Tutorial:Motion guide
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[edit] About Motion Guides
Motion guides are drawn out guides that manipulate the motion tween when it goes from one keyframe to the next. This tool can be used wherever there is a motion tween. It is useful for making symbols do additional maneuvers in a single motion tween without using additional keyframes.
Example:
[edit] Creating Motion Guides
Step 1 - Starting off:
start off how you normally would with your flash page (File:New). On your stage you can either create a new symbol or import from another flash file. Do what you would normally do for a regular motion tween [[1]], except for moving the symbol in the second keyframe, The symbol on the second keyframe will have to be set up after the motion guide is placed.
Step 2 - Creating the motion guide layers:
To create a motion guide, you have to create a whole new layer for the guide itself in order for flash to recognize the fact it is a guide and not a shape or a symbol. Here you can do one of two things:
(A) You can right click your symbol's layer and select "add motion guide". The motion guide layer will be automatically created with the symbol layer inside of it.
(B) You can create a new layer, right click the layer, and select "guide". After this, you have to drag your symbol layer into the guide layer.
A) 
B) 
Step 3 - Creating the guide:
On the guide layer, create an outline using either the pencil tool, the line tool, or the pen tool. The outline has to create a pathway for the symbol to follow, so be sure that it has a beginning and an end to it. Be sure to watch out for any broken lines or possibly other lines that can get in the way, either of those can result to a regular motion tween rather than a guided one.
Step 4 - Aligning
On your timeline, be sure that your motion tween is set between both keyframes on the symbol layer and your guide layer frames match the frames length for the symbol layer. If it doesn’t match, just create a keyframe (F6) on the guide layer that matches up with the keyframe on the tween layer.
When it comes to the symbol and guide, go to the first keyframe and align the symbol with the beginning of the path. If you look on the example, the circle in the middle of the symbol is where you align the guide with the symbol. When you are done aligning symbol on the first keyframe, go to the second keyframe and align your symbol with the endpoint of the pathway. If you press enter, this should display a tween that goes from point A to point B along with the guide. If you test the movie (Ctrl+enter), the guide layer will be invisible and the symbol will still go on its designated path.
[edit] Additional things
Select your first keyframe of your symbol layer, go to your properties inspector with that keyframe selected (if the properties inspector isn’t open, press ctrl+f3). In the Properties inspector, you will see three icons named "Orient to path", "Sync", and "Snap". Selecting each of these will do something different.
Orienting to path: Your symbol rotates in sync with your motion guide.
Sync: Syncs to Symbols
Snap: Automatically snaps the symbol to the guide.
[edit] Multiple Symbols on one guide
You can have multiple symbols do a motion tween on one guide layer. To do this, Each individual symbol needs to have its own layer. Once you have these layers, you can just simply drag all of the desired layers into the motion guide, and repeat step 4 on the tutorial.
