In this InDesign® tutorial, we will continue to work on our fixed layout ePub project. We will add our first animation, which is the Appear animation, to the first page of the poem.

View Sample Project Page 4

The Appear Animation

The Appear animation is simple. The object that is to appear begins invisible on the page and when the animation is triggered, the object appears. The trigger can be one of the events listed below. In the example, the trigger is an interactive button. When the reader clicks the button, the mice appear in the empty Christmas stockings above the fireplace.

On Page Load
On Page Click
On Click
On Roll Over
On Button Event

The Graphics

In the background graphic, the stockings are empty except for a piece of candy. The other graphics for this animation are the button and two stockings containing one mouse each (see screenshot). The trickiest part of this animation is placing these two stocking images over the top of their counterparts in the background. Our first step is to add the button graphic to the page (see screenshot).

1. Open your project to the first page of the poem.


2. From the top menu, click File - Place and find the button graphic.


3. Click the page to add the graphic. Position the button between the two stockings.

Now let's add the first stocking with a mouse.


4. Click File - Place and find the first stocking and mouse graphic.


5. Click the background to add the graphic to the page.


6. Select the graphic and position it directly over the matching stocking in the background.


7. With the stocking graphic still selected, open the Animation panel. You should see the name of the graphic in the panel.


8. Open the Preset pop-up menu and choose Appear.

The default Event that will trigger the animation is set to On Page Load, as is indicated by the checkmark. We need to turn this off.


9. Open the Event pop-up menu and click On Page Load, to turn it off. You should see the menu change to Choose (see screenshot).

Now let's tell InDesign to use our button as the trigger for the Appear animation. But first we need to move the button above the stockings in the Layers panel.


10. In the Layers panel, drag the button layer to the top of the panel (see screenshot).


11. Return to the Animation panel and click the icon to the right of the Event menu. Your cursor should change to circle.


12. Click the button graphic with the circle cursor.

The Buttons and Forms panel should open and the stocking graphic should be listed under Actions and the Options menu should be set to Play (see screenshot).


13. Keep the other default settings.

Let's test our animation.


14. Click the Preview icon at the bottom of the Animation panel.


15. After the page loads, click the button and the stocking with the mouse should appear.


16. Repeat these steps for the second stocking, using the same button as the trigger.

When you drag the button to the top of the Layers panel, this time rename the button stockingsButton1.

When you test the animation, you will notice that the red stocking and mouse appears first and the green stocking and mouse appears next. We want these two stockings to appear at the same time. We can change this in the Timing panel.


17. Open the Timing panel. Select both the red and green stocking pngs listed. At the bottom of the panel, click the link icon to link these to animations to occur simultaneously (see screenshot).


18. Test again and both stockings should appear at the same time.

In the next tutorial, we will add a sound that will play when the button is clicked.

Index - InDesign Fixed Layout ePub

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