How to trigger "symbol play from..." on different symbol?

Saola Animate Support Questions
1

Hello, I am upgrading from Edge animate. I need help replicating a feature in my work.

I am making an animated comic that has short animations in each comic panel. Every panel is a symbol. Every symbol has a “ready” animation, which is labeled in Edge animate. At the end of each panel, I have a trigger that plays the next panel’s ready animation.

In edge, I use this javascript in panel 1 to start playing panel 2:
sym.getComposition().getStage().getSymbol("pl2_ani").play("ready");

Example: http://nwain.com/?webcomic2=page-111

I have started rebuilding the page in Saola. How do I make a trigger in panel 1 that starts the “ready” animation in panel 2? They are different symbols inside the same scene.

2

Hi Terrana,

Saola Animate supports multiple timelines, they have better performance than symbols. So you should use a timeline for each comic panel instead of using symbol.

In case you still want to use symbol, you can add a trigger at the end of each symbol, and use the following script to play another symbol element:

// get parent document (also main document in your case) from symbol document
var parentDoc = doc.getParentDoc();
// get other symbol element in parent document
var otherSymbol = parentDoc.getElement('other symbol element name, not symbol name');
if (otherSymbol) {
  otherSymbol.seek('ready');
  otherSymbol.play();
}

You can do that without JavaScript by taking two steps below:

  1. Add a trigger at a label in your main document to play a symbol with Play Symbol From label action, target is a child symbol.
  2. In a symbol, add Play Symbol From label with target is the parent symbol, label is the label created in step 1.

Regards

3

Thank you for the tip about multiple timelines. They’re working very well!

As you can see here…

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