Who here can tell me what the other name for Future Splash was? I'll give you a hint. Future Splash was a very simple graphics editing computer program released in 1996. Still don't have it? It's Flash 1 silly. That's what Macromedia titled it once they bought the rights to it.
Twelve years later and we're already up to Flash 10 (aka CS4). Well, there is no "official" name for it yet, but many people are leaning towards Flash CS4. I'd also like to tell you the release date of it, but that hasn't been officialized (is that a word?) yet either. Many people are speculating at an October/November 2008 release because of the typical 18 months in between releases. What we do know, however, is that Flash CS4 will have a few very, very exciting new features that previous versions of Flash can't shake a stick at. (I never really understood that expression...)
Chris Georgenes, a professional Flash animator, is one of the testers of Flash CS4, and had this to say on his blog:
I can tell you (because Adobe has already publicly leaked some of the new features at various conferences this year) that a totally new motion tween model will be introduced that is object based and not timeline based. We will also see the Inverse Kinematics finally introduced to Flash as well as a whole new timeline panel called the Motion Editor (not a replacement to the Timeline panel but in addition to). Having used Flash “CS4″ the past several weeks/months, I am happy to report, as an animator using Flash as his primary tool - this might be the best version to date.
The Kinematics feature he talks about is what has me excited the most. Flash CS4 will basically allow you to add a "skeleton" to anything. Here's a video showing this feature live in action:
Cool stuff, cool stuff. I sure can't wait for this to come out, what about you guys? Who's going to rush out and get it as soon as it comes out?
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That is awesome. As soon as it comes out, I'm getting it. Maybe I'll pre-order it. Even without the rest of the features, the inverse kinematics are what makes Flash CS4 worth buying. Making animations would be so much faster with that...