PowerPoint Animation – Advanced Cases
You may believe that PowerPoint animation is still too difficult to master. The problem is that PowerPoint comes with a plethora of simple effects that you can mix and match as you see fit. However, you must decide when the level of complexity reached is sufficient. The results are quite impressive, such as the one with map labels that we discussed in our previous post on advanced animation.
Now let’s go over some useful tips. However, our ultimate goal is to create an animated countdown timer. These tips and tricks, at least some of them, will be extremely beneficial to our project.
Selection area
Your animation design can become overburdened with various objects at times. Making sense of all those forms, pictures, models, and so on in the animation pane could be difficult. They have names that are similar but have different numbers. How do you deal with this and improve your creative experience?
In this case, renaming your slide objects in the Selection Pane is a good idea:
- Navigate to the Drawing action set in the Home menu.
- Next, select Selection Pane from the Arrange menu.
- The Selection Pane sidebar appears, allowing you to edit the names of all of the objects (pictures, forms, charts) required for your slide animation.
Rounded text
It’s a simple trick, but it could be useful – and not just for aesthetic reasons.
You can use the Transform function to reshape any text on your slide into a circle, semicircle, oval, arch, or any other derivative by selecting Shape Format – Text Effects – Transform.
- Choose any object in which you want your text to be written. It can be any shape, such as a circle or star, or a simple text field. Naturally, you can change the fill color and border of your form and text later.
- In order to properly produce round text, the surrounding shape must have all sides equal, i.e. be a perfect square.
- Then, from the Transform menu, select your text and apply the Round effect.
- At first glance, you may notice that not the entire circle is filled with text. You should then find appropriate text settings here (font, font size, intervals). Don’t forget to experiment with a small yellow dot to verify that your circle is closed.
To make an oval line, simply convert a square to a rectangle.
Making an arch is also simple. You can either change the position of the controller (yellow point) or break your circle. Your line can also be turned in any direction your design requires. Alternatively, you could apply various options from the Transform menu to achieve the same result with a single click.
Scrolling text in PowerPoint
We use the Fly-in effect for Scrolling Text. Trying different variations and settings may yield some interesting results.
Here, we’ll work with our line, putting it exactly where we want it once the animation is finished.
Simple Scrolling Line
1. From the Animation menu, apply the Fly-in effect to our line.
2. As a result, our line appears from the right side and flies to its destination.
3. Set Duration and Delay in the Timing settings.
Your line enters from the right and stops at the final animation point.
Repetitive Scrolling Line
Set the number of repetitions in the Animations pane – Timing – Repeat drop-down.
Lines that scroll one after the other
Simply move your Scrolling Line to the left outside the slide area to leave the slide. Repetitions can also be customized to your liking. So your line reaches its final position and then restarts. As a result, there is only one line on the slide at a time.
Our line appears while the previous one tail is there
If you want your line to start scrolling before the previous run is finished, use the following method:
- Make a copy of your line and paste it onto the initial one.
- Configure the second line start parameters as follows: Start – With Previous, Delay – half the Duration time.
Credits in PowerPoint
Credits and Fly-in animation
- Position the text field above the slide.
- Use the Fly-in effect.
- Select the Effect Options – From Below.
Credits effect
The Credits effect has the significant advantage of not requiring you to place your line outside of your slide area. Though its behavior is not always what you would like to have. To make your slides appear once in Slideshow mode, do the following:
- Place your line whenever you feel comfortable.
- Apply the Credits effect.
- Set time for your text to appear and disappear.
- Select Start – With Previous.
There are several options for the Credits effect: As One Object – the effect is applied to the entire object; All at Once – your text is divided into paragraphs, and you can set individual parameters for each, but the effect is applied to all paragraphs at once. By Paragraph – the animation effect is displayed sequentially for each paragraph.
Countdown timer and PowerPoint animation
Let’s say you want a one-minute timer.
Your Start button
This is a simple text field that can contain any text, namely, Start. Let’s add Wipe exit effect to your START button: Start – On Click, Duration – 3 seconds.
Timer line
Let’s make 7 text boxes with numbers where you can enter 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 (one number per field). Assume that the time scale is placed on the 24-cm line. All text boxes with numbers should take up your entire line. Set 0 and 60 at the beginning and end, with the rest set more or less evenly in between. Then select the entire line, go to the Shape Format – Arrange menu, and select Align to Top and Distribute Horizontally.
Now we need to visualize our progress bar. To begin, draw a simple transparent rectangle with visible borders and a red background. As previously agreed, its length equals 24 cm.
Then you can create another rectangle within that one. This time with transparent borders but a solid fill. It is, in fact, our progress bar in the sense that, when animated, it expands from 0 to its maximum width in 55 seconds. Since 24 cm is a spacing for one minute, the target width is 24/60*55=22 cm (width for 55 seconds).
Let’s put our text set and two rectangles together now. Furthermore, 0 and 60 are not necessary anymore. They were employed to facilitate horizontal distribution. However, I left them just in case. And the font color was changed to white (Home – Font Color menu).
We need to reorder our elements like that.
Settings are as follows. All number buttons: Start – With Previous, Duration – 5 sec. Rectangles: Start – With Previous, Duration – 55 sec. and 60 sec.
Now we’d like to get our progress bar to work.
Navigate to the Animations menu – Entry animations – Wipe effect. The following options are available: Effect options – From Left; Timing – Duration – 55 seconds; Start – With previous.
Another animation is added to the progress-bar elements, namely the numbers and the border. Select all of those elements and then press Wipe entry effect with the following settings: Start – With Previous, Duration – 60 seconds, Delay – 0.
When the countdown is complete, we’ll add our final message. I use a pattern fill (dotted: 90%) with a red foreground and a white background in the new text field. There is also “Time is up!” message. It uses white font with 60 point size. I apply the Drop effect with such parameters: Start – After Previous; Duration – 1 sec.
The last step is to choose rectangles all textboxes containing numbers and apply the Exit effect, Dissolve out. Its settings for number fields are: Start – With Previous, Duration – 0.5 seconds. And we use Start – After Previous, Duration – 0.5 sec. for rectangles.
Countdown timer
This is how your final animation should look like.
You can now take your countdown timer and place it wherever you need it.
Final considerations
As you can see, animations can be quite complex and time-consuming, but the effects they provide will excite your audience. There are, however, solutions that can make your work easier and simplify many of the routines required during office hours. Check out our Aspose.Slides apps, which include functions such as Video, Text-to-GIF, Collage, Merger, Conversions, and many more. You might be surprised to learn that great solutions are only a click away.
