Edit motion paths

Hi Marcia - Is there a chance you could share your .story file so we can take a look? Or could you create a quick Peek video to show us what you're trying to do?

Storyline 360 makes working with motion paths a lot easier because you can now give each motion path a custom name. That really helps when you're working with multiple paths.

Hi David

Thanks for the reply.

I have included a .story file of the one example.

I have managed to get the motion smooth for the Object tab, but it's still not perfect on the Natural Sequence tab.

Yes, it's true that I can name the motion paths, but there is still no way for me to see the various motion paths in a list or on the timeline etc. So the moment there is more than one motion attached to an item, it is still difficult to find the correct path and make the necessary adjustments.

If you look at the attached .story, you will see that I use a motion path to move an item into a position. I then need to move to the next slide and I need the item to be in the end position of the motion path, and after that, I need to move it from the end position of the first motion path to the start position of the first motion path using a second motion path (the reverse path).

The motions are there, but the elements "jitter" between the slides because the positioning is obviously not perfect. I am unable to fix it without recreating the entire thing.

I hope this illustrates the problem I am having?

Many thanks

Regards

Marcia

I understand your frustration. I have played around with this a lot. There is a lot that can be improved with motion paths. I would love to see them each shown as different layers, would love to be able to stop motion paths mid motion depending on a variable or intersection with another object. Would love more accurate ability to fine tune paths such as have very short paths so we can move characters in 4 or 8 directions easily with a click or key-press but it is very finicky - especially when the paths are only a few pixels long (keeping them straight when they are short is maddening). I probably should request some of these to product development.  There is a lot of potential for games and more interaction if this gets dealt with but I imagine there are are other features with higher priorities. If they can at least let us put a length number in for linear motion paths, that would be a start.

I'm going to piggyback on this thread. What I'm struggling with is aligning the end points of motion paths. I'm sure this is a simple process, but I can't seem to figure it out. For example, I have 5 text blocks that fly in from the right, one at a time. After eye balling their end point,s I go into the edit path function and grab the red end points, and can produce the dotted snap lines for aligning and yet there's some snapping going on that I'm not in control of, and the boxes wind up in different places. Attaching screen shot that shows difficulty in getting them to snap to the same point, but also that there doesn't seem to be a strong relationship between the red points and the final position. Thanks in advance. 

Hi Jim,

Have you tried using the grid and guidelines to make sure you're adjusting to the same spot? I'm horrible at eye-balling it - so I find that helps!  Here's how to enable those in storyline 2 which will be similar for Storyline 3 or 360.

Thanks, Ashley. That does help. Can you direct me to a list of function keys in SL?

Related: I was able to achieve this yesterday by starting with one text box, copy-pasting it, replacing the text with new, then assigning motion paths. It has something to do with the size of the text boxes apparently. Note how the green starting points are all lined up.

Thanks, happy Friday:)

Hi Jim,

Sure thing! Here's our list of Keyboard shortcuts in Storyline 2. That is from our Storyline 2 User Guide.  It’s so comprehensive and well-organized; I refer to it daily!

Happy Friday to you as well! 🎉

Excellent! Thanks.

I agree, the lack of animation options are really disappointing. 

The help page showing how to fine tune motion paths

https://articulate.com/support/article/storyline-360-fine-tune-motion-paths

indicates that you can select and move start and end points of paths. This is a very useful and needed feature. This works on straight line paths but I can't select end points of a curved path. When you place the mouse over a straight path endpoint a hand icon appears and you an select the point. Not so with curved path endpoints. The Storyline engineers who developed motion path functionality didn't quite finish the job. Why make some paths editable and other not? The only way I found to change the path is to use the "Change the Curve" option, meaning you have to redraw the curve entirely.