Apple Motion 5.1.1 - Manual (Page 710)

Chapter 18 Generators 710
3 Drag the generator to your project.
As with other objects, you can add the generator to your project by dragging it to the Canvas,
the Layers list, or the Timeline. The generator and its HUD appear in your project. (If the HUD
in not visible, press F7.) The HUD contains a subset of the complete controls that appear in the
Generator pane of the Inspector.
Note: Generators added to a project are not added to the Media list. The Media list only includes
media files imported into Motion, such as image sequences, video files, Photoshop files, and
audio files.
Alternatively, you can add a generator to your project by clicking the Add Generator pop-up
menu in the toolbar (to the right of the New Camera and New Light buttons) and choosing an
item from a submenu. Using the Add Generator pop-up menu in the toolbar is quick, but it does
not provide a way to preview the generator before adding it to the project.
Modify a generator
You can modify a generator in the HUD, in the Inspector, or using onscreen transform controls.
You can animate generator parameters with keyframes or behaviors, and you can use a
generator as the basis for a particle system. After you customize a generator, you can save it
custom generator to the Library for future use.
Modify a generator in the HUD
In this task, the Checkerboard generator is used to illustrate how to edit a generator using
the HUD.
1 Add the Checkerboard generator to your project.
Note: For information on adding a generator to your project, see Add a generator on page 709.
The default Checkerboard generator appears in the Canvas, Layers list, and Timeline, and the
HUD appears. The Checkerboard generator HUD contains controls for editing and animating
the checkerboard, such as Opacity, Blend Mode, Width, Height, Color, Size (of the checkers), and
Contrast. The only Checkerboard parameters that do not appear in the HUD are Center and Pixel
Aspect Ratio (which appear in the Generator Inspector).
2 In the HUD, click the Color 1 color well and select a color from the Colors window.
If the HUD is not shown, choose Window > Show HUD (or press F7).
Color 1 is replaced with the new color.
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