Fundamentally Opus lets you lay out a publication or presentation as a series of pages of multimedia objects to display on a computer screen and then publish them to a number of different formats.
Opus Pro standalone Windows programs which can be distributed freely to anyone and run on any Windows computer without Opus installed.
Flash the original standard for animation and interactive material to be published on the internet as standalone movies or as part of a website.
HTML5 the new way to publish interactive rich media content to the internet, including animation, video and game elements in a format compatible with tablets, mobile phones as well as Mac, iPad and PC.
Android this allows you to create an HTML5 publication and then package it up for distribution on Android phones without the need to browse the internet.
Video use Opus Pros animation features to produce non-interactive video for YouTube or for other video requirements.
Opus Pro also lets you apply activities to those pages; for example, to show a series of objects in a particular order, to play a sound, view a video clip or just simply to move between pages.
You can also get information from users, make choices, ask questions and store information and no programming is required unless you want it.
The elements of Opus are:
Pages the screens that appear to users.
Objects the elements placed on a page.
Actions the things that happen in your publication.
Objects are contained in frames drawn on the page and have a range of properties that can be edited including size, shape, border, background or even whether they use a special effect (called a transition) to appear or disappear on screen.
Only your first page will appear automatically when the publication is run by a user you must decide how and when other pages appear and use triggers and actions to do this. Any object on a page will be automatically shown when the page opens unless you set it to be Initially Hidden.
Note:
Every object (even the Page and the Publication) has a Properties dialog in which you can edit various aspects of the object including its content see Explaining Objects in Opus for more information.
Actions are the things that happen in your publication whether they happen automatically or in response to user interaction. Actions are set off by Triggers (things that make them happen), which can be as simple as a page being displayed after a certain time interval.
Note:
Opus does not consider sounds as objects as they are not visible on the page. Instead, sounds are consider as Play Sound actions. We have provided a toolbar button to allow you to add the sound action to an object easily but it remains an action.
This also means that the action is complete as soon as the sound has started so the actions of a program will continue quickly after the sound is played and will not wait for it to finish unless you specify that is what you want using the option to Wait until sound stops on the Play Sound dialog.
Triggers are attached to objects and pages and are the events which cause actions to happen. The triggers used most frequently in a publication are the On Show trigger to trigger something automatically when the object appears on screen, and Left Click to respond to a user clicking the left button on their mouse.
Once objects are on your page, simply double-click them to edit their Properties and their Actions.
The objects and actions of your publication are displayed in the Organiser where you can reorder them or access them easily.
Opus also provides a Master Page feature, which allows you to create both objects and actions that will appear on all the pages in your publication. This saves you time recreating the same object on all your pages and is useful for including a company logo, publication title or specific object/action which is common to all pages an exit button for example.
Once you have completed your publication you can display it from within Opus using the internal Preview, but you may often wish to create a copy which will run independently, so can be displayed on any other computer without having to install Opus or an Opus "player". You are also free to distribute this to other people. This process is called Publishing.
See Viewing your Publication and Overview of Publishing for more information.
There are three fundamental aspects to understanding how to use Opus Pro:
Creating objects and laying out your pages/slides
Making things happen
Publishing and distributing your publication