Baseboards and Floors in PowerPoint/Storyline

Oct 15, 2012

I've been inserting walls, floors and baseboards into Storyline after creating them in PowerPoint. Or, combining PowerPoint shapes with clips I've downloaded.

I've seen some good Screenrs on how to do this. Since I'm not a graphic designer, I'd like to ask advice from those who are...or in any case who know more about this than I.

What's the best way to create a nice looking baseboard? David Anderson did a Screenr a while back discussing Floor Wall Baseboard techniques. In it, he mentions Beveling. So, I took a peek at the Bevel tool in Powerpoint and used it on, for example, thick brown line shapes or wood clip art. Pretty cool, but what might be the best Bevel effect or effects?

For floors, is it OK to just bring the floor in "as is" (that is, flat), or is it important to change the perspective somehow? I've played around with various 3D effects, but by the time I widen them enough to be outside the width of the "wall", I don't really see any difference.

27 Replies
Rebecca Fleisch Cordeiro

Tx, David. So, one doesn't need Beveling at all! That means this could also be done in SL, which doesn't have the Bevel option. Good to know. Very helpful to have the Screenr and the source file - just to check mine against yours (the masters )

Now, about my other question:

For floors, is it OK to just bring the floor in "as is" (that is, flat), or is it important to change the perspective somehow? I've played around with various 3D effects, but by the time I widen them enough to be outside the width of the "wall", I don't really see any difference.

And if I may add on to that: if I download wood from a stock photo site, what size should I be downloading? Because when I insert them, I need to stretch them to be the width of the slide, and then they look - well, stretched!

TIA!

David Anderson

HI Becky -

The 3D effect can be achieved in PowerPoint (see the 1st Screenr below) but for more advanced options and control, a graphics program like Fireworks or Photoshop Elements really makes sense.

For wood textures, I've found it varies. The larger you can find, the better since you're scaling the image texture smaller and then adding perspective to it. I think it helps if your starting texture is at least 2x the size of your slide.

//www.screenr.com/iCm

//www.screenr.com/v8g

Jerson  Campos

@ David
Excellent screenrs. I usually do all my graphics in photoshop so i tend to forget how powerpoint can easily take care of the simple stuff.

@Rebecca
If the floor you want to make has any type of patterns or lines in it, you really need to change the perspective of it or it will just look like a wall. As far as the size of it, it will depend on your output. If the image is already smaller then the area you are working in, then the image is not large enough. I usually try to go with a something that is at least 150% the size of my final output for any image that I will have to manipulate. Since changing the perspective of it really streches out the bottom of it you want to make sure you have the best possible quality;

I also went into PowerPoint and created a room just using just gradients. No images except for the clipart and the photo in the frame. Even the frame is all gradients. I used a linear gradient on the floor (darker to lighter), the wall uses a slight radial gradient, and the frame uses a path gradient and the baseboard uses the techique described by David earlier.

Rebecca Fleisch Cordeiro

Jerson, thanks. That's really cool.

Floor Photo Sizes

Thanks to both you and David on recommended "floor" photo sizes. That's been part of my problem for sure (too small).

Gradients

I've been playing with gradients quite a bit in the last month or so. So I actually understand the "gradient terminology" in your example I like Daniel's suggestion, if you don't mind, sharing the PPT. It really is amazing what gradients can do for depth and perspective. Speaking of which, that's ALL you used for your floor shape, yes? No 3-D?

3-D Floors

Which brings me to 3-D. David, I followed your Screenr: https://player.vimeo.com/video/148906181. But I ran into a snag when I tried to do as you had and use the first Perspective preset and work with the X axis. I'm not sure what I did wrong. I noticed you were using an earlier version of PPT (I'm using 2010), but I don't know why that would matter.

In any case, mine was rotating sort of left to right (geometry was a poor subject for me but I believe I was rotating around the Y axis), where your floor was rotating sort of top to bottom (so around the X axis?).

If I INSTEAD chose Perspective: Relaxed or Relaxed moderately, I could achieve your effect, but in the dialog box it's the Y axis that changes (which is what I would have expected), not the X axis as in your Screenr. The default is 324.8 degrees.  If I decrease to about 285 degrees it looks more like what you were doing.

Any explanation for that...what I'm doing wrong?

Saving as .png

Tx for that tip and it makes a lot of sense in terms of publishing time. But again, I have a question. When I saved my new floor as a .png and then inserted it into a slide, it was very small and needed to be stretched again. That can't be right?

Jerson  Campos

I've attached the PowerPoint slide. It's nothing really fancy, Just 2-3 points for each shape.

I also did a screenr of a different trick I used that would hopefully solve your problem about the image quality you need. I'm not sure if I embedded correctly but here is the link to the screenr https://player.vimeo.com/video/204931100 

Astrid Acase

Phil Weber said:

I'm a couple of months late to this discussion, but I'm working on a course and in looking for backgrounds I discovered this site: http://www.photos.com/clipart-vectors/baseboard. They are vector illustrations, so should scale to any size without distortion. Hope that helps someone!

Phil...this link is my salvation...awesome...Thnak you so much for sharing!
Astrid Acase

Phil Weber said:

I'm a couple of months late to this discussion, but I'm working on a course and in looking for backgrounds I discovered this site: http://www.photos.com/clipart-vectors/baseboard. They are vector illustrations, so should scale to any size without distortion. Hope that helps someone!


Phil, for the projects we do, what dimensions do you choose for PowerPoint or Storyline?

Thanks!

Astrid

Wendy Vaz

Any chance Articulate will just add a bevel option to the shape effects? That's a lot of additional work to get the look I want - especially when I'm used to one click in PowerPoint to do this. I like my buttons/interactions to look 3D and "pop" so it draws the user's attention. Attached is an example of a screen mockup I did for a client in PPT, now I'm attempting to recreate it in Storyline 2, but when I import the slides, all the nice effects are gone. :( Help!

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