Subtitles of the Movie

In this example I have another set of our stars set to Tile File a rectangle. Up to the Add Behaviors Button and I'll select Sequence Replicator. Now, notice this time the behavior is applied to the parent object, the Replicator, not the cell. I'll shorten the Sequence Replicator's Behaviors Track in the mini timeline. There, I don't want this to take very long to animate. Because I'm creating an animated sequence, I have to tell the behavior what parameters I want to animate so I'll click Add and chose Opacity and click Add again and choose Scale. If I change my mind I can click the Remove Button to delete either of these parameters. Let's go back to the Replicator Object itself. Because this pattern is set to Tile Fill, stars are placed to fill the entire shape of the rectangle, not just its outline. Also Motion has added the Origin Parameter. This is where the Sequence Replicator will build the pattern from. Right now it's set to Center. If I change it to Upper Left, you see the color change to reflect that new origin. And the Build Style has changed too. It now says Across or it can be set to Build by Rows or Columns. So with Origin and Build Style, we have set the direction of the animation. Back to the behavior itself, we'll examine the timing controls that are found here in the Sequence Control Section of the behavior. What we are doing with the Sequence Parameter set to From is taking the values we have set for Opacity and Scale in the behavior to the Property Values of the cells. Right now both Opacity and Scale are set to 100 percent, which is the same values as the cells so nothing is going to change. So let's set both to zero percent. This starts to make sense. We are going from the Behaviors Values to the Cells Values. Let's play it. And we see the cells build on but they just pop on. I want to transition from the behaviors values, not just switch them on abruptly. That's where the Spread Parameter comes in. This parameter will create a transition time for the change of the values. I'll set the Spread to eight and play it again. Great. Now we see the stars fade in and grow; very nice. The Traversal Parameter has familiar values it its pop-up so we can ease into the final values during the time of the spread effect. Loops tell Motion how many times you want this animation to play and End Condition tells Motion what to do at the end of each loop. I'll stretch out the Behaviors Track in the mini timeline and I'll set the Loops to five and play it. With the End Condition set to Hold, the animation just finishes completely, then repeats. With the End Condition set to Wrap, the stars build in a more overlapping fashion, starting again before the last loop finishes. With the End Condition set to Ping Pong, the animation again builds fully to the end but then reverses, so it plays forwards fully and then reverse fully back and forth for all of its loops. I'll set it back to Hold. Back in the Replicator Parent, I can change the Build Style to By Row and get an entirely different effect. Or put it back to Across but change the Origin. Let's try Center and get a different effect. Back in the Behavior I'll set the Sequencing to Through, which is similar to Ping Pong because it goes back and forth from the behaviors' values to the objects' but this time I can set it to Wrap again and now I get some nice overlapping. Cool. Replicator Systems work in 3D as well. I'll lay out a camera and in the Replicator's Object Tab, we again see the 3D Check Box and I'll check that On. And in the Shape Parameter Pop-Up, we have a few more options, like Box. I'll orbit the camera around and there's our box of stars. Let's scale the cells down a bit. And I'll make a RAM Preview and play it; very nice but let's make it more of an energy cube. I'll drag this Soft Circle into the Replicator Cell's Object Well and change the gradient to Icy Blue and set the Color Mode to Additive. Another RAM Preview and that looks awesome. Try out other particle and replicator systems from Motion's libraries and switch out the source objects for cells. Add Motion Blur or Glow Filters. Of course, Depth of Field Effects also work great with particles. Particles and replicators are some of the best eye candy in Motion and encourage a lot of experimentation.