Video: Apply paths to layered pictures

How do you apply motion paths or other effects to the items you can’t see when you first view a slide? We'll take a look at some tools that help.

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Design motion paths

In Movie 1, the course introduction, we played this animation sequence, in which pictures fade in at the center, and then move left and right on motion paths.

A tricky part of this sequence is that the pictures are stacked in front of each other.

How do you apply motion paths or other effects to the items you can’t see?

I’m going to show you some tools that help.

Let’s look at this slide at an earlier stage.

I’ve started by positioning everything where I want it to end up on the slide and applying the Fade entrance effect, using the order I want.

Now, I’ll stack the pictures, in the center, and then apply the motion paths.

I’ll close the Animation Pane for now.

When I stack things, I like controlling the front-to-back order.

So, for Holly’s picture, which appears first, I’ll right-click and choose Bring to Front.

Remember these commands; they’re useful when you want to move something behind or forward.

For Lola’s picture, I’ll choose Send Backward, so she’ll stack behind Holly.

And for Mark’s picture, I’ll choose Send to Back, which puts him at the back.

There’s a quick way to stack and center the pictures. First, I’ll select them all—I’m pressing Ctrl as I click.

Then, in Picture Tools, I’ll click Align Objects.

This is a great set of commands for positioning things.

I want to align selected objects, relative to each other rather than to the slide, and that’s checked, here.

And then I’ll click Align Center.

That both stacks and centers the pictures.

One thing I did to prepare the pictures was to crop them all to be the same size, so they would stack evenly.

Now I’ll open the next handy tool, which is the Selection Pane. It’s also part of the picture tools.

The Selection Pane lists every item on the slide—pictures, captions, and the title placeholder.

The pictures are currently selected on the slide, and they’re also selected in the pane.

I can select items on the slide by selecting them in the Selection Pane:

Holly’s caption selects that shape on the slide.

Lola’s caption selects that shape.

Title selects the title placeholder.

Another thing I can do is name each item so it’s descriptive.

PowerPoint uses names like “Placeholder 5” or Rectangle 3.”

But you can double-click and retype what you want.

But the real benefit of the Selection Pane is that I can use these icons, shaped like an eye, to hide things on the slide.

So for example, if I want to work just with Lola’s picture,

I can point to the eye next to Holly’s picture and click it, and that hides Holly, and shows Lola.

To redisplay Holly, I click the icon again.

This will help me add the motion paths.

Holly’s picture’s in front, so I can easily add her path. I can select her picture by clicking in the pane.

I click Animations, Add Animation (because Holly already has a Fade effect), and Lines.

There’s the path and it’s selected.

Using Effect Options, I’ll make it go to the left.

Now, to work with Lola’s picture, I’m going to hide Holly.

In the Selection Pane, I’ll close the eye for Holly’s picture.

And now I can work with Lola’s picture. I select the picture, click Add Animation, apply the path, and make it a right-pointing path.

That takes care of the motion paths.

And very important, I have to remember to redisplay Holly’s picture in the Selection Pane.

So, to recap, three tools that helped me work with layered pictures were the Arrange commands, such as Bring to Front;

The Align commands in Picture Tools;

And the Selection Pane, also in Picture Tools.

I can close the Selection Pane now.

Now I just need to order the animation effects. I’ll open the Animation Pane and do that quickly.

Here are the motion paths.

I’ll drag the one for Holly’s picture up, to follow the entrance of her picture.

And I’ll do the same with the motion path for Lola’s picture: I’ll drag it up to follow the entrance of her picture.

I’ll set them both to Start After Previous so they move on the path after they enter.

While they’re selected, I’ll change their duration and make it shorter, at 1 second.

And finally, I’ll click Play All to see the sequence.

Now you have all the tools you need to create great animations using motion paths.

For more information, check out the links in the Course Summary.