I’m breaking down (and showing you
step-by-step) how you can create an parallax effect with Articulate Storyline
360 for multiple slides in your project.
Last week I saw this youtube video from One Skill PowerPoint Tutorials on how to create a parallax effect for multiple slides in powerpoint. Now let’s see if we can get the same result in Articulate Storyline
cta under video
Start a new Storyline files
I start with a new storyline file. The first thing I do is change the dimensions of my slide. Let’s go to the design tab and click on story size. In the story size drop down menu. I’ll change it from 4:3 to 16:9. I choose 720X405 (16:9). But you can choose whatever slide size you want. I’m finished here so I click on Ok.
Now let’s go to story view by double clicking the slide in the scene view and add a background photo. In Storyline 360 you can do this via the photos option from the 360 content library. Are you using Storyline 3 or Storyline 2 you can go to unsplash.com and search for photos over there.
I type city select a photo and click on insert. Storyline places this photo on my slide. Let’s also add some text. I go to the insert tab and add a text box. Let’s type something. For instance the city that. I make the text bold change the font size and center align it.
I give the text a little shadow so it stands out a little from the photo. I double click the text to open the format tab. Now click shape effect > shadow > shadow offset center.
Group the text box and background photo
The next step is to group the text box and the background photo. Select both objects, right click and select group or click CTRL + G on your keyboard.
Storyline groups the two objects. You can see this by the group icon on the timeline and the arrow before the row on the timeline. Now i duplicate this group. You can simple do this by clicking CTRL + D on your keyboard.
Storyline duplicated the group. Now I align this group under the first group. So it’s under our slide canvas positioned vertical at 405 pixels. Let’s change the text on the second slide in ‘never sleeps’ and change the background photo.
Double click the background photo the format tab opens. Now click ‘Replace Picture’ and choose ‘Content Library 360 photos’. And I choose a photo of New York by night.
Animation
Now we can add some animation. Select the second group and go to the animations tab. Click ‘Add motion Path’. Choose lines. Click Path options. Choose up and change the speed to slow. Now you can grab the red circle and drag the group up so that it covers the first group on the slide. Let’s preview the slide to see the animation.
There’s a small visible edge of the first photo so I have to adjust the positioning of the second group. Let’s preview it again.
Now this animation is perfect. Now let’s add an animation to the first group. Herefore select the second group. Click the animation painter button and now select the first group. We’ve duplicated the animation from the second group to the first group.
Now grab the red circle from the first animation and drag this down to the top of the slide.
The animations starts when the timeline begins to play. But I want that a user clicks a button to proceed so let’s add a button. I go to the insert tab choose icons from the 360 content library and type ‘chevron down’. I select the double chevron and click on ‘Insert. I change the fill color to white, give the icon a white border and position it horizontal on my slide and vertical 350 pixels from the top of my slide.
Change the triggers
The next step is to change the two animation triggers. They are now executed when the timeline starts I want to change that in when a user clicks on the icon. I double click the trigger and change the when part to user clicks and the object part object to icon 1.
Now let’s duplicate slide 1. Select slide 1 in the left pane and click CTRL + D on your keyboard. Storyline now creates a second slide in your scene. Let’s return to slide 1 and add an extra trigger to our icon button.
To do this select the chevron icon. Click on ‘New trigger’. Choose jump to next slide.
On slide 2 I change the position for group 1 and two. So that the group that slides in on slide 1 is visible when slide 2 loads. I place the other group under the slide at y 405 pixels.
Now let’s preview this scene again to see how the parallax course looks like.
Pretty cool right? Now let’s add two paragraphs of text on the second slide. So I click the insert tab go to text box and draw a textbox on my screen and type =lorem(1) en click enter on my keyboard. Storyline add now automatically one paragraph of lorem ipsum text. I adjust the font size and give this text box a nice fade In animation. Now click CTRL + D to duplicate this textbox and align the text boxes as two columns on my slide.
On this second slide we want to continue the parallax effect therefore I add the textboxes also to the group to do this. Select the group with the background image and the header text.
Right click and select Group > Ungroup or press CTRL + SHIFT + G on your keyboard. You’ll see that the motion path animation will disappear. This is something we fix later on. Now the background image and the header text are selected. Hold down the shift key on your keyboard to select the two textboxes. press CTRL + G to group all the items.
Now let’s add a new motion path animation I use the animation painter in Storyline to copy and paste the animation from my first slide.
So I go to my first slide. Select group 1. Click the animations tab and click the animation painter. Storyline now copies the motion path.
Let’s go back to slide and click group two (this is the group that is visible when the slide is showed). Because we switched the groups on slide two the other motion path isn’t the right one anymore. So let’s remove this one and copy the motion path from group 2 on slide one to this motion path.
