[Burt Hazard]

The Inspector is your friend! 🙂

Go to Inspector>Emitter>Cell Controls>Life and just crank up the particle Life values. One quick tip, you can adjust the sliders but to get higher values than they are showing just double click the numerical value and enter higher numbers. (Also keep in mind that both the Life Randomness and Opacity Over Life parameters can effect the life of particles as well.)

Definitely check out the “Working with Particles” chapter in the manual (although with even the combined Motion 3 manual and the Supplemental Documentation topping in at a whopping 1402 pages, they still don’t cover every aspect of this program).

[Burt Hazard]

I’m not exactly sure the effect you’re trying to achieve but for one thing particles don’t follow motion paths at all, but you could cheat something like this. I.e., particles are different beasts than normal objects.

One way to create a “particle stream” effect would be to make your particle emitter’s Emission Range be 0 degrees and really crank up the Life and Speed parameter values and then control it with null objects with the Attractor, etc. behaviors applied to them. It is a bit tricky since the “end” particles seem to be the ones that are attracted to the nulls, but maybe with some tweaking…. 🙂

[Burt Hazard]

“Or is there an auto-trace style function for tracing and creating a mask?”

Actually I discovered that there might be, at least in Motion 3. Reading the MOTION 3 SUPPLEMENTAL DOCUMENTATION they do talk about the new Track Points behavior feature (p.54, 76, & 109) in which apparently you could set an initial shape, then go to Behaviors>Shape>Track Points:

Track Points Controls
The Track Points behavior allows you to link the control points of a shape or mask
(including paint strokes) to reference features on a source clip. This behavior also allows
you to apply existing tracking data that was recorded by the Analyze Motion, Match
Move, or Stabilize tracking behaviors to the control points of a shape or mask.
Parameters in the HUD
The Track Points HUD contains controls to load an animated object or tracking behavior
into the behavior (via the Source well or the tracking behaviors pop-up menu), to
specify how the destination object moves, to start the motion analysis (the Analyze
button), to reverse the direction of the track (the Reverse checkbox), and to offset the
track (the Offset Track checkbox).

and

To track a shape or mask using the Track Points behavior:
1 Select the shape or mask you want to track, click the Add Behavior icon in the Toolbar,
then choose Shapes > Track Points from the pop-up menu.
The behavior is added to the shape, and trackers appear for each control point on the
shape. The trackers are ordered in the same order that the shape was drawn: Control
Point 1 is Track 1, Control Point 2 is Track 2, and so on.

I have no idea how well this might work in practise, but it is definitely something you could play around with.

[Burt Hazard]

[Ben Butterworth] “Or is there an auto-tace style function for tracing and creating a mask? “

If only things were that easy! (Actually there are other programs that can do auto-tracing type effects; Studio Artist is one of them but the roto effects it achieves are somewhat different.)

Actually, I do roto work in both Shake and Silhouette Roto, but you can do this type of stuff in Motion as well. Like Silhouette Roto, Motion offers both Bezier and B-Splines and like both Shake and Silhouette Roto you set keyframes at certain extremes in the subject’s motion and the programs “tween,” or interpolate the shapes in between the keyframes. You then go back and tweak the interpolation by setting further keyframes in between the ones you’ve already set (mostly trying to find the halfway point, but sometimes just where the roto-shapes are the most mis-aligned). And rotoing a person, for instance, you normally break up the person into several roto shapes just because it makes it much easier. In this case you might have to just use one shape just because you’re trying to make an animated shape to drop into a particle emitters’ shape well.

In Motion you would achieve this by creating your initial shape, then hitting the Record button, moving forward in the timeline and using the spline-tool to move the shape’s points accordingly. The keyframes will show up under “shape animation” in the Keyframe editor. When you are done you would then deactivate the record button.

An easier alternative maybe would be to duplicate your footage, use a Color Correction>Contrast filter to really boost the contrast, apply a Stylize>Edges and a Blur>Gaussian Blur to create what is know as an “edge matte,” then increase the scale slightly and use that to stencil luma (or whatever) fire clips or particle emitter fire “washes” to the exterior of your dancer.

[Burt Hazard]

I love these tough questions. 🙂

It is doable, but as far as I can tell you’re going to have to rotoscope your dancer using a mask and then applying that mask to a fire particle emitter’s Shape Source well:

Emitter>Shape>Geometry
Arrangement>Outline
Shape Source>[drag in your animated mask/matte shape]

Now according to both the Motion 2 and 3 manuals you should be able to use an image/movie clip (with or without an alpha channel) to control the Emitter, but it does seem like a broken feature in Motion, since all it ever seems to do is use the media clip’s outside rectangular edge.

[Burt Hazard]

Scary! 🙂

You might want to check out another product called EffectsLab Pro from these guys in the UK at http://www.fxhome.com. It tends to be geared towards independent film visual FX stuff with opticals, laser effect stuff (“neon”), explosions, muzzle flashes, etc. and like Motion does have a surprisingly sophisticated particle engine. Also there is a whole community of users/developers who create preset effects that are free to download (if you have bought one of their products). Some of the presets are top rate and some of them are lame, but of course you can download what you need.

(As a sideline, when Apple included Color with FCS2 there was some talk here at the Cow about how “now you’ll see some totally amateurish overgraded projects” coming from the video trenches. Since you can do color grading as well with EffectsLab, CompositeLab, Vision Studio, etc. there are a lot of overgraded movies at that website; but also some really well done color grades as well.)

[Burt Hazard]

You’d probably have to import it as an image sequence.

[Burt Hazard]

Well the specific answer to the particle change question is that you can drag a media file from the File Browser or Library, then drop it into the Media tab, then drag the object to the “Bat” Particle Cell>Particle Source Well and it will replace the Bat movie with whatever you want. It’s a good feature of Motion that you can tweak the presets for your own needs.

Also, there are bird presets in Content>Fauna>Bird & Birds 01. The “Birds 01” is a bird flock particle emitter, which may be what you’re looking for, or maybe not. You might have to create your own animated particle cell (or even roto footage of a real bird in flight with Motion’s masks, etc.). You could then use some of the Simulation Behaviors (Align to Motion, Attracted To, Drag, Random Motion, Wind) maybe in conjuction with another transparent (“null”) object to control your “flock.”

[Burt Hazard]

Actually pretty easy to do in Motion, although for a really good effect you may need to use many layers.

Underwater effects tend to need several things, refraction, caustics, greenish/blusish colorations, an overall diffuse glow, blurred elements in the distance, and maybe even bubbles!

Actually refraction and “caustics” (the shimmering light patterns found on the bottom of swimming pools) are related to the way light refracts and focuses through a water medium.

For the refraction displacement effect you can use Filter>Distortion>Underwater (you also have “Ripple,” “Refraction,” etc. choices as well). I’d bring down the Refraction and Speed parameters in the Inspector.

You could use the Generator>Caustics preset and Stencil Luma it to your text. You could then add Blur/Bloom filters to objects in the distance, as well as a tinted plate(s) and particle emitter bubble streams in the foreground.

Good luck,
Burt Hazard
Munedawg Communications

[Burt Hazard]

OK, here goes…

1) Create your elements
2) Click on Create New Camera in Toolbar, this is the fastest way to create a 3D scene in Motion
3) Click on the 2D/3D icon for your background layer in the Layers tab to change it to 2D.
4) Keep your other elements 3D
5) Either use camera behaviors or a keyframed motion path (or both!) to animate your camera
a) Behavoirs>Camera>Dolly, Sweep, Zoom In/Out, Zoom Layer
or
b) Select camera in either Layers Tab or an orthagonal view
c) Hit Record button in underneath Canvas
d) set initial keyframe for initial position in Inspector
e) Move camera to your liking, add lights, objects, movement, season to taste, deactivate Record button

I know this is an on-going mantra here at Creative Cow, but definitely read the manual (PDF) “cover” to “cover” and of course download the Motion 3 Supplemental Documention from the Apple website and pay particular attention to the “2D and 3D Group Interaction” on p.34.
For really good online free tutorials, go to motion graphics guru Mark Spencer’s website, http://www.applemotion.net and in particular check out two of the Macbreak podcasts he did with PixelCorps’ Alex Lindsay, “Manipulating Objects in 3D” and “Mixing 2D and 3D Groups.” Also I can recommend the Apple Pro Training books MOTION GRAPHICS AND EFFECTS IN FINAL CUT STUDIO 2 (Mark Spencer and Jem Schofield) and MOTION 3: DESIGING AND ANIMATING MOTION GRAPHICS IN FINAL CUT STUDIO 2 (Damien Allen, Mark Spencer, Bryce Button, & Tony Huet). There’s also a new Ripple Training DVD from Mark Spencer called MOTION 3 3D DEEP DIVE which I may end up purchasing myself.

Good luck,
Burt Hazard
Munedawg Communications