Animating images
Impress
offers some animation functionalities that are typical of
specialized programs. An animated image consists of a sequence of
images (frames) that are displayed in succession. Each frame may
contain one or multiple drawing objects. To start creating a custom
animated image open the Animator dialog from Insert
> Animated Image (see Figure 78).
Creating
an animation
Several
mechanisms can be used to create an animated image. This chapter
describes only two of them as that should be sufficient to
understand the functions offered.
Frame
by frame animation
Create the image
you intend to animate using the drawing tools.
Select
the image and click the Apply
Object
button. This copies the object (or objects) into the upper part of
the Animation dialog.
Apply
some transformation to the object; for example, rotate it, change
the color, if you are animating a text add or subtract a letter and
so on.
When
you are ready, create the second frame of the animation and click
the Apply Object
button again.
Repeat
steps 3 and 4 until you have created all the desired frames of the
animation.
Select
Bitmap object in
the Animation
group section of the Animator dialog. This allows
you to customize the timing of each of the frames and the number of
repetitions for the animation (set the value to Max
to obtain an infinite loop).
Click
Create to place
the animated image on the slide.
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Note
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If
the image to be copied in the Animator consists of several
objects, you can choose to treat each object as a separate frame.
In this case click the Apply
objects individually
button
 .
Remember that each object will be centered in the animation.
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Animated
image in one step
For some simple
animations it is possible to create all the animation frames in
advance, and place them on the slide. This method works well for a
rotating line, a shape gradually changing color, shapes increasing
or decreasing size. In most of these occasions it is convenient to
use the Edit > Duplicate
command.
When
all the frames are already prepared, use the Apply
objects individually
to create one frame for each of the objects.
It
is easy to obtain for example a rotating segment:
Draw a segment,
say, horizontal and make it fairly thick (use Format
> Line or the Line and Filling toolbar to do that).
Open
the Duplicate dialog by selecting Edit
> Duplicate and set the number of copies to 5, the X
and Y axis to 0.1, the angle to 30, the enlargement width and
height to 0, and press the OK
button.
Select
the 6 segments created by Impress
and open the Animator (Insert
> Animated image from the main menu bar).
On
the Animator dialog, click Apply
objects individually.
Select
Bitmap object in
the lower part of the dialog, then click the Create
button.
Other
functions of the Animator
You
can review the animation at any time by clicking the Play
button
as well as navigate the various frames using the other controls
available.
If
you are not satisfied with a particular frame, you can remove it. To
do so:
Navigate
to the frame using the edit control with the spin buttons.
Click
the Delete current image
button
.
You
can also delete the whole animation by clicking the Delete
all images button
.
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Tip
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If
you want to work on the animation frames a bit more, you can copy
them into the Impress work area by selecting Group
object and then
clicking Create.
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Tip
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Since
all the objects are centered in the animation window, to animate
an object off the center of the image, create a blank rectangle
of the same size of the final image and select it along with the
object to be animated. Make sure that Group
object is selected
before clicking the Apply
object button.
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