Transitions can be used to affect the Position, Size, and Opacity of an object or image in Informa and FireBird. As an example, if you want a graphic to move from the lower left corner to the upper right corner of the screen you use the Position Transition to create that effect. This involves selecting a starting and ending position as well as a duration for the transition. You can have up to 10 transitions of each type on the same object.
First select an image or graphic from a file folder, click on the image name in the Elements box and it will move down to the Preview Pane. Drag it from the Preview Pane to the Draw Screen. Give the graphic a lifespan by selecting the image and then clicking on the Clock in the tool bar and enter a time or check the "end on project completion" box.
The next step is to establish the transition time. You can view the Transition Time Line by un-docking the Time Line Viewer. The Time Line Viewer is the screen located under the Draw Screen. Click on the up arrow to un-dock and the down arrow to re-dock the timeline. The image name will be displayed in the center of the green bar. Click on the down arrow on the right side of the green bar to display the transition options (position, size and opacity). Since we want to work on the movement and position we will use the Position line.
There are two ways to do a Position Transition. The first is to enter the X and Y parameters manually. To do that, left click on the Position line to bring up a blank transition (gray bar). Right click on the bar to display a pop-up menu for Manual Data Entry, Lock Transition or Delete Transition. Select Manual Data Entry and a window will appear that displays the Previous or Current Position of the image. Enter the New Values which are the end location. The screen is 720 x 480 so position 1,1 is top left and 720 x 480 is bottom right. In addition to entering the X and Y location you can also enter the time or duration of the move. All time entries are expressed in minutes, seconds and frames. Frame counts are expressed as 60 frames per second to match the refresh rate of your monitor. You want to make sure your monitor's refresh rate is set to 60Hz.
The second way to set a Position Transition is to drag the image from one point to the next. First, position the image at the start location on the draw screen by selecting and dragging. Next, double click on the Position line in the Time Line Viewer. Move the mouse up to the Draw Screen and drag the image from its current position to the desired ending position and right click to exit the Transition Modification Mode. You can adjust the start time as well as the transition duration by extending or shortening the timeline bar in the Time Line Viewer. Exit the Timeline and click on the Play button (Green, Right Facing Arrow) the object will then move from point A to B in the allotted time starting with the specified frame. Point A can be changed by simply changing the position of the object on the screen. It will still move to Point B in the allotted amount of time because the system will recalculate the speed and movement parameters automatically.
Practice and experiment with this transition and you will begin to see the possibilities. This feature can add a significant enhancement to many project.
