Forum Discussion
Animation in Storyline through the Morph Transition
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?
Agreed. this is an ongoing active thread, and you've got customers going from discussing work arounds to discussing alternative software solutions. I do appreciate the staff update, but the answer is coming across as dismissive. Why is this not a higher priority? Our work in Articulate has to compete with work produced by designers using your competitors' software, and as the months go by, my work is starting to feel clunky and old fashioned without this option. Please consider reevaluating your priorities and moving this request up.
Agree, Articulate's answer is dismissive. It's not a higher priority to them because of their arrogance. They don't listen to customers.
We shouldn't plead with them.
We need to move on and use a competitor's product, to a competitor that cares about the users of its product.
If we can influence more Articulate users to leave Articulate for the competitors, then watch how Articulate will be begging customers to come back by offering all sorts of enticements.
Everyone ... I think the issue here is that:
ā¢ Obviously, Articulate doesn't care about its customers. If they did they would listen to customers. Pure arrogance. Same excuse again and again.
ā¢ And Articulate doesn't have the developer knowledge and skills to develop the Morph transition.I agree if they can revisit their priorities and I believe that they are listening to their customers it's just that Morph is not with a very high impact as we can proceed with alternatives. I visited their feature roadmap and I'm looking forward to those. Let's also consider their process as we all know that even in our own processes and business requirements we sometimes or most of the time prioritize things based on impact, need, time and effort. Take care everyone!
I think it either: it would require a larger chunk of DEV time than Articulate is willing to allocate, or the way their development architecture is set up, it might not actually be possible for them to execute.
Software companies never admit that they can't actually do something, so they rely on the PR technique of stating that they're choosing not to do it. I think that if they could do it cheaply enough, they'd have done it years ago. Unfortunately, it's now been five years. Perhaps it's time to reinvent the wheel and blow-up the old code and start anew. You've gotten a LOT of miles out of this code, Articulate!
Very well said Patrick, I agree.
Thanks. I also think that Articulate might not truly understand WHY we like the Morph transition. It's not really about the "animation" per-se. It's about how much (and what kind of) animation we can getāfor the least amount of TIME invested. It's SO EASY to use. I see all kinds of suggestions for complicated workarounds, but those people don't seem to understand. I want to make these transitions in PowerPoint, and I want them to remain intact in Storyline. I can get so much out of that transition. Articulate needs to take to heart that we often have to develop to multiple platforms. Articulate 360 is not a one-stop-shop. The relationship between what I do in PowerPoint and what I do in Storylineāis symbiotic. Articulate needs to be going where PowerPoint is going.
And would it kill you (after this many years) to do a Mac version?
Hi Everyone! - As Lead Customer Advocate at Articulate, my goal is to work directly with our product team to voice your needs. I take into account every insight shared in our E-Learning Heroes community, and evaluate 100+ feature requests every week.
I understand your passion for this feature and share the same enthusiasm when I bring requests to our team.
To add more context, the need for Morph Transitions has impacted a low number of users, and that contributes to the priority we give it. Industry trends, new ideas, and complexity of a feature also weigh in on our decision process, but none of these factors have managed to move this one past the items currently on our product roadmap.
I hope this glimpse into our feature process will help address any concerns.
Bret, not that I doubt you, but may I ask what metrics you have to illustrate this low number of users, or how you gather this data? I've used Storyline at more than one company and I've never seen any sort of survey or similar.
I logged in to say the same thing. If Articulate are only going by the number of users who actively contact them and ask for a feature, they're misreading their audience. For every one of us who has commented in this thread, there will be hundreds who don't bother reading here, but who would also greatly appreciate this feature, and make purchasing decisions accordingly.
I've also never seen a survey.
I don't want to go back to iSpring - I use layers and triggers a lot, and although you can duplicate that in iSpring, it is more labour intensive, as is any kind of navigation other than linear. It can be done though. And when I weigh up the amount of time I spend to recreate even text boxes in Storyline, because they've imported as pictures, well, the time may not be a lot different.
I am sorry you do not see the need for morph. Your competition, iSpring, allows me to retain all of my morph transitions when creating courses in PPT thru their tool. I understand adding morph to Storyline could be difficult, but I do not understand how adding morph to Articulate 360 (presenter) would be hard. I have purchased iSpring just so I have access to Morph. With the recent release of iSpring Page (basically iSpringās version of Articulate Rise), now when I compare iSpring to Articulateā¦ the differentiator for me is morph. We rely primarily on Articulate 360 or RISE to create our courses, so losing access to Storyline does not hurt me at this point. I prefer to stay with Articulateā¦ but the morph feature is a āmust haveā in my world and iSpring offers me that. So for now, unfortunately, I am switching to iSpring and will not be renewing with Articulate. If you have morph by the time my renewal date comes back around, I am hopeful to return.
https://www.ispringsolutions.com/blog/ispring-supports-the-amazing-morph-transition
https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-pageI 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.
Brett, it impacts EVERY user who has a Morph transition in their PowerPoint deck. Remember, that transition is more than just a wipe, fade or barn-doors. It's really used as a way to quickly and efficiently animate / transition things (motion, scale, color, transparency, typography, etc). People heavily use this transition. You just might not be hearing much from the users because they already know to prepare their work differently. It takes time to make noise.
Respectfully, I'd submit that you're not reaching a representative sample of your core users. Typically, the most vocal and/or the most aggravated are the people who take time to log on, find a board, locate a request link, etc., and then take time to post. That's a small percentage. Requesting the morph transition is rather akin to requesting indoor plumbing. If the 2 star hostel down the street (Powerpoint) has it, but the 4 star luxury chain (Articulate) doesn't, most people will just work around it until they find a way to pack up and move on. They are spending time finding out what software that amazing design they love was created in, and after enough of the same answer, they jump ship. Consider this board a canary in the coal mine rather than an pesky outlier, please.
