Animation Features:
The Tween Animation feature included in both Opus Creator and Opus Pro makes clever animation easy and intuitive.
Simply set the state or position of an object at the beginning and the end of the animation and Opus creates the frames in between. For more complex animations create key frames at key points along the way using the tween timeline.
Tween animation is supported in HTML5 output as well as Flash and standard Opus publications.
The tween feature even allows you to change the shape of a vector object using node editing and produce shape-tweening.
You can use the tween for any type of animation to make your content more interesting, to attract attention to a particular element or to create precise animations for simulation or elaboration.
The tween object is just like any other Opus frame. Simply draw it into position, resize or relocate it as required. It is often useful to make the tween object much larger than required or even to fill the whole page to allow you greatest flexibility when animating.
You can then add any content you like to the tween - vector objects created with the Opus drawing tools work best especially if you want to do shape tweening, but you can also add images, backgrounds or text. Remember that you can convert text to vectors using the Convert to Vector option on the text menu.
Each object appears in the tween timeline with it's separate object timeline. Then simply select the object on the page or in the tween timeline which appears below the page.
Add keyframes for the points at which you want the changes to occur and then change the size, shape, position or colour of the object at those points as required.
See the Tween Tutorial for full details.
Tweens can have flare and blends applied to the overall object and you can synchronise actions with specific frames in the tween thus allowing objects in the tween to interact with other objects or cause events.
You can also trigger actions to control your tween...
You can even put tweens within tweens allowing you to create one tween of, for example, a flying bird which is then tweened away into the distance. Or combine several to create a flock which flies across the page. You can also animate tweens along paths just like any other object.
One of the uses for this tool is to make complex animations for complex simulations or animated explanations much quicker and easier to achieve.
Select from the menu on the right for examples of specific opportunities for the tween animation tool.