Nitro Effect with Motion

Apple Motion ships with two sets of LiveFonts for a total of 52 different animations.  LiveFonts are different than traditional fonts, because each character or 'glyph' is animated.  You can also purchase additional LiveFonts from third party companies such as LiveTypeCentral.

Launch Motion, and create a new project.  For learning purposes, create a NTSC DV project. 

Next, Press the F5, and F6 keys to bring forward the Layers Tab and Timeline Tab.

In the large window or 'Canvas' area type the word 'Nitro Effect'.  To do this:  Click on the Text tool, and then click onto the Canvas window to start typing. 

After typing your text object, click back onto the arrow tool, which is officially called the 'Select/Transform Tool'.  This tool is located in the upper left corner of the toolbar at the top of the Canvas Window.

In the Inspector window, click on the Inspector Tab, and then click on the Text tab.  Adjust the size of your text object by use the Size Slider.  Adjust the size of your text object to a  value of 70 or higher.

With the text object still selected, use the duplicate the object using the keyboard shortcut Command + D.  You should now have two identical layers as indicated in the Layers Tab within the Canvas Window.

Change the top layer to the Nitro LiveFont.  To do this, click on the Library tab within the Library window, and highlight the Nitro font within the LiveFonts category.  Press the Apply button to make the change.

With the Nitro LiveFont, Apple Motion automatically applies sequence timing at a value of 15% to the Nitro LiveFont. This adjusts the timing of the letters so they do not explode at the same time.  You will want to adjust the spacing (tracking) of the LiveFont to closely match the letters of the layer below it.  It’s easier to do this if you adjust the Sequence Timing of the Nitro LiveFont to 0, so you can see where to make the tracking adjustments. 

After you've temporarily set the Sequence timing to 0%, go ahead and adjust the tracking so the LiveFont glyphs closley match the layer below it.

Then remember to set the Sequence timing back to it’s original value of 15%.

Click on the bottom layer within the Layers tab.  Click on the Add Behavior button at the top of the Toolbar.  Choose Text Basic / Fade Characters Left In.

The last step is to adjust the behavior timing so the exploding LiveFont glyph's match the Fade-In Behavior.

To adjust the timing of the Behavior,  grab the edge of the purple Behavior track and adjust accordingly to match the timing of the LiveFont glyphs.