Reference

Coming from Animate

If you know Adobe Animate or Flash, you already know most of Phoenix. This page covers the differences, so you can get straight to work.

What carries over

• Your files. Phoenix opens FLA and XFL files, and binary FLA files from Flash MX 2004 to CS4, and saves FLA files that Animate opens again. TLF text opens as classic text, as Animate converts it. Data Phoenix does not use itself is kept as it was. Publish settings are read and written by Phoenix's own Publish, and the settings it does not use are kept.
• The drawing model. Merge and object drawing, primitives, groups, and how strokes and fills interact all behave as you expect.
• The timeline. Layers, folders, keyframes, classic, shape and motion tweens, eases, masks, guides and motion guides, and layer parenting. In Layer Properties, Follow parent's Scale, Skew and Flip can each be turned off for a child layer; see Layer parenting.
• Symbols. Graphics, movie clips and buttons, editing in place, looping options, color effects, blend modes and filters. 9-slice scaling draws on the stage and in exports, also on rotated or skewed instances and those with color effects, filters or blend modes.
• Your muscle memory. Tool keys, F5 to F8, the frame and arrange shortcuts, and the modifier keys while drawing are the same.

Keys

Phoenix's keys are Animate's standard Windows keys: B for the Brush and Shift+B for the Nib Brush (Animate's Classic Brush), Ctrl+Alt+1 to 8 for Modify › Align, Ctrl+Shift+B for bold text, F1 for help, and so on. Backspace clears the selection on the stage, as Animate's Edit › Clear does.

Commands Animate does not have get keys Animate leaves free: Light Table (Shift+L), Onion Skin (Alt+Shift+O), Previous and Next Keyframe (Alt+, and Alt+.), Loop Playback (Alt+Shift+L), Repeat (Ctrl+Shift+Y), the Outliner (Ctrl+Alt+O) and the Asset Warp tool (Shift+W).

To use Animate's keys exactly, choose the Animate Standard set in Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts. Import there also reads a shortcut set saved from Animate, matching each command by its menu and name, and lists any commands Phoenix does not have.

Where things are

What works differently

• Native format. New documents save as .phx, which opens much faster. Use Save As to write an FLA whenever you need one, or choose FLA files or XFL folders under File › Default Save Format.
• Movie clips on the stage show their first frame while you edit and scrub; their animation plays while the document plays and in exports.
• Scripts run in Test Movie. ActionScript is saved with the file. Control › Test Movie runs ActionScript 1 and 2, frame scripts and button handlers alike, and ActionScript 3 frame scripts with mouse, keyboard and enterFrame listeners; ActionScript 3 classes are not run yet. Playback on the stage and exports follow only the simple calls in frame scripts (stop(), play() and the gotos), with Control › Enable Simple Frame Actions on. See Frame scripts.

What Phoenix adds

Ink Brush

A brush with a stabilizer for steady lines, an adjustable pressure response and tilt that broadens the line, for clean inking.

Time Scrub tool

Drag across the stage to move through time.

Outliner

The whole document as a tree, down to individual paths.

Phoenix documents

A faster, more robust file format with room to grow. See The Phoenix format.

Crash recovery

Regular recovery copies, offered back after a crash.

Reference video

Import video straight onto a guide layer to animate over.

Shareable eases and presets

Export custom eases as JSON, and import Animate's motion presets.

Rigging

An X-sheet, pegs, master controllers, curve and envelope deformers, and function curves for any layer property. See Rigs and motion.

Ink and paint

Line and color art on separate layers, linked palettes that recolor a whole document, and tone, highlight and glow layers. See Ink, paint and palettes.

Compositing output

Line, color and matte passes, multi-layer EXR, and ProRes video. See Compositing passes.

Render queue

Renders lined up and run in the background while you work. See Render queue.

Studio pipeline

Split an episode into shots, link rigs to master files and update every shot, and leave review notes on frames. See Shots, assets and review.

Command-line rendering

Render, convert, check and repair, compare versions and process whole folders without opening a window. See Command line and Version control.

Motion graphics

Behaviors that move instances with no keyframes (wiggle, pulse, loop, jiggle, follow), rings, grids and crowds of copies, particles, shape operators such as Trim Paths, letter-by-letter text animation, track mattes, adjustment layers and templates. All bake to keyframes, and Export FLA for Other Apps writes a copy Animate plays the same way. See Motion graphics.

Python and AI assistants

Scripts in Python as well as JSFL, and AI assistants such as Claude that can read and change your document. See Scripting and AI assistants.

Free and open source

On Windows, macOS and Linux.

Not in Phoenix yet

These Animate features are not available yet. Files that use them still open, and the data is kept when you save.

• 3D rotation and translation are drawn and edited in Phoenix, but kept as Phoenix's own settings: Animate shows such clips flat.
• Spring simulation on bones (springs are kept). Armatures, boned shapes and warps play, and the Asset Warp tool turns artwork into a new puppet; Animate also stores rendered images of a puppet, which Phoenix does not make, so check a puppet made in Phoenix in Animate before relying on it there.
• Animate's built-in art and pattern brush library. Phoenix's Paint Brush draws art and pattern brushes made from your own graphic symbols; Animate shows those strokes as plain lines.
• Running HTML5 Canvas JavaScript, and the larger parts of ActionScript 3 (interfaces, getters and setters, the drawing API). ActionScript 1 and 2, ActionScript 3 frame scripts with their event listeners, and document and symbol class files run in Test Movie.
• Animate's camera layer: a file that has one opens, but its pan and zoom do not play. Phoenix's own camera (Insert › Camera) does.
• HTML5 Canvas documents, and publishing to AIR or projectors. Published SWF movies have no ActionScript.