier than Adobe thought it should. It really solves so many of Flash's symbol short comings. Smart transform and the magnet rigs really speed up the animation process, and I know for a fact I couldn't have hit a few deadlines without these swell tools. It wasn't too hard to learn and the personal help I got when I couldn't get things to work was amazing. I just updated to Flash CC on a new computer without the EDAPT plug in and I only made it about an hour using plain old Flash before I had to stop, and get these power tools set up. Once you use these tools, you will not want to go back. And they're Free! Stop swearing at Flash and use it the way it was meant to be used. I'm a total cheapwad and even I had to donate a couple bucks because of all this product has done for me. Check it out!

Just wanted to say thanks for such a comprehensive run down of an efficient Flash workflow. It was a huge help.

Massive help to my Flash work in UNI. Thanks so much for this brilliant learning resource, there’s nothing like this out there.

Ajit Pratap Singh Rajput

is this EDAPT tool supporting in flash cs6? if yes then how?

Jesse Cunningham

Nothing but crashing for me. Animate CC 2017. Im not even able to make a magnets work lol. Need a clearly more introductory level tutorial. I would pay to get this to work as smooth as you guys do in the videos. This sucks hard!