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Using MotionArtist to pan across a picture

For MotionArtist versions 2, 3 or 4

One effect that seems challenging at first is to pan across a still image- the 'Ken Burns effect', so-called. This can be done fairly easily in MotionArtist- all it takes is a little imagination.Setting up a MotionArtist scene in which the 'camera' pans across a still image is actually fairly simple- instead of moving the camera, the trick is to move the image. Moving (and potentially resizing) the image along the timeline gives the appearance, when the animation is played back, of the camera panning across the image, zooming in and out as desired.

The thing to remember about the MotionArtist workspace is that any part of the image extending off the edges- out of the white space- won't be displayed in the rendered SWF; thus you can treat that white space as your guideline for what will show up onscreen when the SWF plays. IHere we've created a new document and set it to 600x450 pixels; we then set the page to display at 100% to have a consistent view on the image.

Bring in an image- for this example, one of Microsoft's default JPEG wallpapers- and scale it up to where parts are off the edges of what'll be displayed in the SWF.

We can then animate it to move around 'under the camera' so to speak, using the Object menu's Animation Settings entry for the picture, as shown in image 3. We drag the 'ghosted' version of the picture to its final destination- this makes for one camera move.

If we wanted to combine panning with zooming, we could use the Stretch option in the Animation Settings. If we wanted to go back and forth we could set up another copy of the picture starting at the previous endpoint and traveling back... then we'd need to use the timeline to have different pictures appear and disappear seamlessly to give the illusion of one single picture moving back and forth.