Motion guides

This flash tutorial will teach you how to use motion guides. Motion guides let you draw paths along tweened instances, groups, or text blocked can be animated. For this tutorial I will show you a moving block of text along a motion guide. The block of text will get larger as it moves towards the end of the guide.

Using motion guides

Step 1

Create a new flash document.
Type your text on stage then select the 20th frame and create a new key frame by selecting F6.



Step 2

Add a motion guide by selecting the following button.



*A normal layer that is linked to a motion guide layer becomes a guided layer.


Step 3

Select the first frame of the guided layer.
Draw your guided path on the stage.
I used the brush tool but you can use any of various tools to draw the desired path

• Pen
• Pencil
• Line
• Circle
• Rectangle
• Brush

Make sure the guided path is touching your text or it will not work.
*You can link multiple layers to a motion guide layer to have multiple objects follow the same path.


Step 4

Now select the 20th frame of layer 1 and move your text to the end of the path.
It should look like something below:



*You can increase the size of the text/shape at the end of the path. This make the shape get bigger as it follows the path.


Step 5

On the timeline, right click on the 19th frame of layer 1 and create a motion tween.




Step 6

Select Ctrl + enter to test you motion tween.



You should now have motion guided piece of text. For more examples of motion guides checkout motion guide 2 tutorial.