Storyline 3: Adding Animations

Storyline 3 has a gallery of entrance, exit, and motion path animations that you can apply to pictures, shapes, captions, text, characters, and more.

To learn about synchronizing animations, see Syncing Entrance and Exit Animations and Syncing Motion Path Animations.

In this user guide, we’ll cover:

Adding Animations
Adjusting the Speed of an Animation
Renaming Motion Path Animations
Choosing Effect and Path Options
Copying Animations from One Object to Another
Animating Grouped Objects and Answer Choices

Adding Animations

Each object in your course can have one entrance animation, one exit animation, and multiple motion path animations.

Here’s how to add an animation to an object:

Select the object and go to the Animations tab on the Storyline ribbon.
Click the star icon for the type of animation you want to add (entrance, exit, or motion path).
Choose an animation from the gallery.

Tips:

You can add animations to objects on your slides, layers, slide masters, feedback masters, and states.
Some animations don't work when viewing HTML5 output in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge.

Adjusting the Speed of an Animation

Entrance and exit animations default to a duration of 0.75 seconds. Motion paths default to 2 seconds. But you can make them faster or slower.

Just enter a time in the Duration field for the animation. The duration can be as fast as 0.1 second or as slow as 59 seconds.

Renaming Motion Path Animations

Storyline assigns names to motion path animations, but you can rename them. And it’s a good idea to rename them so you can identify them when you’re working with triggers.

Go to the Animations tab on the ribbon. This reveals the motion path animations you’ve already added to the slide.
Select the motion path you want to rename, then enter a new name for it in the Name field on the ribbon.

Choosing Effect and Path Options

You can tweak the behavior of most animations by choosing Effect Options (for entrance and exit animations) or Path Options (for motion path animations).

Effect Options

Path Options

You can choose the direction of some animations.
You can choose a shape, number of spins, or number of spokes for other animations.
You can combine some animations with Fly In or Fly Out animations. Just select a direction from the Enter sub-menu.
If an object has text, you can also animate the text all at once or by paragraphs. Here's an example.

You can choose the direction of some animations.
Motion paths are unlocked by default, meaning they move with the object to which they're applied. If you lock a motion path, it'll move independently of the object to which it's applied.
Motion paths start and end smoothly by default, meaning the starting and ending speed is a bit slower than the rest of the animation. This is called easing. Use the Direction sub-menu to turn easing on or off for the starting and ending points, then use the Speed sub-menu to adjust the subtlety of the effect.
If you build a motion path and later decide you want it to travel in the opposite direction, select Reverse Path Direction.
Motion paths support relative starting points, meaning you can add more than one motion path to the same object and have each begin at the new location of the object, based on previous movements. Just choose Relative Start Point.
New in Storyline 3, you can now change an object’s orientation as it travels along a non-linear motion path so it’s always facing the direction it’s moving. Just click Orient Shape to Path.

Copying Animations from One Object to Another

Need to use the same animations on several objects? Save time by copying animations from one object to another with the Animation Painter.

Select the object that has animations you want to copy.
Go to the Animations tab on the ribbon and click Animation Painter.
Click another object to apply the animations to it.

Tip: If you need to apply the same animations to multiple objects, click the Animation Painter twice to keep it turned on. When you're finished, click it again to turn it off or press the Esc key on your keyboard.