Making objects move smoothly from one location to another

Sep 02, 2012

Eric Stephan
By Eric Stephan

Hi folks. This might be a bit more of a "training wheels" question than the average.

Is there a way to have a trigger, or really any other aspect of storyline, take a slide object (for instance, a regular circle, or a text box)  automatically move from its initial location on the slide, smoothly sliding over to a second location on the screen?

Naturally, if I didn't want to see the animation of the object moving over, I would just have a new layer appear with the item appearing in its second location. But if you want to illustrate a concept by that object sliding over to a new place (for instance when the user presses a button, OR simply if a certain point in the timeline is reached) ... I can't recall how.

If this winds up being remedial, here is your chance for an easy answer!  Thanks much -- eric

14 Replies
Bruce Graham
over 11 years ago09/03/12 at 3:39 am (UTC)

Hi, 

Not sure that you can do "sliding" per se, because of the limited animations possible, however, if I want to "move" things around, I just fade out, and fade it in somewhere else on the screen.

Just set it up so that Object #1 fades out at a certain point on the timeline, while at the same time fade (a copy of it) in again at a different location.

Sometimes I have done this when listing "visual" objects, and have them stacking up in a line down the RH side of the page, which each image a little smaller than the original.

A bit like this -  .story file attached.

Bruce

Simon Perkins
over 11 years ago09/20/12 at 1:34 pm (UTC)

You can also build your 'animation' in PPT on a blank slide > publish > extract the SWF of that particular slide from the outputted folder > import into SL.

It can be fiddly in terms of getting the sizing right, but once you do it's a pretty simply thing to replicate.  This means you can replicate any of the traditional PPT animations within SL, including motion paths  

Depending on your skill or resource you could consider Flash too.

Scott Calvin
over 11 years ago09/21/12 at 11:13 am (UTC)

Thanks Simon. I tried the method you described, but I must be missing something.

I created a simple circle with a motion path on a blank PPT slide, and selected "Publish>Publish Slides", selected my folder, and completed the action.

When I look in the folder, all I see is a new .pptx file. There is no publish folder, or swf file. What am I missing?

Thanks very much.

Simon Perkins
over 11 years ago09/25/12 at 5:07 am (UTC)

Hi Scott

Here's a demo with some instructions on how to do this.  You'll find it really simple once you've done it the first time.  The bottom line is you can now do all kinds of fancy animations in PPT and bring them into SL (even with full transparency and scalability).  The only drawback is getting a feel for the initial scaling.  There's probably some maths that make the conversion easy - I just haven't got round to trying to figure it out.

Happy animating

Veronica Budnikas
over 11 years ago11/09/12 at 12:40 am (UTC)

Hi all,

Just to add to this: I am using the preview version of Powerpoint 2013, and I don't have Presenter. PPT 2013 lets you SAVE AS >MP4... then in Storyline you can just Insert>Video>from file and select the mp4 you created.

I only tried it with a simple motion path on a shape in PPT, then inserted the MP4 into SL and it worked a treat.

Cheers, Veronica

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