Motion 5.3 Tutorial Part 2 - Ecotrain Gif Animation

gardenbsquared (59)in #animation • 9 years ago (edited)

This is part two of my Ecotrain tutorial for Motion 5.3. Click here for part one.

Yesterday I ended the first part of this tutorial saying that my sunbeam was not in the right group. It should be in the sun group. I dragged into the sun group and made a copy by hitting <cmd + d>.

Go to: Inspector - properties - rotation
Fill in a rotation value of 15 degrees
Call this ray, Ray 2 and drag it in the right place

Make another copy by hitting <cmd + d>
Go to: Inspector - properties - rotation
Fill in a rotation value of 30 degrees
Call this ray, Ray 3 and drag it in the right place

Make in total 7 rays like this with the following rotation values: 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 degrees.

Select the 7 rays
Right click and select group

This will form a new group in the sun group containing the rays. Call this group Rays right.

Duplicate this group by hitting: <cmd + d>
Call this group Rays left
Go to: Inspector - properties - rotation
Open Rotation and fill in a Y rotation value of 180 degrees

Move the Ray left group into place by going to: Inspector - Properties - Position
Left click on the X Value and drag downwards until the Rays left are in the right position
Open the group and turn off Ray 1 copy

One last thing to complete the sun is to duplicate the circle within the sun group.

Select the circle and hit <cmd + d>
Go to: Inspector - Properties - Blending - Blend Mode - Add

This will make the sun look a bit brighter than the rays.

This completes the sun but so far everything looks a bit dull. So let's liven things up a bit.

First I looked at all my gradients. I made the sky it bit more blue and the field a bit more green.

For the mountain gradient I selected the blue tab and changed the middle to about 60%. This shows a bit more blue at the mountain tops.

I want to make the mountain a bit more organic looking. I will use an Indent filter to achieve that effect.

An Indent filter works with a Height Map. We need to create some background to activate this map.

turn off all the groups except the BG sky
Create a new group by hitting <cmd + shift + n>

Select the Paint Tool and draw something small like this and make it a bit wider.

Go to: Inspector - Shape - Style - Outline

Fill in a Width Value of 10

We want to centre this paint stroke.

Go to: Inspector - Properties - Position

Right click and select Reset Parameter

We want many paint strokes to fill the whole screen. We use a Replicator to do this.

Press the L key
Go to: Inspector - Replicator - Arrangement, and select Random Fill

Fill in the following values but ignore the seed numbers. (see picture)

Export this picture by going to Share - Save Current Frame and export it as a jpeg and call it Height map picture
Import this picture into a new group. Call this group Height map indent
Delete the Replicator group
Turn off the Height map picture
Turn on all other groups

Open the Mountain layer 1 group and select the Gradient
Go to: Library - Filters - Stylise - Indent and apply

Go to: Inspector - Filters - Indent Filter
Drag the Height map picture into the Height Map

Fill in the following values. (see picture)

And now our mountain looks like this:

Next thing to make are the tunnels for the train to appear and disappear.

Create a new group. <cmd + shift + n>
Call this group Tunnels
Select the square tool
Draw a rectangle
Go to: Inspector - Shape - Style
Turn on Fill and choose the colour black
Set the width of the Outline to 25 and choose the colour brown

Go to: Inspector - Properties - Crop
Crop the Bottom and Top with a value of 21

Draw a circle slightly smaller than the square and Fill with black
Set the Outline to 25 and pick the same brown as the rectangle outline
Crop the Bottom and put it in place so that it becomes the top of the tunnel

Now you have something that looks like this.

Select both the Rectangle and the Circle and group them
Call this group Tunnel left

Rotate the Tunnel left group over Y by 90 degrees
Duplicate this group, <cmd + d>, and call it Tunnel right

You don't see the tunnels any more because they are rotated.

Select the Tunnels group
Go to: Inspector - Properties - Position
Drag the group downwards by clicking and dragging the Y value
Select the Tunnel left group and move it to the left with 800 pixels
Do the same with Tunnel right but move it to the right

Now it looks like this:

Now we are going to make the sides of the tunnels. We use the Bezier tool to draw them.

Zoom in and select the Bezier tool

Draw out the shape
Turn off the Outline
Select a slightly lighter brown for the Fill

While pressing the alt key, drag the Bezier shape into the Tunnel right group

Holding the alt key while dragging creates a duplicate.

This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial. Tomorrow I'll post hopefully the conclusion in which I'll explain how to do the rails, train and the animated text.

If your new to motion I hope you find this tutorial useful so far.

Thanks and much love,

Gardenbsquared