The best feature of Motion is that it lets you play. And while playing (and having fun) you inevitably stumble across something that catches your eye, and you find yourself saying, "Hey, that looks cool!" This tutorial demonstrates how a simple combination of particles and a few filters can create a complex-looking, three-dimensional glow effect.

Please note that the movies in this tutorial require Quicktime 7 to view. This tutorial also uses the Insect Eye filter, which is a Motion 2 registration incentive download but is included in Motion 3.

Create and position the particles

1. Select the circle tool from the toolbar or press the 'C' key.
2. Draw a small circle in the Canvas.
3. Press the Tab key to exiting the shape drawing mode.

4. Click the Make Particles button on the toolbar or press the 'E' key.
5. Select the newly-created particle object and move it to the bottom-left of the Canvas.

Configure the particle emitter

1. With the particle emitter selected, press the 'D' key to bring up the Dashboard.
2. Set the Life to around 4.5.
3. Set the emitter angle and speed using the arrows, as shown:

4. Jump to frame 150 so you can see more of the particles.
5. In the Inspector, view the Emitter tab.
6. In the Cell Controls section, change the Color Mode to 'Pick From Range', select the 'Burnt Ember' gradient preset and enable the Additive Blend checkbox.

On frame 150, your Canvas should now look something like this:

Fixed Resolution (read this!)

Our last few steps involve throwing a couple of filters on our particles, but before we move on, let's take a moment to talk about Fixed Resolution in 2D groups. By default, groups in Motion auto-size themselves to the size of their contents. To see this in action, select the parent group of the particle emitter and press the Play button. The bounding box of the group is constantly changing size as particles are born and die. This is great, because the contents of a group can move around or change size, and you're not constantly having to manually resize the group.

There are, however, times when you want the group size to stay fixed. For example, if you are applying a filter that has a centerpoint to an always-changing group, the centerpoint of the filter moves around. Enabling Fixed Resolution for a group turns off the auto-sizing and fixes it to the specified size, so filters that have centerpoints don't wiggle around.

Enable Fixed Resolution

1. In the Layers list, select the parent group of the particle emitter.
2. Rename the group to 'Glowy'.

3. In the Inspector, view the Group tab and enable the Fixed Resolution checkbox.

And that's the key to our project. See you on page 2...