So in this tutorial, I’m going to teach you how to make components fade out with smart animate. Here’s an example from a project I’ve done:
Let’s dive right in!
First off, you will want to create some text along with an video image placeholder rectangle and a down arrow to indicate to users to scroll down for more information.
Start off with creating a textbox (Press T and click anywhere on the screen) and typing in “Guide: How to Smart Animate” and you can bold sections by highlighting it and pressing ‘CMD + B’.
Next, create the video image placeholder by pressing ‘R’ and then dragging anywhere along the frame to get the rectangular shape. Hover over the edge and pull the dot to adjust the corner radius of the rectangle. Then go to the 4th tool on the top left menu and select polygon to create a triangle. Adjust the color of the triangle to be darker than the rectangle behind it. Then CMD + Shift and click onto the rectangle and triangle to select both of them and align them Horizontal and Vertical centered via the top right aligner toolbar. Then adjust the rotation of the triangle by -90 degrees to rotate it to look like a play button. Remember to group these two shapes together by selecting both of them and pressing CMD + G.
Next, we will make the down arrow by pressing ‘L’ to draw a line (note: to draw a straight line, hold Shift as you drag your mouse to make the line). Then select the polygon shape tool to make the triangle. Adjust the color of the triangle to black and move it to line up with the line in the middle. Group these two shapes and label it “Scroll Down Arrow”.
The last thing you will want to do on this page is to create some text on the bottom of the frame because you want them to scroll and view the text below. Press T and drag to select the width of the textbox. Fill in with loris ipsum text filler (You can download the plugin for that in Figma). Follow by writing ‘Step 1:’ at the top. Then select auto height on the text box configurations on the right toolbar. Once that is finished, you will want to set the ‘Layer — Pass Through’ from 100% to 0% to make it invisible. This is important because you want the layer to dissolve in when you scroll.
Now that we have the first page all made, we will need to duplicate this to create the prototype. Do that by pressing on the frame (the gray text at the top of the frame) and then pressing CMD + D.
Following that, we will now focus on the second page. Rename this layer to Post 2.0. Now we want everything to fade away and the text to come up as the user scrolls downwards. To do this, we will set the Layer — Pass Through of the ‘Guide’ text, the video image placeholder, and the scroll down arrow to 0%. Once you do that, drag them in the direction you want them to fade out. If you want it to fade in place, don’t move it. In this case, we will drag the ‘Guide’ text up out of the frame, the scroll down arrow downwards, and leave the video image placeholder in place. The further away you drag a component away from its original position from the 1st frame (Post 1.0), the faster the animation will be. Smart animate recognizes two different components/layers in different frames and animates the movement based off the differences. Which is why you need to play with how far you want to move each item till you like the final product.
(Side Note: If you notice the Guide text, when I drag it off the frame, it moves that component out of the Post 2.0 Layer on the left. You will need to drag that component back into the Layer if you want the transition effect to work. If you notice the component is not transitioning how you want it, check to make sure the component didn’t move out of the layer.)
Then we will want to move the loris ipsum text we had at the bottom back up. But first, set the Layer — Pass Through for it back to 100% and then move it to the top. Preferably around the same area as where the Guide text was previously.
Finally, let’s prototype this! Click on the 1st Frame (Post 1.0) and select Prototype at the top right. Drag the dot that shows up on the 1st Frame (Post 1.0) to the 2nd Frame (Post 2.0). Select ‘On Drag’ for the Interaction because you want the animation to show up when you drag downwards. Then select the ‘Smart Animate’ for the Animation sequence. Change the timer from 300ms to 1000ms (1 second). Also, make sure to select ‘Post 2.0’ in the ‘Prototype’ tab and change the Overflow Behavior to Vertical Scrolling to allow people to scroll down to read the text that clips off at the end.
Let’s see the final product by hitting the play button at the top right next to ‘Share’.
That’s it for this guide, I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial! Till next time.
