7 Pro Tips for Working with Motion Path Animations in Storyline 360
Animations can be a powerful way to explain a concept, tell a story, or make your content memorable. Storyline 360 has a variety of animation options—including entrance, exit, and motion paths. With motion path animations, you can control how your objects move and bring your ideas to life. Here are some time-saving tips to help propel you forward when working with motion path animations. 1. Rename Motion Paths When you add a motion path animation to an object in Storyline 360, a name is automatically assigned. If you plan on adding multiple motion paths, it’s a good idea to rename each one. This will make it easier to identify which motion path you’re working on when editing triggers. 2. Copy Animations If you plan on using the same motion path animation on several objects, save time by copying the animation from one object to another using the Animation Painter. By double-clicking the Animation Painter, you can apply the same animation to multiple objects one after the other without having to click the Animation Painter over and over again. To turn it off, click it one last time or press the ESC key on your keyboard. Did you know? When you copy and paste an object, any animations you’ve added to the object are also copied over. So if you’re using the same object multiple times, add any animations you want to include before you copy it to save time. 3. Sync Using Cue Points As you build content, you might change your mind about when you want your motion path animation to start. Syncing your motion path to a cue point gives you the flexibility to change the motion path timing without having to edit the trigger each time. All you have to do is drag the cue point along the timeline until the timing feels right, and the motion path will start at the new time. 4. Select the Object Path to Edit To edit a motion path, you can select the start or end point individually using your mouse and drag the point to the desired location. If you have multiple start or end points overlapping each other, you can easily select and edit them without having to hide objects from your timeline. Simply select the line of the object path you want to edit. It will turn bright blue while the other objects and their paths will fade. Then, move the start or end point as needed. Did you know? Another way to fine-tune a motion path is to select the start or end point of one or all of the objects and edit the X and Y coordinates. This is great for times when you need to be super-precise. 5. Change the Easing Option By default, Storyline 360 automatically assigns an ease-in and ease-out effect to your motion paths. This controls the acceleration and deceleration of an animation. If your animation needs to move at the same pace across the screen, then you’ll want to edit the easing direction to none. 6. Orient Shape to Path There might be times when you need to include an object that faces a certain direction as it follows a path—for example, a car making a right turn. By selecting Orient Shape to Path, the object will always face the direction it’s moving, even when it travels on a nonlinear path. 7. Use a Relative Start Point Perhaps you want to create an interaction where the object can move multiple times depending on the learner’s choice. For example, let’s say you created a racetrack and want the learner’s car to move forward whenever they answer a question correctly. Instead of duplicating the object and creating motion paths for each possible outcome, you can select Relative Start Point to move the object along the motion path starting from its current position. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this tutorial. Did you know? 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. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this free Storyline 360 download by Samuel Apata. Motion path animations give you the flexibility to quickly create content that’ll move your learners. What tips do you have for working with motion paths? Share your ideas in the comments below. Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Five Overlooked Timesavers for Working with the Timeline in Storyline 360
When I need to create richly interactive, custom learning experiences, my go-to Articulate 360 app is Storyline 360. With features like the timeline, Storyline 360 makes it simple to work with objects on my slides—making them appear and disappear in tandem with audio narration, for instance. So let’s take a look at one of the most low-key, powerful features in Storyline 360—the timeline—and five overlooked timesavers for making the most of it. Managing Objects with the Timeline When you’re building highly interactive e-learning with lots of audio and animations, it’s not unusual to end up with a number of objects on a slide. And when you’re working with so many objects, it’s also easy to get confused. Here are some timeline features and tips that can help you avoid that confusion and stay organized! Rename Objects Every object on your slide also appears on the timeline. So when you’ve got, say, 12 rectangles on your slide, Storyline 360 will number each rectangle on the timeline as Rectangle 1, Rectangle 2, etc. One of the fastest ways to confuse yourself is to leave these default labels in place. That’s because later on when you’re adding triggers to your project or building things like a drag-and-drop, you’ll waste precious time trying to figure out which of the many pictures on your slide is “Picture 27.” Save yourself a lot of trigger troubleshooting time and headaches by simply renaming objects on the timeline. To do that, just double-click on the name to the left of each object and type in a more descriptive name then hit Enter on your keyboard. It looks like this: That’s all it takes. And while it might seem a bit tedious to name every object on your slides, I guarantee it will save you loads of frustration! Undock the Timeline When you’re working with a lot of objects, scrolling through the timeline to find the ones you need can get challenging. That’s why it’s so helpful that Storyline 360 lets you undock the timeline panel and even place it on another monitor. To undock the timeline panel and place it elsewhere, just click Timeline and drag it to a new spot. I like to drag mine over to my bigger monitor so I can expand it and see everything. Ready to redock the timeline? Select Redock icon, in the upper right corner of the panel. Here's a gif showing how to undock and redock the timeline: Working with Grouped Objects on the Timeline One of my favorite timesaving tricks is to group objects on my slide so there are fewer individual items on my timeline. You can group objects by holding the CTRL key while you select the assets you want to include in the group. With all the items selected, simply right-click and choose Group. Grouping objects is especially helpful when you have a lot of assets like textboxes and shapes. I find it makes it easier to adjust timing when I can grab and place the entire grouping rather than each individual object. Expand an Object Grouping Need to make a change to an object that’s part of a group? Just click the triangle next to the group name to expand it so you can see all of the individual objects nested beneath it. Then, make your changes and click the triangle again to collapse the grouping. In short, not only does grouping assets keep your timeline looking tidy, it also makes it easier to hide/show or lock a group of objects so you can remove distractions and focus on other objects on the slide. Let’s take a look at how hiding and locking objects works. Hide and Lock Objects on the Timeline Sometimes it’s helpful to temporarily hide some objects so you can focus on others. To hide an object, click the eye icon to the left of its name on the timeline. Click the eye icon again to unhide it. There are also times when you want to see objects on your slide, but you’d rather not accidentally grab them when you’re working with other adjacent objects. To prevent one element from being moved or modified while you’re working with another, click the box before its name on the timeline. Clicking that will change it to a padlock icon. Simply click it again to unlock it. Here’s what hiding/unhiding and locking/unlocking looks like: Pro Tip: If you’ve hidden objects on the timeline, they won’t appear in your published output, so remember to unhide them before you publish! Syncing Objects on the Timeline I like to think of the timeline as a director, the objects on my slide as actors, and the slide as my stage. Thinking in these terms helps you see how the function of the timeline is to orchestrate your entire slide. By positioning and dragging the “actors” (objects) on the timeline, I can control when they’ll appear on stage (my slide) and when they’ll exit the stage in concert with other actors or my narrator. One way to orchestrate all of this activity is to use cue points. Let’s take a closer look at how cue points work. Quickly Add Cue Points To quickly add cue point markers, click Play, in the lower left corner of the timeline, then press C on your keyboard at any point where you want to insert a cue point, like this: To remove a cue point, right-click the cue point marker you want to delete and select Delete Cue Point or right-click anywhere in the timeline and select Delete All Cue Points. More Timeline Timesavers As you’ve seen, the timeline in Storyline 360 is pretty awesome. It’s hard to believe that something this simple is so powerful! In this article, I’ve covered five of my favorite overlooked timeline features, but there’s much more to learn! For more tips and tricks about using the timeline, don’t miss these articles: 3 Time-Saving Storyline Timeline Tips 11 Awesome Things You Can Do with the Storyline Timeline Storyline 360 User Guide: Working with the Timeline What’s your favorite Storyline 360 timesaver? Do you have a best tip or trick for working smarter? Share them with us in a comment, below. Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.
