Developing Real Time Animation with PowerPoint

You've no doubt already heard of MS PowerPoint, a Microsoft program that will enable us to create presentations in the form of slide shows.

As of the time this article was written, the latest version of PowerPoint was PowerPoint 2007, although many still use PowerPoint 2002. This tutorial has been written to accommodate both PowerPoint 2002 and 2007 users.

One of the best presentations that can be made for your audience involves creating animation. Animation gives life to your discussion, especially if you are discussing manufacturing processes, teaching kids and explaining complex ideas. Without animation, explaining the processes can be difficult and leave your audience confused during and after your presentation.

This tutorial attempts to create real life animation using PowerPoint. It is not as difficult as it sounds; even a beginner can create simple animations.

Basic Steps to Create Animation

In order to create animation using Microsoft PowerPoint, you need to meet the following requirements.

Step 1. Create a basic sketch plan. Make sure to sketch your process on a piece of paper before drawing it in PowerPoint. This will help you simplify your animation and make it more user-friendly. It will also make it easy for you to create animation. It is essential that during the sketch plan, you ensure that the objects can be drawn in PowerPoint using basic auto shape objects (see below).

Step 2. Draw those items in MS PowerPoint. Now that you have drawn those rough objects that you would like to animate on a piece of paper, it is time to draw them in PowerPoint.

Drawing can take a lot of time. It is important to utilize various PowerPoint auto shape tools to come up with your design. To make it three-dimensional, you can select 3D objects such as a cube or cylinder. It is important to realize that to minimize the time spent in drawing, you can make the graphics consist of only basic auto shape objects, such as cubes and cylinders for three-dimensional objects, or squares and circles for two-dimensional ones.

Drawing Objects

As with any animation techniques, even the complex ones used by Walt Disney and Pixar for movies, the basic concept is to break the animation steps taken from the sketch plan into what I call "animation frames."

Animation frames, to make an impact on your audience, must be realistic and logically arranged.

For example, suppose I would like to illustrate a "dancing robot with a magnetic hand" animation for my kindergarten school presentation (see the end of this tutorial for the sample download). I can break it down into four unique looping frames of animation:

It is logically sequenced in a way that it can be easily understood by my audience.

Note that the objects I'm animating are drawn from simple shapes such as the  Cube, Cylinder, Square and Smiley from MS PowerPoint.

This is the limitation of MS PowerPoint Graphics; it cannot be used to animate complex and real life objects.

Each frame represents one slide in PowerPoint. So if you have four unique looping frames, you should also be making four slides to draw it.

Customizing PowerPoint for Animation

If you are not familiar with how MS PowerPoint works when it comes to making animation, keep reading. The first thing that you need to do is create a new presentation by going to File -> New. By default, PowerPoint gives you the first slide. You can then start drawing in it, and then if you need another slide you can go to "Insert -> New Slide." You can then start drawing the second frame. Continue until you are done.

It is important to have the "Drawing" and "Auto shape" toolbars enabled. If by accident you cannot find those toolbars at the bottom, simply click View -> Toolbars, and then the following should be checked:

• Standard
  
• Formatting
  
• Drawing
  
• Task plane

Then on the bottom you should see the Auto shape and drawing toolbars, which you can use to create graphics. See screen shot below:

When you are finished drawing your frames in the PowerPoint slides, you can start setting it for animation by clicking Slide Show -> Slide Transition, and then under "Modify Transition" you will be able to change the following (depending on your application):

Speed: The three choices available are [SLOW], [MEDIUM] and [FAST]. One of the down sides to PowerPoint is that even though you set it to "Slow," the transition still goes very fast. I have not found an option to slow this down in PowerPoint 2002, except for duplicating frames in such a way that the transition becomes slower (see details below).

Sound: This is customizable; if you need sound, you can set this. Otherwise, set it to "No Sound."

Advancing Slides: Under "Advance Slide," uncheck "On mouse click" and then check "Automatically after." This will enable PowerPoint to start the animation right away after the animation file is open.

In MS PowerPoint, the recommended file format to be used for animation is .PPS, or it is called "PowerPoint Show." To make your animation in .PPS format, you have to go to File -> Save as type -> PowerPoint show.

Some amateurs or first timers will have a hard time finding out how to edit an existing PowerPoint show file. To edit, simply open PowerPoint, and then go to File -> Open the PowerPoint file.

To set up the show, go to Slide Show -> Set up Show -> and then, depending on the applications of your animation, you can use the settings below as the default:

• Check "Presented by a Speaker"
  
• Under Show options "Loop Continuously until ESC." This will enable PowerPoint to play it continuously unless the ESC key is pressed. 
  
• Under "Show slides" select "All."

For details please see the screen shot below:

It is also suggested that you enable the hardware graphics acceleration mode for the best viewing experience.

Layout and Finalizing the Animation

As I said earlier, the "SLOW" speed for slide transition is still fast. So the best strategy is to duplicate slides. For example, a single unique frame can be duplicated four times (on four slides). Thus, when the animation file is open, the slides will then appear to be played more slowly because PowerPoint will play a certain single unique frame four times:

Below is a screen shot of how the four unique frames (from the first example above) are being duplicated a total of 20 times (four times each unique scene) to slow down the transition in the overall animation:

You can download the exact animation file (in .PPS) discussed in this tutorial by going to:

http://www.php-developer.org/wp-content/uploads/tutorials/Presentation1.pps

Summary

It is very possible to create animation with PowerPoint. In this article, you learned at least three very important lessons. First, PowerPoint cannot create real life and complex graphics, since we are limited to using Auto shapes and basic 2D/3D figures. Second, you learned how to save the file under PowerPoint Show, and how to set up the animation so that is ready for your audience. Finally, you learned that animation is highly customizable in PowerPoint, and that with simple auto shapes, a beautiful animation can be created.