OmniGraffle to Motion - Animating Flowcharts

Hello,

I often create flowcharts in OmniGraffle Pro to show how an Audio / Visual system is connected. (I've attached a simple one to this post as an example.)

I'm hoping to find a fast and easy way to import (or replicate) a flowchart in Motion so that I can create a training video that follows one of these flowcharts and explains it to the user (I'm trying to train non-technical volunteers.) I'd like to animate between different zooms and crops on portions of the canvas.

I think that the ideal situation would be if I could create a flowchart in OmniGraffle and bring in every item as a separate object in Motion, while preserving each item's respective scale and position relative to the other items.

Then, I'd create a series of camera positions, and for each one decide which items should be shown when -- keyframe them to fade in, animate drawing arrows between them, etc.

The final piece I'm trying to figure out: working through my training script (getting the wording right, the timings, etc) and associating different keyframes with specific portions of the recorded audio.

It would also be great if there was a way to do a 'live preview' of my project, so I could give this training session live. Is there a way to use Motion as a live presentation tool, pausing between different slides and waiting for user interaction?

Maybe everything looks like a nail because I know that this is such a powerful tool. The built-in presentation capabilities of OmniGraffle or Keynote don't come close to what i'm trying to achieve here.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcomed.

Thank you!

Only way would be if OmniGraffle Pro exports layered PSD files. Then you can manipulate each layer independently.

Otherwise, you'd have to build it in Motion from scratch. Bring in the PDF, use that as a template to build on top of, perhaps.

Or bring in the PDF (I'd save it as a PNG) as is, and use masks and fade In/Out behaviors, to hide/reveal, draw lines, etc.

Yes you can do it, but the presentation must be built in and directed by Keynote.
Create the template in OmniGraffle, export as photoshop. Now in Motion you will have the template divided by levels. Build the various animations that you want and save them as .mov movies. Now you can create your presentation in Keynote adding buttons and transitions, and create more variations you can use during the lecture.
Have good fun.

Let me build on what Pielle said in response to your questions:

thombrooks wrote: I think that the ideal situation would be if I could create a flowchart in OmniGraffle and bring in every item as a separate object in Motion, while preserving each item's respective scale and position relative to the other items.

The Pro version of OmniGraffle will export OmniGraffle layers to PSD layers so all you have to do is distribute your separate items on as many OmniGraffle layers as you need. Export to PSD and then import into Motion.

thombrooks wrote: It would also be great if there was a way to do a 'live preview' of my project, so I could give this training session live. Is there a way to use Motion as a live presentation tool, pausing between different slides and waiting for user interaction?

I agree with Pielle. Build the fancy moves in Motion, but as small chunks. Export these as .mov movies and import them into Keynote. That way you get the best of both Keynote and Motion. If I were doing this, I would start with Keynote for the overall structure, go to Motion for the things the Keynote couldn't do or do as well, assemble it all in Keynote and finally build the training video by either capturing the Keynote presentation with voiceover in something like Screenflow or export a .mov file from Keynote, record the VO separately and bring them into FCPX.

Hope that helps.