Import animation into Animate

[Dazzer_21]

I am working on an artwork that contains sparkles on that I want to make look as though they glint (so imagine a white starburst that gets larger and then shrinks back to its original size as an animation, placed on an image). So..

First question: If I create this animation in Animate - import the original starburst graphic (currently a .psd file) as a symbol into frame 1, duplicate to frame 10 as a larger instance and then duplicate the original size version to frame 20 and then tween all the frames - I get an image that starts small, gets bigger and then reverts back to original size as a smooth animation. That's the exact effect I'm after. At the end of the day, I want about ten of these in place all glinting away at spaced intervals.

I have initially tried exporting the original as an .swf file and then importing into the Animate file I'm creating my artwork in. This works - to a point. It imports the file and shows it to be 20 individual frames in the timeline, whereas the original had 3 frames linked by tweens. I can live with that although the imported graphics default to being placed on the top left corner of the canvas. As hard as I try, I cannot move that animation to where I want it to appear. It lets me move each frame individually but I want to copy the whole block of 20 fames in one go. I can't do it.

Which leads me onto question 2: Is there a better way? I've tried exporting the original starburst animation as an animated GIF and once again that does import back into Animate, although it's lousy in terms of quality. What should be a smooth white image with transparency comes in as an ugly grey with a dark grey outline. Is there a more suitable file format I should be using? I was hoping that the animation would sit in a single frame and just be left to play on its own - either just once or looped to the end. Looks like it doesn't work that way in the end so looks like I'm going to be stuck with a massive amount of frames to deal with. But just a way of getting a decent end result would be nice. It can be done, but it's the issue of me not being able to move the graphics down from the top corner which is presenting me with grief right now...

Thanks for reading all that...  

[RandomlyFish · Accepted solution]

For this I would recommend copying your animation and put it inside a movieclip. That way you can make 10 copies of the movieclip and place them where you want.

First you would need to click and drag to highlight all the frames in your animation and then right click on them and select copy frames. Then click on the symbol on the first frame, right click on it and convert it to a symbol. To add the animation to that symbol, double click it to edit it. Now that you're inside it, you should see that the timeline only have one keyframe. Right click on the first keyframe and select paste frames, which should insert the animation on the symbol's timeline. Once you're done, just double click anywhere on the stage to get back to the main timeline. Since the animation is inside the symbol, you only need one keyframe on the main timeline, so you can get rid of the rest. Then you can just make as many copies of that symbol as you want.

To make some of them glimmer at different speeds, you can open the library panel and right click on the symbol and select duplicate. You can then animate the duplicated version at a different speed.

[Dazzer_21]

YESSSS!!!! Thank you! That's one life made very much easier - thank you kind sir!

[Dazzer_21]

OK... I had a brief wobble this morning as I tried to do this within my master animation and it wouldn't work!!! What I tried to do was create the animation on one of the layers on my master file. Try as hard as I could, following the instructions, it just wouldn't work! So I then opened a new Animate file and imported just my sparkle image onto the stage. Created the animation as per your steps and it worked perfectly. I then copied and pasted the animated symbol into the master and... Bingo!!