Using Transitions

Animation Shop has some built-in effectscalled transitions that can be used with your animations. A transition is a way to move from one image to another. Transitions include effects such as fading from one image to another.

To see how transitions work, follow these steps in Animation Shop:

1. Select the black frame with the Arrow tool and press Delete, or click Delete Frames to delete that frame. You'll be left with six frames : three green lights and three red lights.

2. To run a transition effect on the animation, click F:3 (the red ball at the bottom of the third frame) and choose Effects, Insert Image Transition. Doing so brings up the Insert Image Transition dialog box (see Figure 44.8).

   Figure 44.8. The Insert Image Transition dialog box.

   

3. Transition effects add an effect between frames or from one frame to an effect. Play with the various transitions to see what they do. I selected Pinwheel, which will wipe between the two frames like a rotating pinwheel. I also set the Transition Length to six-tenths of a second to speed up the transition.

4. To see this effect, simply click OK to close the Insert Image Transition dialog box, and then click View Animation. Note how the image goes through a transition from one frame to the other. You'll also notice that additional frames creating the transition were automatically added to your animation.

You can add different effects, as well. You can apply a long list of built-in effects to your animation. I think, for example, that the Spin effect would be a good way to treat some text.

Speaking of text, Animation Shop also enables you to create some text effects; they're discussed next .