Motion comes with more than 100 particle emitters in the Library. These emitters are organized into categories, including Nature, Pyro, and Sparkles.
Particle systems include three elements: an original object that is used as a mold, an emitter that mass-produces particles that are replicas of the original object, and a particle cell that represents the actual particles that are emitted.
You can change the Project preferences so that new objects are created either at the playhead position or at the start of the project. If the playhead is moving, objects are automatically placed at the start of the project, which is also the default setting.
You can create a particle emitter from virtually any selected object by pressing E or clicking the Make Particles button on the toolbar.
When you create particles from an object, the original object becomes inactive on the Layers tab.
Particle settings modify the particles as if they were living objects, with parameters like Birth Rate, Life, Scale At Birth, and Scale At Death.
If you have only one particle cell in a system, the particle cell parameters are available on both the Emitter tab and the Particle Cell tab in the Inspector.
You can modify the shape of a particle emitter so that it emits particles in a point, a line, a circle, a filled circle, a shape, or an image.
You can apply behaviors to the particle emitter to modify the location where the particles appear in the frame, or you can apply behaviors to the particle cell to apply them to the individual particles.
Particles assume the size and color of the original object. You can modify the scale and color with the cell controls in the Inspector. You can apply different color modes to the particles, including Solid, Pick From Range, and Over Life.
You can replace the original object in a particle system with another object to change the particles without changing any of the other parameters in the system.
Motion's particle generator combines random variables to create particles. Each set of random variables is assigned a number called the random seed. To change the random variables, you can generate a new random seed by clicking the Generate button on the Random Seed parameter in the Inspector.
You can save your customized particle emitters in the Favorites folder on the Library tab.
