Animation & transitions

How to animate 3D objects in PowerPoint

March 13, 2018 by Ellen Finkelstein 8 Comments

If you have Office 365 (the subscription version) and the Creative edition of Windows 10, you can insert 3D objects into PowerPoint. I explained this feature in an earlier blog post, “How to Insert 3D in PowerPoint.”

Now, you can apply 5 special 3D animations to 3D models on your slides:

Arrive: Fades in the object and turns it slightly
Turntable: Turns the object around
Swing: Rotates the object slightly back and forth
Jump & Turn: Makes the object jump up, turn around, and then come back down. It’s great for grasshoppers!
Leave: Fades out the object and turns it slightly

Before I go on, watch this video of a presentation using some of these animations. It uses the Arrive, Turntable, and Leave animations.

These new animations are specifically for 3D objects and they facilitate showing the objects at various angles to highlight their third dimension. Of course, you can still use other animations. In the video, I also used the Grow/Shrink animation, for example.

You have lots of options, as well. For any animation, click Effect Options to the right of the Animation Gallery to see them. Here you see the options for the Turntable animation. As you can see, you can change the direction, amount of turn, and the rotation axis.

You still have the usual animation options such as Start (On Click, With Previous, or After Previous), Duration, and Delay.

Morph transitions can be particularly effective with 3D objects.

Finding 3D objects

Finding 3D objects is still the biggest challenge. In “How to insert 3D into PowerPoint,” I explained how to create them in Paint 3D.

Microsoft maintains a community library of 3D objects, Remix 3D. Most of the 3D objects there seem silly to me. I recently sent Microsoft a list of objects I thought would be useful to use as metaphors in a wide variety of business situations, like the fence in the above video–I’m using it as a metaphor for an obstacle. I hope they will expand the 3D objects so they are useful in more situations.

When you upgrade to Windows 10 Creator Update and get Paint 3D, you get a small library of 3D objects in a new 3D Objects folder. You can see that here:

You can use these 3D models as building blocks for your creations in Paint 3D.

Here’s how I created the fence:

I drew it as a 3D object in AutoCAD.
I exported it as an STL file.
I imported it into Paint 3D.
I attached a wood grain sticker.
I exported it as an OBJ file.
I imported it into PowerPoint using Insert, 3D Models.

That’s a lot of steps! But methods like these are how many presenters will create the very specific models they need. Here’s a long list of 3D modeling software from Wikipedia.

Some presenters have had difficulty using 3D models that they bought from stock libraries because the models came into PowerPoint without the materials or sticker. As a result, the models were all white. This is apparently caused by the material being in a separate file from the model. Also, there are many file types and not all programs support all file types. Suffice it to say that the field of creating and displaying 3D models for non-professional modelers is still in flux.

Nevertheless, the ability to display and animate 3D objects in PowerPoint is an exciting opportunity!

Have you played around with 3D models in PowerPoint? Do you see a use for them? Please leave a comment and share this post using the social media buttons below.

Easily create a menu slide with the Zoom feature

December 18, 2017 by Ellen Finkelstein 1 Comment

There’s an important reason that you should consider creating a menu slide, which is a slide that links to other parts of your presentation (and maybe outside resources as well).

You could also call it an agenda slide. (In fact, you could create a Questions slide at the end to link back to topics you’ve already covered so that you can redisplay slides in answer to a question.)

With a menu slide, you can offer your audience a choice about which topics they want to hear and in which order. Your presentation can become collaborative and interactive instead of a lecture.

PowerPoint calls this slide a Zoom Slide.

This type of presentation is valuable when:

You’re presenting to a small group
Your audience is made up of potential clients
Your audience is advanced and may want to skip some of the topics
You’re presenting to children and want to engage them
You’re presenting to adults and want to engage them

Can you think of other situations when offering the audience a choice would be valuable?

What is the Zoom feature?

The Zoom feature is new for Office 365 and you’ll have it only if you have Office 365, which you pay for by subscription. Although it creates a zoom-like animation, it isn’t related to the Zoom animation effect. It also isn’t related to the feature that allows you to zoom into part of a slide in Slide Show view. (I know, confusing, isn’t it?)

The Zoom feature makes creating a menu slide very easy. The result is an attractive slide that contains (by default) an image of each of the slides you link to. At the end of this post, I have links to other posts that will explain how to create a menu slide if you don’t have Office 365.

An aside about sections

Before I go into detail, I need to explain sections. Starting with PowerPoint 2010, you can create sections for your presentation. Before the Zoom feature, these were just to help you organize your content. As you’ll see, the Zoom feature can now make use of sections to create a Zoom slide.

To add a section to a presentation, you work in the left-hand pane. Right-click just above a slide and choose Add Section. In newer versions of PowerPoint, the Rename Section dialog box pops up where you can type in a name and click Rename. If that doesn’t happen, right-click the unnamed section and choose Rename section to rename it.

Back to Zoom Slides

PowerPoint offers 3 ways to create a Zoom Slide:

Summary Zoom: Creates a menu slide of selected slides. If you have created sections, the slides that start each section are automatically selected. If you don’t have sections, you choose the slides that you want to hyperlink to and PowerPoint creates the sections for you. When you click on a link on the Zoom Slide, you go to that slide and then continue through the rest of the slides in that section. The next click brings you back to the menu (Zoom) slide.
Section Zoom: Creates a menu slide on an existing slide from sections that you have defined. You can use a Section Zoom to hyperlink to one or more sections, go through the slides in that section, and then return to the Zoom Slide. This is similar to using Custom Shows and returning. (I explain Custom Shows here.)
Slide Zoom: Creates a menu slide on an existing slide that links to any slides you choose. Then you continue the presentation to the end. This is similar to using Custom Shows and not returning to the menu slide.

How to create a menu (Zoom) slide

Creating the menu (Zoom) slide is easy. Here are the steps:

If you want to create a Zoom Slide on an existing slide, display that slide. For a Summary Slide you don’t need to work from an existing slide — in the left-hand pane, click before the slide where you want to create the new menu slide.
Choose Insert> Zoom and choose the type of zoom you want.
In the dialog box that opens, choose the slides or sections you want to include.
Click Insert.
If necessary, deselect the zooms and rearrange them on the slide.

Tip#1: If you’re creating a Section Zoom, you can simply drag the section name you want in the left-hand pane onto the slide where you want the Section Zoom.

Tip #2: Similarly, if you’re creating a Slide Zoom, you can simply drag the slides you want from the left-hand pane onto the slide where you want the Slide Zoom. You can then rearrange their order on the Zoom Slide.

Customizing Zoom Slides

When you select a Zoom item on a slide, the ZoomTools Format tab appears. There, you can:

Specify whether you want to return to the Zoom slide after displaying that item (check or uncheck the Return to Zoom checkbox)
Keep or remove the Zoom transition effect with the Zoom Transition checkbox
Adjust the speed of the Zoom effect in the Duration box
Change the Zoom item’s image by choosing another image. By default, the image is the slide you’re linking to

Creating a menu slide manually

You can create a menu slide using hyperlinks. I have two earlier posts that will help you create a menu slide:

Create a visual menu

Designing a web-style, menu-based presentation

Do you create nonlinear, interactive presentations? How?

Do you create menu slides or include hyperlinks to make nonlinear presentations? Please share how and why you do this in the comments. And please share this post on social media using the Social Media buttons.

Note: This post has been translated into Russian here by Timur Kadirov of clipartmag.com

Wishing you & the world all the best in 2017!

December 31, 2016 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

Visualizing concepts-24-hour protection

October 9, 2016 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

This week I worked with a client who sells dust protectors for computers and one slide said that his products offer 24-hour protection.

It was an important concept to visualize because of the emotional impact. People are afraid to lose their data (dust is one of the top reasons that computers fail) and 24-hour protection makes them relax, knowing that their data is safe from dust.

Presenters often struggle when visualizing concepts because the concepts may be abstract or because they simply can’t find the right graphic.

I found this image at Stockunlimited.com, where I have a lifetime account. The site has both photos and vector files and I use it a lot. I think it’s the best value in royalty-free images around.

To get it into PowerPoint, here’s what I did:

Downloaded the EPS file.
Chose Insert, Picture and inserted it into PowerPoint.
Ungrouped the image and clicked Yes to convert it to a drawing object.
Ungrouped it a second time.
Deleted several blank rectangles, leaving me 2 objects, the arc with the arrow and the clock hands.

Unfortunately, the hands were all one object and I wanted to animate just the hour hand, rotating it around the clock to represent 24 hours. So I deleted that object and created 2 hands with simple lines. Of course, I matched the color and width of the arc.

Tip: To get the rounded end, right-click the line and choose Format Shape. In the Line section, change the Cap Type to Round.

Creating the clock from scratch

Since you might not have access to this image, I figured out a way to create it from scratch in PowerPoint. It’s a bit of work to create the arc and you might be satisfied with a full circle instead of a partial one, but I really liked the arrow effect.

Here’s how I did it. (7-minute video) [Read more…]

4 steps to create a video from PowerPoint slides

July 18, 2016 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

You can create great videos using PowerPoint! A common reason to create videos is to post them on YouTube but you can post them on a website or on social media as well.

You can make them as simple or as complicated as you want. Here are the basic steps to create a video from PowerPoint slides:

1. Create animated slides (including transitions)

Of course, you start with animated slides. The basic concept is to keep things moving like they would in a video. A video is a very different medium from a slide presentation, so you have to think differently.

For example, after you apply entrance animations, you can apply exit animations so that objects come in and go out. Use some of the more extreme animations that you would never use in a regular business presentation.

2. Add audio (narration and/or music)

[Read more…]

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