Carousel template - Instructions

These are instructions relating to my article "Dynamic PowerPoint interactions for Articulate #1 - 3D Carousel".

Here's how to do this as if "from scratch", with reference to the example pptx file.

First, create a single slide to set things up.

Pictures

This is something to do first, in your picture editor of choice. For the example, I used a 16:9 ratio, saving them off at 320x180 pixels (at 72 pixels/inch) as PNG files (Articulate treats these well, but look out for the file size warning below).

To save time later, number them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the order you want them to appear in, and put them in their own separate folder.

The shapes

The template uses 10 shapes with image fills (although you can only see 5 at first glance).

You can insert images directly, but I wanted to be able to set the overall transparency (i.e. the Alpha) of the images to give the 3D impression of them "fading into the distance" down the stack. As far as I know it's not possible to set the overall transparency of a directly imported image, so I used this method:

- create 10 standard PowerPoint shapes on the slide - 10 rounded rectangles- right click on these (one at a time) and select "Format Shape" at the bottom of the

dropdown- select "Fill"- check "Picture or Texture Fill"- click the "Insert from File" button and browse to your image

You can then use the transparency slider to set the overall transparency of each shape.

The rounded rectangles, the border outlines and the reflection effect are all standard PowerPoint effects that you'll find on the "Drawing tools" toolbar. If you want to make the outline's transparency match the image, you need to set this in the "Drawing tools" toolbar:

- click "Shape outline"- click "More outline colors"- set the transparency with the slider

The layout

As you can see from the example, the layout is already set and you can see 5 shapes. This is because each shape has another one stacked behind it (in preparation for the animation). The layering here is very important in order to give the visual effect of the animation, so open the Selection Pane (Home toolbar > Arrange > Selection Pane) to see how things are stacked and named. This is what you'll see:

This is a very useful kind of "layer view" for PowerPoint. The top layers are at the top of the list, and you can reorder them with the arrows at the bottom. This is much more flexible than the "Send to back" and "Bring to front" commands available when right-clicking on objects - note that you can select more than one object from this menu by using the Control and Shift keys while selecting.

So if you look at the first slide of the demo, what you have is:

Image 1 FRONT - the lion (a shape with an image fill of 01.png)

Image 1 BACK - the elephant (a shape with an image fill of 02.png) - you can't see this until you make Image 1 FRONT invisible by clicking its visibility icon on the Selection Pane.

Image 2 FRONT - the elephant again (you'll see why when we get to the animation).

Image 2 BACK - the buffalo (a shape with an image fill of 03.png)

...and so on until you get to Image 5 BACK - which is the lion again.

This is so we can achieve the animation effect - the front image disappearing, the others shuffling forward, and the front image finally shuffling in to the back of the stack.

Animation

At first, I tried to emulate the classic Flash effect of the images smoothly magnifying forward and sliding off to the left. To cut a long story short, this animation didn't translate well to Articulate

output. Instead, I used a standard PowerPoint animation effect for a different kind of transition - "Glide".

The trick is as follows:

- Image 1 FRONT glides out (exit effect) at the same time as Image 2 BACK glides in (entrance effect) - so they smoothly replace each other.

- Then the same thing happens with Image 2 FRONT and Image 2 BACK

...and so on, until the end of the stack.

This is achieved by stacking the animations in direct relation to the stacking of the objects, as you can see from the Custom Animation menu (Animations toolbar > Custom animation):

One key thing here is to use the "Start" parameter of each animation to specify exactly when it happens, so Image 1 FRONT is set to "with previous" (i.e. immediately) and Image 2 BACK is also set to "with previous" (i.e. at the same time as Image 1 FRONT). Image 2 FRONT is set to "after previous" (i.e. it waits for both the Image 1 animations to finish) and Image 2 BACK is set to "with previous" (so it glides in at the same time as Image 2 FRONT glides out). And so on until the end of the stack (when the display text box finally fades in).

The other key aspect of the animation is the speed at which it occurs. The default speed makes for a pretty jerky animation, so right-click on any of the animations and select "Show advanced timeline" from the menu. You'll see this:

Each of the image animations is set to 0.1 seconds. This setting isn't available from the "Speed" dropdown at the top - you need to right-click on the animation and select "Timing" from the menu. Note that you can select multiple animations by using the Control and Shift keys while selecting, and then set the same timing for all of them at once. You can also adjust the individual bars visually with the mouse.

Other elements of the screen

The other elements of the screen are straightforward:

- a "Next" type of button with a hyperlink to "Place in this document" > "Next slide"- an Intro Text box at the top with some text- a Display Text box at right of the shapes with some text. Note that this relates to Image 2

BACK (the elephant), as this is the image that you'll see at the end of the animation

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At this point, if you're doing this from scratch, take a break, have a coffee or whatever and preview the slide output in Articulate until you're happy with the way it works and looks. You can change the animation types, the layout, the timing and whatever else you want to play around with.

To save a whole lot of time, only proceed to propagating the rest of the sides when you're happy with the way this one slide works.

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Propagating the slides

Now comes the unavoidably tedious part. As there are no programming or scripting capabilities available in PowerPoint (not that I know of anyway), you have to take on the role of the computer and just act like a machine for a little while.

Here goes:

1. Duplicate the slide2. Change the display text at right to refer to the next image in your series3. Open the Selection Pane and select the first shape at the front (Image 1 FRONT)4. Right-click on the shape and select "Format Picture"5. Select "Fill" and click the "File" button6. Change the fill image to the next one in your series - so if it's currently 01.png, change it to

02.png7. Make the image invisible in the Selection Pane and select the next one down in the stack8. Repeat from step 4 until you've changed all 10 of the fill images (increasing each of them by

1 in your series)9. Then repeat from Step 1 again for the next slide

Yes - this does mean that you need to swap out the fill of 40 images - so it does require a little time, focus and concentration! Using a "large icons" view when selecting the next image helps a lot.

On the final slide, change the hyperlink on the "Forward" arrow to "Place in this document" > "First Slide" - and there you have your loop. You can set up the branching in Articulate so this set of slides acts as a single slide.

Considerations and warnings

- on the Animation toolbar, make sure you uncheck both boxes under Advance Slide - "On Mouse Click" and "Automatically After:". Your hyperlink on the arrow on the slide is what controls the animation

- in the Slide Properties on the Articulate toolbar, make sure all the slides are selected to Advance "By User"

- in the Presentation Options on the Articulate toolbar, you may need to adjust the image quality settings if your output files are really large

- if things look weird, make sure the images are stacked in the right order, that the animation stack matches this order, and that the timings are consistent

- don't group the shapes - you'll lose their individual animations and have to start again. If you want to shift them around together, use the Selection Pane (or drag a marquee) to select all of them

Have fun!

Sasha Scott