One of the more interesting new filters in Motion 2 is Extrude. In this tutorial, you'll see how Extrude, combined with some judicious text styling, can give some great results. Please note that the movies in this tutorial require Quicktime 7 to view.

Set up the project

  1. Create a new project using one of the 'Broadcast SD' presets (NTSC or PAL).
  2. Press Cmd+J to edit the project properties and set the Duration to 200.

Create the text

  1. Select the Text Tool from the toolbar or press the 'T' key.
  2. Click in the Canvas and type the word 'SUPER'.
  3. In the Inspector, go to the Text->Format tab and set the Family to 'Helvetica Neue'.
  4. Set the Typeface to 'Condensed Black'.
  5. Set the Size to 400.
  6. Set the Tracking to 10.
  7. Press the escape key (Esc) to exit the text entry mode.

With the text created, we'll add a Throw behavior to give it movement.

Animate the text

  1. In the Canvas, move the text so that it is just off to the right of the project area and aligned with the bottom edge.
  2. With the text object selected, select the Throw behavior from the Add Behavior menu or the Library.
  3. In the Dashboard, set the Throw's Zoom slider to the halfway point and point the arrow straight to the left (hold Shift to contrain the angle to 90-degree increments).

If you play back your project, you should see something akin to this:

You might notice that the 'R' at the end of 'SUPER' doesn't quite move offscreen at the end...That's OK, because after we apply some filters, it will.

With our animation complete, it's time to add filters. To make animation more visually interesting, we're going to add the Sphere filter to distort the text. Because the text is moving and we want the the center of the Sphere filter to stay in place, we'll apply the filter to the parent layer of the text. And for that to be effective, Fixed Resolution must be turned on for the layer.

Enable Fixed Resolution

  1. Select the parent layer of the SUPER text object.
  2. Rename the layer to 'Text'.
  3. In the Inspector, go to the Layer tab and enable the Fixed Resolution checkbox.
  4. Set the Fixed Width to 920.
  5. Set the Fixed Height to 600.

If you're unclear as to what Fixed Resolution does, please refer to 'Fixing the Size of a Layer' on page 204 of the Motion 2 manual.

Apply the Sphere filter

  1. In the Layers list, select the 'Text' layer object and add the Distortion->Sphere filter from the Add Filters menu or the Library.
  2. In the Inspector, go to the Filters tab and set the Center of the Sphere to X: 290 and Y: 190).
  3. Set the Radius of the Sphere to 750.

With the Sphere filter in place, our text slides by and appears to curve away as it goes:

Apply the Extrude filter

  1. In the Layers list, select the 'Text' layer object and add the Stylize->Extrude filter from the Add Filters menu or the Library.
  2. In the Inspector, go to the Filters tab and set the Angle to 330.
  3. Set the Distance to 72.
  4. Set the Back Size to 0.85.
  5. Set the Face Brightness to 0.54.
  6. Set the Front Brightness to 0.65.
  7. Set Back Brightness to 0.20.

These Extrude settings give us a soft-lit look, which looks great against black.

In this project, though, we're going to create a gradient background that gives us a light-on-the-horizon effect.

Create the background

  1. Create a new layer beneath (not inside) the 'Text' layer.
  2. Rename the new layer to 'Background'.
  3. From the Library, add a Gradient generator to the 'Background' layer.
  4. Set the gradient so that it has three (3) color tags, with the following settings:
    • Tag 1: RGB = (0.84, 0.84, 0.41), Location = 0%
    • Tag 2: RGB = (1.00, 1.00, 0.66), Location = 77%
    • Tag 3: RGB = (0.84, 0.78, 0.31), Location = 100%

We'll need to adjust the Extrude filter settings to make the text look as if it's lit from behind.

Adjust the Extrude filter

  1. In the Layers list, select the 'Text' layer object and view the Filters tab in the Inspector.
  2. Set the Face Brightness of the Extrude to 0.74.
  3. Set the Front Brightness of the Extrude to 0.47.
  4. Set the Back Brightness of the Extrude to 0.85.

Not yet pretty, but with a few changes to our text settings, we'll start to see our final result shaping up.

Page 2: Styling ->