A particle emitter can have multiple cells that it emits, but our project has just one: the 'MOTION' text. Each cell has its own settings for various properties like speed, scale, color, etc. Our first adjustments will be to the cell's speed, birth rate and life.

Change cell speed, birth rate and life

1. In the Layers List, select the particle emitter object.
2. In the Inspector, select the 'Emitter' tab and view the Cell Controls section.
3. Set the Speed value to 5.
4. Set the Birth Rate value to 15.
5. Set the Life to 1.5.

With the decreases in speed and birth rate, our particles are no longer flying away and there are fewer of them being born. To make this more fun to work on, let's add some color. You still have Motion playing back, right? Keep your finger away from that Pause button!

Colorize the particles

1. In the Layers List, select the particle emitter object.
2. In the Inspector, select the 'Emitter' tab and view the Cell Controls section.
3. Select 'Colorize' from the Color Mode popup menu.
4. Untwirl the Color disclosure triangle and set the following color values:
• Red = 0.03
• Green = 0.04
• Blue = 0.07
5. Enable Additive Blend (check the checkbox).

Why did we make the color of the particles so dark? The Additive Blend option causes the color values of the particles to add on to one another: if the particles were too bright, they would quickly add up to 100% white, making the text look blown out. We want it to look as though it's gently glowing, so we set the color values extremely low.

The text does look a bit dim, though, so we'll adjust the birth rate range of the particle cell. This will add a little variety to the number of particles, and because of the additive blend, more particles means a brighter result. Also, you may have noticed that we have a period at the beginning where the text is dark as the first particles are being born. We'll offset the particles to start before frame 1 so that they are at full brightness on frame 1.

Set the birth rate range

1. In the Layers List, select the particle emitter object.
2. In the Inspector, select the 'Emitter' tab and view the Cell Controls section.
3. Set the Birth Rate Range to 38.

Offset the particle emitter

1. In the Layers List, select the particle emitter object.
2. In the Timeline or Mini-Timeline, select the Emitter object (not the cell) and drag it to the left, offsetting it 30 frames (-30).

Here's where it finally gets fun: let's put a little spin on our particles. But we don't want them all to have the same spin, so we'll use the Spin Range parameter, which sets a range of potential spin values.

Set the spin range

1. In the Layers List, select the particle emitter object.
2. In the Inspector, select the 'Emitter' tab and view the Cell Controls section.
3. Set the Spin Range to 23.

Our particles are definitely looking cooler, but you can see that they instantaneously blink out at the end of their lives, creating a harsh jitter. Let's see if we can smooth that out a bit, on the next page.