We're going to use the Sequence Replicator behavior to have our lower third build itself onto the screen. The behavior takes a replicator and makes changes to it, over time. And since we're not working with keyframes, having Motion play back while we're doing all this makes it fun and easy to judge our results. Press that play button and watch yourself go!

Add the behavior

1. With the replicator selected, choose Add Behavior->Replicator->Sequence Replicator from the toolbar, or add it from the Library.

Now it's time for us to tell the behavior what parameters we want it to affect, but before we do that, we want to make sure that the behavior is going in the right direction.

"Direction?" you ask.

Good question. By default, the behavior takes you from your existing replicator settings to the changes you've specified. In this case, we want our finished replicator to look as it does now, so we want it to start from the changes and end with what we currently have.

Set the sequencing direction

1. In the Inspector, view the Behaviors tab and change the Sequencing of the behavior from 'To' to 'From'. Boy, wasn't that awful to read? Try saying it aloud without sounding silly...

With that little chore out of the way, it's time to go to town on our lower third.

Sequence Opacity

1. In the Inspector, view the Behaviors tab and choose 'Opacity' from the Parameter 'Add' popup menu.
2. In the Opacity slider that appears at the top, set the value to 0.

If you watch the playback you'll see your lower third slowly build itself on, fading in one block at a time. Thanks to the behavior, each block is going from an opacity of 0% and ending with your original (default) setting of 100%.

Since the duration of the behavior controls how fast the changes occur, let's trim it down so that our lower third gets built faster. We'll also adjust our playback range accordingly.

Trim the behavior

1. Pause playback and move the playhead to frame 30.
2. With the Sequence Replicator behavior selected, press the 'O' key to set its out-point.
3. Move the playhead to frame 60, and press Cmd+Opt+O to set the playback range's out-point.

With the behavior trimmed down to a duration of 30 frames, you should see a much faster animation.

Sequence Scale

1. In the Inspector, view the Behaviors tab and choose 'Scale' from the Parameter 'Add' popup menu.
2. Open the disclosure triangle for the Scale parameter that appears, and set the X to 0% and Y to 75%.

You can see that each block in the replicator is now scaling up as it fades in. But the animation seems very choppy. By increasing the Spread value of the behavior, more than one block will be affected at a time, smoothing out the animation.

Adjust the spread

1. In the Inspector, view the Behaviors tab and set the Spread of the behavior to 4.

Sequence Position

1. In the Inspector, view the Behaviors tab and choose 'Position' from the Parameter 'Add' popup menu.
2. In the Position parameter that appears, set the X to -70 and leave the Y at 0.

With our behavior in place, we now have our replicator building itself by scaling, fading and sliding. But it's completely linear, so let's make it look more organic by adjusting the build order of the replicator. The Sequence Replicator behavior sequences through the replicator in the order that the replicator was built in, so if we shuffle the build order, we shuffle the effects of the behavior.

Shuffle the replicator

1. With the replicator selected, go to the Inspector and view the Replicator tab.
2. Enable the Shuffle Order checkbox.

By randomizing the build order of the replicator, we've completed our lower third. And because the animation is done using a behavior, it's extremely flexible. Want to speed it up or slow it down? Just shorten or lengthen the behavior. Want more movement? Just adjust the behavior's parameters.

Let's say that we want our lower third to animate back out again. How would we do that? We only have to duplicate our Sequence Replicator behavior and change its sequencing direction.

Sequencing out

1. Open the Timeline view.
2. Select the Sequence Replicator behavior and go to Edit->Duplicate or press Cmd+D to duplicate it.
3. Slide the duplicate in time to the point at which you want the outbound sequencing to start (frame 50 for me).
4. With the duplicate behavior selected, go to the Inspector, view the Behaviors tab and change the Sequencing from 'From' to 'To'.
5. Trim the replicator so that it ends when the duplicated behavior ends.

Here is a picture of the Timeline. You can see the first Sequence Replicator behavior, which builds on our lower third, and the second Sequence Replicator behavior, which moves it back off. The replicator is trimmed to end when the second behavior ends, because we don't want it to pop back on screen when the behavior is no longer affecting it.

Now you can pat yourself on the back, save your lower third out as a preset (maybe even mail it to a friend) and tell your clients that you spent all afternoon keyframing the random look of the animation. Muhahahaha!