[Mark Spencer]

Did you get that to work, Stephen? I don’t see how you can match move a control point of a shape to the movement of the arrowhead unless you first bake the arrow animation as a movie.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

I think you are going to have to export your arrow animation as a movie, bring it back in, and then analyze the motion of the movie with a tracker on the arrow head – then track the point of your balloon shape to the arrowhead.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

You don’t happen to have a Color Munki display profile do you? That would cause this issue. Otherwise, you may need to reinstall – easiest with Pacifist

https://www.applemotion.net/Troubleshooting/Troubleshooting.html

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Put your mask on the group containing the layer, then you can move the layer independent of the mask.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Yes, you can. You need to number your images sequentially, e.g., picture_001, picture_002, etc.

Motion will see the pictures as one file – an image sequence (assuming you have “show image sequences as collapsed” enabled at the bottom right of the File Browser, as it is by default).

Just make particles from this layer, and in the Emitter, tab, turn off Play Frames (near the bottom). Tweak to taste.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

In Motion, any image, including text, can be the source for a replicator or a particle emitter. So you create your text, replicate a square, set the replicator to use an image and drag the text layer to the well, turn off the text layer, then tweak the fill parameters. You can then animate it with a sequence replicator behavior. Below is an example movie; the project file can be downloaded here:
https://www.daystreet.com/Replicated_word.motn.zip

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Try trashing your prefs:

1) Quit Motion.
2) Navigate to User/Library/Preferences.
3) Locate com.apple.motion.plist and delete it.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

I’m assuming you are using a sequence replicator to animate on the boxes. Go to the Replicator tab and select the Shuffle Order checkbox.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Great solution, Stephen, I forgot all about that filter!

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Johathan,

You are probably trying to change the colors of one of the light streaks, I would guess. It’s a little complicated, because their colors are keyframed. You need to go to the Shape tab of the Inspector, then to the Stroke pane – at the top is the Color Over Stroke parameter. Click the Animation menu (the diamond that will be solid or hollow, depending whether or not your playhead is parked on a keyframe), and choose Show In Keyframe Editor.

Now move the playhead to each keyframe and change all the colors at that point in time, then repeat at each keyframe. Note that it isn’t strictly necessary to do this in the Keyframe Editor – you could just use the Animation menu to navigate to each keyframe or press Shift-K – but it does make it easier to see exactly what is going on.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net