Tweet Basic difference between slide transition effects and animation effects

Slide transitions are the animation effects that are applied to whole slide whereas animation effects are applied to objects (text, shape, picture etc.) on a slide. For a slide you can have only one transition effect while each object on the slide can have multiple animation effects.

Transition effects appear in PowerPoint slideshow view when slides change from one to the next. Like animation effects we can control the speed of each slide transition effect, and we can also add music or sound. Video below should help you understand the difference:

Transition and animation effects provide visual impact and  grab the audience's attention but when to use them and when not entirely depends upon your content and target audience. It's advisable not to overdo animations or slide transitions and also to stick to one transition effect throughout the slideshow because your audience may find it annoying and distracting. A balanced use of animations and slide transitions can lead to effective presentations which will  keep your audience attentive and awake.

Tweet Animation Painter

You must have used format painter at times to copy settings such as font, color, and size to apply it on some other text. Format painter feature not only saves our time but also ensures that all the text in a presentation has same font, color and size.

PowerPoint users were always in need of something like format painter to transfer animation effects from one object to another. "Animation Painter" in PowerPoint 2010 lets you transfer all the animations and settings to another object  thus saving your time to replicate the animation effects. It works similarly to the Format Painter. Like video triggers, 3D slideshows and PowerPoint to video, Animation Painter is a brand new feature which isn't available in PowerPoint versions prior to 2010. Just select an object with animations, select the “Animation Painter” button on the Animations tab, and with a single click you can transfer all the animations and settings to another object. Double-click on painter button will let you paint multiple objects sequentially. PowerPoint creation is gonna whole lot easy with PowerPoint 2010.

Tweet Triggers in PowerPoint

PowerPoint offers wide range of features like motion path animations, action buttons, inter slide hyperlinks to create interactive and engaging presentations.

PowerPoint executes all the animations as sequence of events. Any object (text/image/shape) can be made appear, fly in as a result of click or after effect of some action. Any action for example a click results in next animation or slide.

You can't just jump on to a particular event of your choice or repeat an action again and again. For example what if you want to stay on same slide and display an image again and again on click on a text say "Who is founder of Microsoft". In such scenarios where you have to bypass sequencing or repeat actions while staying on the same slide, PowerPoint triggers is the best option available. Triggers can only be set on some animation effect.

• Select any text/object, apply some custom animation effect.
• Either double click or right click the animation effect applied(on custom animation sidebar).
• Click on 'timings' tab, click Triggers button and select the radio button "Start effect on click of".
  
• Select the event on whose click you want selected animation to execute.

Either visit Microsoft 's website or watch video below to understand use of triggers in PowerPoint.

Video triggers in PowerPoint 2010

PowerPoint 2010 offers Video Triggers; a feature with which one can mark locations in a video (i.e. set bookmarks), and then trigger animation sequences upon reaching those bookmarks on playback of the video. In simple terms you can set some specific animation to run when a particular scene appears in video inserted in PowerPoint.

Image via Microsoft PowerPoint Blog

Tweet Motion Path Animations

Motion paths offer such a wonderful PowerPoint animation effect that in slide show mode, for a moment you might mistake the presentation to be a video. Don't believe it? See it for yourself:

Sample motion path

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A motion path is a custom path that an object(text/image) follows. Either you can pick from preset paths like line, up, down or may create your own custom paths. Motion Paths let you create your own animation effects which are otherwise not available in PowerPoint.

Just follow steps below to add awesome Motion Path animations to your PowerPoint presentation:

1. Select the object(text or image).
2. Click on the animation tab.
3. Click on Add Effect>Motion Paths.
4. Select motion path you want to use and click OK.
5. Run slide show to verify and save.

Microsoft has good training material with voice over for Motion paths. You can have this free training here.

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