Cue points have been around since the original version of Storyline but did you know that Storyline 2 comes with the awesome new ability to trigger a cue point? This means you can now trigger your entrance and exit animations.

Check out the example below to see how I use buttons to trigger both an entrance and an exit animation on the laptop graphic.

View demo

Here are the high-level steps I followed to accomplish this interactivity:

I started by inserting the graphic that I want to have enter and exit the slide (it could also be a shape, a text box, a character, or many other objects, but in this example I used a laptop graphic.). Next, I headed over to the Animations tab and added an entrance and exit animation to the graphic, and adjusted the duration of the animation. In my example I set both the entrance and the exit animation on the laptop graphic to last 1 second.

I then inserted two buttons on the slide. One button to trigger the entrance animation, and one to trigger the exit animation.

The trick is all in adjusting the timing of the buttons and the graphic on the timeline. The entrance button appears first, for 1 second. Right after it disappears the laptop graphic appears. Then, the exit button appears for 1 second, but quickly disappears 1 second before the end of laptop graphic (which would be when the laptop graphic will be doing the exit animation.). Here’s an example of how the timeline looks:

The next thing I did was to add in my 2 cue points. To add a new cue point left-click on the timeline and select “Create Cue Point at Play Head”. I placed it on the timeline so appears right before the entrance button disappears. Next, I inserted a second cue point and placed it on the timeline right before the exit button disappears from the timeline. Now that cue points have been added the timeline looks like this:

I’m almost done! My last step was to set up the 4 triggers. The first trigger pauses the timeline when it hits cue point 1. A second trigger, on the entrance button, restarts the timeline when the entrance button is clicked. At this point, the laptop graphic appears on the timeline. Then, a third trigger pauses the timeline when the timeline hits cue point 2. And finally a fourth trigger, which has been added to the exit button, restarts the timeline when the exit button is clicked. At that point there’s just enough time left on the laptop graphic to show the exit animation.

And voila! That’s how you can use cue points to trigger animations with Storyline 2. Do you need a step-by-step video to help you through this process? No problem, just check out the video tutorial below for an even more detailed walk-through.

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Chris Fry