Animation in Storyline through the Morph Transition

Nov 12, 2018

Cameron Ward
By Cameron Ward

Some time ago, PowerPoint came out with a transition called Morph that literally morphs shapes, colors, strokes, graphics, etc. from one slide to the next. In other words, if you build a design on one slide, duplicate the slide, and make changes to the shapes on the second slide, the Morph transition will smoothly deform the shapes from the first slide to the next.

This transition is POWERFUL for animation. I feel that small animations of this kind are especially important for a product like Storyline. In a sense, the ability to build animations is one of the key features that I feel is missing from Storyline. If Articulate would consider adding the Morph transition to Storyline, it would allow users to animate the graphics on the screen with triggers, and I believe that would open up new worlds of possibility with Storyline.

Is this something you all would consider adding to Storyline?

246 Replies
Andy Pastotnik
over 3 years ago10/14/20 at 3:32 pm (UTC)

I can understand where you're coming from on the "metrics" side of things...but the other considerations to take is that a far more inferior product to Articulate is offering a feature that many of us use. It is us minorities that will drive and inspire the majority. So I would like the Articulate team to be encouraged that it would be a very helpful feature AND that if more people knew about this feature being available in Articulate they'd probably NOT use 3rd party for it.

John Hunter
over 3 years ago11/13/20 at 2:57 pm (UTC)

Good Morning, All;

I am going to +1 for this feature as well.

If you take a look at how many companies are using Articulate (SL3 and up) as their primary development tool based on job descriptions and how many subscriptions that Articulate must have, I find it amazing that just because we take the time we are only "a small percentage of users". Personally, the less time I have to switch between dev products to create a module the better it is. Also, for downstream work if another ID has to work on the content but does not have the same tools I do, it becomes more difficult to update or modify.

Math Notermans
over 3 years ago01/05/21 at 4:54 am (UTC)

Actually you can create Morph animations with Storyline.
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/a447cc04-524a-40cb-8345-aa86660f3637/review
As seen in this sample from me you can morph SVG shapes. Using GSAP Morph you can morph any given shape in Storyline to another shape. Also imported shapes will work. If anyone wants a tutorial to see how to get that done with Storyline and GSAP let me know and i make one.

Math Notermans
over 3 years ago01/05/21 at 5:00 am (UTC)

@bjorgensen Good to hear some motivation about choices made on the development roadmap Bret. To improve visibility and clarity of the development product roadmap i would suggest creating a viewable list for all users here on the forum where all can see what is top priority and if ideas and things they request are already on that list...and possibly vote directly on items.

Math Notermans
3 years ago01/25/21 at 2:56 pm (UTC)

For sure...get started with GSAP first... check my profile...and go learn GSAP. Then when your somewhat familiar with Javascript in Storyline... visit the GSAP site...
https://greensock.com/gsap/
Get a Club Greensock account and download the plugins needed... because off the bat not all the extra plugins are included in Storyline... only the bare bones GSAP is... MorphSVG is one of those extra plugins you need to get this working...

If your at that point...having access to GSAP's plugins... and need help... im here :-)

Math Notermans
3 years ago03/19/21 at 6:09 am (UTC)

As concerning Feature Requests and the lack of transparancy on Articulate side on that, i created a Storyline setup in which users can add requests they have and vote for existing features.
Articulate should make something like that on the forum in my opinion.

Im adding the Morph transition feature request now, so you all can vote for that.
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/building-better-courses/feature-requests-overview-and-voting-system

Checking the feature requests in now 2 jump out.
Storyline for Mac - 151 votes
Merge/combine/add/subtract shapes - 62 votes

As i donot have build in some check if people add votes multiple times..do restrict yourself from that, because the complete tool is useless if you do that. I suspect someone did that with the Storyline for Mac feature.

Leslie McKerchie
almost 3 years ago04/26/21 at 2:38 pm (UTC)

Hi Lesa,

This conversation is specific to Storyline 360, and I've not seen an official feature request submitted for Presenter 360. I see that you have mentioned it in this conversation in the past, and I wanted to share some information about how we manage these feature requests, which may be helpful. 

We froze feature development in Presenter 360. We'll continue to fix issues that stem from operating system upgrades, browser updates, PowerPoint changes, and security vulnerabilities. You can read additional details here.

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