How to Export Flash Animation Data

Question

I'd love for my partner, the artist, to be able to animate using flash movieclips and timelines. Then I, the programmer, would like to read the raw Flash info and re-program it into my engine of choice (which happens to be Torque2D). The data I'd want is

1. the bitmap images that were used in Flash, like the head and body
2. the links between the images, like where the head connects to the body
3. the motion data from the flash animation, like move, rotate (at what speed), shear, etc. for the head or arms or whatever.

Is there any way to get this data?

Here's what I know so far.

• There are tools like SWFSheet and Spriteloq that convert the entire flash animation into a frame by frame sprite animation (in a sprite sheet). This would take too much space in my case, so I'd like to avoid that. Re-animating on the fly would take much less texture memory.
• There is a PDF that describes the SWF file format but NOT the individual components like the movieclips.

So anyone know of a library I can use, or how I can learn more about the movieclip components and whatnot?

(more better tags: transform, export, convert)

Answer 1

I would recommend you to take a look at the grapefrukt exporter.

I didn't tried it myself yet (I will for sure!), but it seems to match your needs (well most of them).

Here is the list of features (from their website)

• Exports sprites to transparent pngs
• Exports MovieClips to animation sheets
• Parses positions of parts in MovieClips and exports keyframe data
• Exports sprites to SVG
• Exports fonts
• Data format defaults to XML but is fully customizable

There is a nice video presentation right on the website or here directly on YouTube

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Edit: Here is an alternative solution, completely in opposition with the previous tool. But it may be interesting to know about it, even if it does not fit your described needs directly.

If you use Torque2D you probably use C++, so you can probably use external libraries to run SWF files directly into your project.

Here is a list of libraries of that kind:

• Berkelium (based upon Chromium -> Chrome)
• Awesomium (based upon Chromium -> Chrome)
• Chromium Embedded Framework (based upon Chromium -> Chrome)
• GameSwf
• Gnash (based upon GameSwf)

Answer 2

Followup:

I'm still experimenting with Grapefrukt et al, but it looks like there may be an easier way!

Flash CS4 and greater supports a format for Flash projects called XFL. This format is very reader friendly and can probably be used to export data.

Classically, Flash had a project format known as FLA where all your source assets are combined into one big file. This includes your images, code, movieclips, vector graphics, etc. (It would be hard to work in a team on the same project and very hard to use source control).

With XFL, your project is kept as a directory of assets, similarly to other development tools. These assets include the movieclip information as XML data, the images, and the vector graphics as XML. Sweet!