Hottest R.A.V.E. In Town

I realize that many of you simply use CorelDRAW to create the artwork you use for printing, engraving, sublimating and cutting. But if you are going to already have the software and learn how to use it, you might as well get the very most out of it for your business. So I'm going to go over the new Corel R.A.V.E. program that is included with CorelDRAW 10. It's main focus is to create artwork for the Internet in Macromedia Flash format. Since a large number of you have a home on the Web, this could give you the ability to contribute content for that home.

That Sense of Sameness

It's quite possible that you'll open up Rave for the first time and not notice any real difference from CorelDRAW 10. I guess that is because it is almost identical. The main changes are the addition of a Timeline Docker and the effects for creating quality animations. Because of this sameness, you can create your first animation only minutes after starting the program. Even better, you can open an existing CDR file to use as the basis for your animation.

Let's Animate

When working with CorelDRAW, everything is static. So the first change we see is in the Movie Setup dialog box at right. You still choose a height and width (the default measurement unit here is pixels), but the most important change is the Frame Rate. This determines how many frames are shown in each second. For reference, movies at your local theater play at 24 frames per second. The higher the value, the larger the file it produces though the animation will be smoother. The default in Corel R.A.V.E. is 12 frames per second and I would suggest keeping this value for the time being. Change the page size to 500 pixels wide by 200 pixels high and click OK. The Movie Setup dialog box gives you the ability to see the number of frames displayed each second.

In order to get the hang of the timeline, we'll need to add something to our file. So, add some text. I chose the word "WOW!" in 100 point Futura XBlk BT for my file. Feel free to use a different word or font if you wish. My only suggestion is you keep the word fairly short and use a bold font. Hmmm, so far this works just like our old friend CorelDRAW.

Now look at the Timeline Docker and you should see "Artistic Text: Fontname" in the tree list just below Layer 1. "Fontname will obviously read as the name of the font you've chosen. For example, mine says "Futura XBlk BT". Just to the right of this entry will be the first frame of the object on the timeline filled with a big black circle. Click on the "Artistic Text" entry in the tree list and then click and drag the circle to the right until a line covers all the frames through Frame 36. You should now see something similar the image at right. The Timeline Docker makes it easy to specify how long each object appears on screen.

Now click your cursor in the box representing Frame 18 of our text object. Hint, this is halfway. If you miss and click in the wrong frame, it isn't a really big deal. Once you've clicked in the frame, double-click right on the line. This will turn that frame into a Keyframe for our text object. When this happens, you'll notice that the big black circles at either end of the line have now changed into hollow squares and a hollow square is now in Frame 18. This just means that each of those three frames is a keyframe.

The idea is that you create artwork in each keyframe and then Rave will create all the frames between each of the keyframes. So let's make a change in our artwork so that you can see exactly how this works. With Frame 18 still selected, choose the Interactive Envelope tool, set the mode to Single Arc, click and drag the top middle node up while holding the Shift key. Keep dragging until you get near the edge of the movie. When you've done this, your screen should look similar to the image at right. After Enveloping the text, your image and Timeline should look similar to this.

Believe it or not, we're almost done. Go to the lower left of the Rave window and you'll see some VCR buttons. Press the Play button (the rightward pointing arrow) and watch the movie you've made. The text will shrink and grow as the movie cycles. The last step is to export this file.

Choose File | Publish to the Web and name your file. The only file format available is Macromedia Flash (SWF). Click the Export button and you'll get a dialog full of options. In the Presets drop-down, choose "High Quality - Optimized and Protected" then press the OK button. Now it is just a matter of adding this file to your Web page. A simple way to preview it would be to find the file in Windows Explorer then drag and drop it on top of an open Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator window. Most of you already have the Flash plug-in required to view the file though some of you may get an error if you don't have the plug-in. It can be downloaded for free from http://www.macromedia.com if you don't already have it.

In Closing

Our sample project was obviously a very simple example of how to use Rave to create an animation. But if you followed along, you should have seen that learning Rave is pretty darned easy if you already use CorelDRAW on a regular basis. And the results you get are just plain cool!

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