D video games using Scaleform GFx, a technology that renders Flash content within non- Flash video games. Scaleform is supported by more than 1. Unreal Engine, UDK, Cry. Engine and Phyre. Engine, and has been used to provide 3. D interfaces for more than 1. Film and animation!
Wubbzy! El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, Danny Phantom, and more. Flash is less commonly used for feature- length animated films; however, 2. The Secret of Kells, an Irish film, was animated primarily in Adobe Flash, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 8. Academy Awards. Several popular online series are currently produced in Flash, such as the Emmy Award- winning Off- Mikes, produced by ESPN and Animax Entertainment; Happy Tree Friends; Gotham Girls, produced by Warner Brothers; Crime Time, produced by Future Thought Productions and Homestar Runner produced by Mike and Matt Chapman. Various third- party software packages designed for traditionally trained cartoonists and animators can publish animations in the SWF format.
History. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson, Jonathan Gay, and Michelle Welsh. Flash was a two- part system, a graphics and animation editor known as Macromedia Flash, and a player known as Macromedia Flash Player. Future. Splash Animator was an animation tool originally developed for pen- based computing devices, but due to the small size of the Future. Splash Viewer, it was particularly suited for download over the Web. Macromedia distributed Flash Player as a free browser plugin in order to quickly gain market share.
As of 2. 00. 5, more computers worldwide had the Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, Quick. Time, Real. Networks and Windows Media Player. As Flash matured, Macromedia's focus shifted from marketing it as a graphics and media tool to promoting it as a Web application platform, adding scripting and data access capabilities to the player while attempting to retain its small footprint. In 2. 00. 0, the first major version of Action. Script was developed, and released with Flash 5. Actionscript 2. 0 was released with Flash MX 2. UI components, and other advanced programming features.
The last version of Flash released by Macromedia was Flash 8, which focused on graphical upgrades such as filters (blur, drop shadow, etc.), blend modes (similar to Adobe Photoshop), and advanced features for FLV video. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2.
Macromedia product line including Flash, Dreamweaver, Director/Shockwave, Fireworks (discontinued) and Authorware is now handled by Adobe. In 2. 00. 7, Adobe released Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, the first version released under Adobe, and the ninth major version of Flash. It introduced the Action. Script 3. 0 programming language, which supported modern programming practices and enabled business applications to be developed with Flash.
Adobe Flex Builder (built on Eclipse) targeted the enterprise application development market, and was also released the same year. Flex Builder included the Flex SDK, a set of components that included charting, advanced UI, and data services (Flex Data Services). In 2. 00. 8, Adobe released the historic tenth version of Flash, Adobe Flash CS4. Flash 1. 0 improved animation capabilities within the Flash editor, adding a motion editor panel (similar to Adobe After Effects), inverse kinematics (bones), basic 3. D object animation, object- based animation, and other advanced text and graphics features.
Flash Player 1. 0 included the first in- built 3. D engine (without GPU acceleration), that allowed basic object transformations in 3. D space (position, rotation, scaling). Also in 2. 00. 8, Adobe released the first version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (later re- branded as Adobe AIR), a runtime engine that replaced Flash Player, and provided additional capabilities to the Action. Script 3. 0 language to build desktop and mobile applications. With AIR, developers could access the file system (files & folders), and connected devices (joystick, gamepad, sensors) for the first time.
In 2. 01. 1, Adobe Flash Player 1. Stage. 3D, allowing for GPU- accelerated 3. D rendering for Flash applications and games, on desktop platforms such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Apple restricted the use of Flash on i.
OS due to concerns that it performed poorly on its mobile devices, had negative impact on battery life, and was deemed unnecessary for online content. In 2. 01. 5, Adobe rebranded its Flash authoring environment as Adobe Animate to emphasize its expanded support for HTML5 authoring, and stated that it would . The Flash source file format is a proprietary format and Adobe Animate is the only available authoring tool capable of editing such files. Flash source files (. Flash movie files (. Adobe Animate. Note that FLA files can be edited, but output (.
Flash movie files are in the SWF format, traditionally called . Flash Video files.
For content in a single format (such as just text, video, or audio), other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less CPU power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades. In addition to a vector- rendering engine, the Flash Player includes a virtual machine called the Action.