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5. Create custom animations

Combine moves, fades, scaling and more into your own step-by-step animations.

Presets cover most needs. When you want something specific, for example a button that rises, fades in and pops, build it yourself with Custom. A custom animation combines simple actions (move, fade, rotate, scale, flip, blur), and you can chain several steps of each.

The six actions

Open any build-in or build-out panel and click Custom. You'll see the actions you can combine:

The Custom panel with the actions you can combine

Action

What it changes

Default when added

Move

Position, along a path

From X 0 to X 50 px

Opacity

Transparency

0% to 100%

Rotate

Rotation around the centre

0° to 90°

Scale

Size

100% to 150%

Flip

3D card flip: Horizontal, Vertical or Both

0° to 360°

Blur

Sharpness

0 to 2 px blur

Every action also has Ease type and Tween type settings. These work the same way as in 04 · Add build-in, middle, and build-out animations, and custom actions also offer Bounce and Elastic tweens.

How custom animations work

  • Actions run at the same time. Add Move and Opacity, and the layer moves while it fades.

  • Each action gets its own track under the layer in the timeline. Click a track to edit that action.

  • Steps run one after another. Inside an action, click Add new … (for example Add new scale) to add a second step that starts when the first one ends.

  • Move values are offsets. They're measured from the layer's position on the canvas, not from the edge of the banner. From Y 30 → To Y 0 means "start 30 px lower and end where the layer sits".

  • To remove an action or step, open it and click Delete in its header.

Walkthrough: make a button rise, fade in and pop

In this example we animate the Book trip button.

1. Start a custom build-in

  1. In the timeline, click the left part of the button's layer bar.

  2. In the Build in panel, click Custom. The bar is now labelled Custom.

Good to know: choosing Custom replaces the build-in preset the layer had before.

2. Add the actions

  1. Click + next to Opacity.

  2. Click + next to Move.

  3. Click on the stage to close the panel. Under the layer in the timeline you'll see a Move track and an Opacity track.

3. Set each action

  1. Click the Move track. Set To X to 0 and From Y to 30. The button now rises 30 px into place. While the panel is open, a ghost copy on the canvas shows where the movement starts.

  2. Click the Opacity track. Keep the default 0% → 100%, so the button fades in as it rises. The preview bar shows the fade.

Adding Move and Opacity actions and editing their tracks

4. Add a pop with two Scale steps

  1. Open the Custom panel again (click the build-in part of the bar) and click + next to Scale.

  2. Click the Scale track and set From 80%, To 110%. The button grows slightly past its normal size.

  3. Click Add new scale. A second Scale step appears right after the first one.

  4. Click the second step and set From 110%, To 100%. The button settles back to its normal size.

Chaining a second Scale step

5. Check the result

Turn on Show current frame and click along the ruler, or press Play. Here's the result, captured from the editor:

The finished custom build-in playing on the banner

The button rises from below, fades in, grows a little bigger than normal and settles. That pop draws the eye to the call to action.

Tips for good custom animations

  • Keep it short. Entrances of 0.5–1 s feel snappy. Longer ones feel slow in a banner that only plays for a few seconds.

  • Use small values. 20–40 px of movement and 80–110% scale look smooth. Large jumps look jumpy at small banner sizes.

  • Pair Move with Opacity. Layers that slide in from invisible look cleaner than layers that pop up already visible.

  • Reuse your work. Copy a finished custom animation and paste it on other layers. See 07 · Copy and reuse animations.

Next steps


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