Particles are useful for more than just smoke and energy effects: they can also be used in the design of type treatments. This tutorial will show you one possible way to create a ghosting type effect. Remember, Motion is all about experimentation, so if you find yourself somewhere cool along the journey, feel free to wander and explore the possibilities.

Please note that the movies in this tutorial require Quicktime 7 to view.

Create the text

1. Select the text tool from the toolbar or press the 'T' key.
2. Click in the Canvas to create the text object, and type in the word 'PIZZA'.
3. Press 'Esc' to exit the text entry mode.
4. With the PIZZA text selected, press 'D' to bring up the Dashboard.
5. Set the Size to 75pt (or close to that).
6. Set the Alignment to 'Center'.
7. In the Canvas, position the text in the center of the project area.

Your Canvas should look like this:

Our next step is to turn the text into particles. By 'turn into particles', I mean that we will create a particle emitter that uses this text as its source.

Create the particles

1. Select the PIZZA text in the Canvas.
2. Click on the 'Make Particles' button in the toolbar or press the 'E' key.

Move the playhead (current time) to frame 30, and you should see something like this:

If you look at the Layers List in the Project view, you will see that a couple of new objects have been added to your project: the particle emitter and its child, the emitter cell. You will also notice that the PIZZA text object has been disabled. Motion does this as a little shortcut for you, so that the original text does not obscure your particles. The emitter cell refers to the original text, even though that text has been disabled, so if you make any changes to the text, you will see them reflected in the particles. Let's try that.

Edit the original text

1. In the Layers List, select the PIZZA text object.
2. Drag it down from the center of the screen to the bottom, away from the particles.
3. In the Layers List, re-enable the PIZZA text (check the checkbox) to make it visible.
4. In the Canvas, double-click on the PIZZA text to edit it, and change it from 'PIZZA' to 'MOTION'.
5. Press Esc or Enter to exit the text-editing mode.
6. In the Layers List, disable the MOTION text (uncheck the checkbox) to hide it.

As you can see, the particles updated to reflect the change you made:

Press the Play button and view the animation. Leave Motion playing, as it will allow you to immediately see the results of your changes as we move forward.