| 00:00 | Now, whenever I'm trying to recreate
natural phenomenon such as smoke or water
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| 00:04 | particles, I prefer to use stock
footage of the real thing. It's going to look
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| 00:07 | more natural and more organic, more
realistic. However, Apple's Motion does
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| 00:12 | come with a pretty good Particle
Generator in it with some pretty passable
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| 00:15 | smoke. So, let's take a look at how
you might use that instead of stock
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| 00:19 | footage to create these natural
fills for light rays and other effects.
|
| 00:22 | We are back in Motion. I'm going to
turn off the groups that I was working with
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| 00:26 | so that I can see what I'm doing
with my Smoke layer. I'm going to open
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| 00:29 | up the Library in Motion. I'm going to
select Particle Emitters and they have a
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| 00:33 | category called Smoke. As you click on
the different ones down here in the Name section,
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| 00:37 | you will them previewed up here
in the window. I'll try Black Smoke,
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| 00:43 | Rising Smoke. I think this Basic Smoke
is a good starting point, so let's go
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| 00:47 | ahead and grab that one and drag Basic
Smoke into my Layers panel and it will
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| 00:52 | be added to my project. I'll hit Play
and now smoke will start being generated
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| 00:56 | to my Composition window. Drag it
down to make it rise up to the frame and
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| 01:01 | let's start customizing this smoke to
make it look like more what we want to.
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| 01:05 | I will select the Basic Smoke layer.
My heads-up display will give me a few
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| 01:09 | parameters such as how fast the
smoke's being emitted, very, very fast smoke
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| 01:14 | and drag it down further here, or very
slow dense smoke and if my smoke is too dense,
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| 01:20 | I'll just turn down to Birth Rates
so fewer smoke particles are being
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| 01:24 | created. Well, there is a nice cloud
there. Now, in this case, I'm having it
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| 01:29 | rise in a straight line. If I want it to
shot out in all directions, I just need to
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| 01:33 | widen out the Emission Range. Drag up
to the middle and now you see smoke is
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| 01:40 | being shot out in all directions.
That might work better in case we had
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| 01:43 | centered light rays coming out of the
logo and you want your smoke going in all
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| 01:46 | directions and this is about as far
as we can push the heads-up display.
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| 01:50 | To customize this more, we really need
to get into the Property Inspector.
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| 01:53 | I'll turn this off for now so I can see
what I'm doing, go back to the Inspector and
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| 01:58 | now I have got all the parameters for
this Particle Emitter and Smoke. There is
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| 02:02 | a few different things we can play around with.
We have already played around with the direction,
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| 02:06 | or the Emission Range,
and we have already played around with
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| 02:08 | parameters like Speed which you can
scrub directly here in the Inspector and
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| 02:11 | you can see the effect over here on my
canvas. Fast speed means you are just
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| 02:16 | going to be disipated that much more
quickly. Let's go for something a bit on
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| 02:19 | the more drifting side, there we go.
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| 02:24 | Now, by default, this smoke is being
generated from a line and going across my
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| 02:29 | composition and that might work pretty
well in the case of centered light rays
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| 02:32 | coming out of a logo. But if I want it
to come from a wider area, I might have it
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| 02:36 | generated by a rectangle and now you
see, my smoke fills up practically my
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| 02:40 | entire screen. Looks like I'm going
to need more smoke so I'll increase the
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| 02:44 | Birth Rate to help fill it in. I'll
change the arrangement from Tile Fill to
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| 02:50 | Random Fill to make it much more
random looking and then maybe go ahead and
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| 02:53 | boost up the Size a little
bit just to fill up my window.
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| 02:58 | Now, I have got a nice amorphous
smoke. I'll increase the Birth Rate here,
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| 03:01 | just get some more density going
on and now I've got something fun
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| 03:05 | happening. Now, with Particle Emitters
in Apple's Motion, things start to build
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| 03:10 | from time zero. If you need them to
start building earlier, drag your time
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| 03:14 | marker back to the start and then drag
your group with your Smoke layer earlier
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| 03:17 | in time until you see enough smoke
build up on the screen. I'll drag it back
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| 03:22 | a little bit more here.
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| 03:24 | Now, I'm starting with a nice constant
Smoke field. That will give me a little
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| 03:28 | more what I'm looking for and again I
can further modify the parameters by
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| 03:32 | selecting my Smoke layer, go into the
Emitter in the Inspector tab and further
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| 03:37 | playing around these parameters such
as maybe Speed Randomness, just to get
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| 03:40 | little bit more animated motion
going on the smoke, a little bit more
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| 03:43 | Turbulence and some other tricks like
how long the particles last on screen,
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| 03:47 | a little bit denser looking smoke.
|
| 03:50 | Right now, the smoke is just kind of
wandering around the screen and not doing
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| 03:52 | anything very purposeful but let's say
that I do want Rising Smoke. I'm going
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| 03:57 | to pull my Speed Randomness back
down so that my speed actually means
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| 04:00 | something. I'm going to reduce my
Emission Range so that it's shooting in
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| 04:04 | one particular direction like to the side
or up and then I'll go ahead and rotate
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| 04:09 | my Emission Direction so things are
rising up my screen and now I have got
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| 04:14 | Rising Smoke. Pretty cool and I have
to admit, a lot more flexible and a lot
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| 04:18 | more customizable than the stock footage.
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| 04:20 | So, there is some Basic Smoke. Let's
go ahead and use in context. I'm going to
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| 04:25 | stop playback for now. I'm going to go
ahead and turn on my groups for my Text
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| 04:30 | Rays and for my underlying text I'm
going to select my Image Mask. I'm going
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| 04:37 | to drag my Smoke layer into the Mask
Source. Finally, I'll turn off the smoke
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| 04:43 | itself, so that I don't see the smoke.
I just see the effect inside the Light
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| 04:46 | Rays, Preview and there is the Rising
Smoke that I created sitting inside my
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| 04:52 | Light Rays. I don't need to use just
smoke. Let's get creative and go back to
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| 04:57 | the library and see what else there are.
There is lots of different particle
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| 05:00 | emitters, which have some very
interesting effects such as Abstract, and you go
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| 05:04 | ahead and click through these to see
what the results are and start to consider
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| 05:08 | if any of these might make some
interesting fills to go inside your libraries.
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| 05:11 | A couple of interesting ones down here
are the Light Dots. Light Dots 02 is a
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| 05:17 | very interesting field of blue. Light
Dots 01 are all these different colored
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| 05:22 | sparkly dots and before we think I'm
going to go psychedelic on you, let me
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| 05:26 | show you how you can customize this.
I'll pause the playback, drag it into my
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| 05:31 | project, put it up top so I can see
what is going on, drag it to start,
|
| 05:38 | the beginning of my timeline. And rather than
just having Dots file over the place, let's go
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| 05:44 | ahead and apply a filter to this group
such as our old friend Light Rays. Glow >
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| 05:51 | Light Rays.
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| 05:52 | Now I've got streaks of those dots.
I'll go ahead and maybe pull down the Glow
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| 05:57 | amount. Play around with the center so that
they are just shooting up the screen again,
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| 06:02 | just like the light rays on my text. Go
find my Image Mask, bring it forward in the
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| 06:08 | Inspector, drag my new Light Rays group
into the Mask Source, turn off the rays
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| 06:15 | themselves and now those rays are
creating kind of interesting animated effect.
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| 06:19 | A little bit more like fire, little
more like lava. Something a bit different
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| 06:22 | than the standard smoke. So, that is
how you can take advantage of the Particle
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| 06:27 | Emitters that come with Motion to go
ahead and create your natural phenomenon
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| 06:31 | that you use to fill your light rays.
Motion is quite a powerful program.
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| 06:34 | You can do a lot with it. You just need
to combine the parts together to create
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| 06:37 | the look that you want.
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