Animation Question

Hello all,

I am trying to animate a 20 sided dice. I created my own animated gif of the different 20 sides and they quickly switch from one to another. The only way I can get it to pause is to right click the image. Is there another way in animation or somewhere else to pause it?
Thanks

So, there is kinda a way to control a GIF in the way you describe. You can use VBA to change the playback mode of the GIF at the proposed timing, effectively pausing the GIF at the precise moment you want. However it's finicky and getting it to pause the GIF at the correct time every time is something that PowerPoint was not built to do consistently.

In my opinion your best bet is actually to do the following:

1. Create 20 different animations as videos, not GIFs, of the dice rolling and landing on each number.
   
2. Import all 20 videos into the slide where you want the animation to play.
   
3. Use a tiny amount of VBA to generate a random number, then trigger the appropriate video to play based on which number it generates
   
4. Check the "video playback in fullscreen" option on the videos. This means that you can have all 20 videos off the slide, and when one of the videos is triggered to play it will instantly snap to fullscreen to play the video (you can also have VBA make the videos appear and disappear if you'd like, too).
   

With this method it should give you the desired effect without creating complicated scripts or worrying about precise timings that you have only imprecise control over.

Wow... thanks so much for the detailed answer/idea.
Although I am very comfortable and well versed in PowerPoint, animations, etc. I tried my hand at it about 7 years ago and felt out of my league. Maybe its time to try again.
Thanks a bunch!

Feel free to DM me if you need any help. I've been working in PowerPoint for 10 years at this point and I have a decent amount of experience and knowledge that I would be more than happy to share

Will do! thanks

If you are OK with the VBA approach, that's fine.

I have a non-VBA approach to dice rolling if you need it.

Thanks John.. yes I would be interested in a non-VBA way. I have used animation to do workarounds like a spinner that moves quickly. The arrow image I attached starts and stops the spinner to get me a random number. I also found youtube videos of dice that spin if I wanted to add a video would like to see your idea. thanks

It would work like a normal 6-sided dice as per this tutorial, but with either a trigger circle with 20 segments or 20 scrolling (back & forth) squares or rectangles.





The square/rectangle approach is simpler.

Depending on what you are looking for these may or may not help but may be useful for future reference to use in other projects.