Using Transitions and Builds In Keynote

Use transitions to make moving from one slide to another more interesting. Use builds to add animation to objects as they appear and are removed from the slides. There are a variety of transition and build options, and each can be customized.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use Transitions and Builds in Keynote.
So I'm using Keynote version 6.0 here. Let's take a look at using Transitions between slides and also Builds for elements inside of slides.
Let's first populate this simple presentations with some slides. Now that we have some slides let's look at adding a  transition between them.
If I were to play right now while I'm on slide one and I hit the space bar or click I just go directly to the second slide. So let's add a transition between these. I'm going to select the first slide here and over on the right I'm going to go to Animate and I'm going to add an effect. It is always hard to remember this but these transitions happen after the slide so I want to put it on the first slide if I want it to be a transition between slide one and slide two.
Let's go to one. We can preview these at the Preview button here to see what they look like. I'm going to select something pretty simple like a Move In; actually let's do Push, even better. We'll select Push and now we get to change some things like duration or whether it goes right to left or top to bottom. Let's do top to bottom. We can preview it like that. We can say we want the transition to go On Click or Automatically. Automatically means you go from slide one to slide two without doing anything. So we don't necessarily want to do that.
So now that we have this in place we can hit Play and when I click we get the transition from one to another.
The difference between Transitions and Builds are Builds happen with the elements on the slide where Transitions happen between slides.
Let's go to the third slide where I have have three images. When I select one of these, one object, and I still have Animate selected over here I can do a Build In action or a Build Out. 
For Build In let's say we want this thing to move in like that. So we'll select that and then we will go to this object here and also set a Build In. We'll do Move In but we will do right to left. Then we will do the same thing for this one. We could have done them at the same time; right to left. 
So each one of these is going to take place in a certain order. You see the Order number here, 1, 2, 3 right over there. So when we preview the slide will start off with nothing because it is waiting for the first action, the first click. Then we get that. The second click gives us that and the third click gives us that. If you ever want to change the order of these we could simply change this to the second one and it would swap them or we can hit Build Order here and it gives us actually these three and we can drag and drop them. So if I wanted to shift the order I could shift it like that or I could combine them. So say if I wanted to do two and three together see how I put them together like that. Now if I hit Play it will do that one and it will do those two together, I didn't have to click a second time.
This is a  pretty complex thing here. Notice how I could have had these come in at the same time. I've got this second image here, this one, see it is selected, moving in on click and this one moving in after Build 2. I go do it with Build 2. So now get this one over here and these two come in together.
So there is a ton of stuff you can do with Build Order with moving these apart from each other, changing how they start On Click, with or after. There is a lot you can do there. You can select each individual object and change things like Duration & Direction, whether there is a Bounce in this case. Different builds will have different options.
We can also do Builds Out for these. When you are done looking at the slide, before it goes to the next one, these will disappear in different ways and also their actions. So I can do something like say if I want to add an effect like a jiggle to this, I've just done that. You look at the Build Order and I've got Move In, Move In, Move In, and a Jiggle. So there is going to be four things that will happen on the screen. 
So it could be useful if I'm giving a presentation where I say, Here is this photo, here is this photo, here is this photo but here is something I want to point out in this one that makes it different. So these little actions are kind of inbetween things; Build In, Build Out, and inbetween them you can do actions.
Of course you can rearrange these in lots of different ways and combine them. So there is a ton of stuff you can do.
Now my last slide here has text. It has a bullet list on it. You can actually do some interesting things with text. You can  treat them as different elements like these three pictures here. But you can also add say Build In for this text and do something like Sparkle and you can see how this is going to build in across for entire text field.
But it doesn't have to be because for these you will see Delivery pop up here. You can say All at Once, By Bullet, By Bullet Group if you have a list with a sublist in it, or Highlight a Bullet. Let's just do the simplest. By Bullet from first to last and now when we play this each bullet item will come in separately. So I click once and it comes in there, click twice and it comes in there, etc. Makes it really easy to do animation with a bunch of bullet items if you want to do that without having to create separate elements for each one of these bullets.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Using Transitions and Builds In Keynote”

Doli

10 years ago

Thank you! This really helps in transitioning from Keynote V.9 to the new version of Keynote that comes with Mavericks.

Jeffrey Calligan

Is there still a way to crop pictures with geometric shape?

Gary Rosenzweig

Yes. Add a shape. Then drag an image into it.

Val Lee

I always enjoy your informative videos! They are easy to understand for application purposes.

geoff c

great one! always love the show! can i also do batch tweaks to transitions and builds?

Try it, you’ll see. For instance, you can select multiple slides and apply a transition to all of them at once.

Joe M

Thanks for the regular newsletter - very useful.
I'm considering installing Mavericks but I'm concerned that my existing Keynote files will not work with Keynote version 6.0.
Any advice?

They may not. But you can still open them in the older version of Keynote. Installing the new version shouldn't delete the old one. In fact, installing Mavericks doesn't do anything for Keynote -- it is a separate download through the Mac App Store.

Thanks - great work!

Comments Closed.

Using Transitions and Builds In Keynote

Comments: 9 Responses to “Using Transitions and Builds In Keynote”

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