5.5

Table Of Contents
495Motion User Guide
Create particles
Intro to particles in Motion
Particle systems let you create sophisticated effects involving large numbers of
automatically animated objects.
You can add a premade particle system to your composition from the Library, or you can
create your own custom particle effects using nearly any image layer or group in your
project, including still images, shapes, text, and movies.
Particle systems consist of two basic elements:
Particle emitter: A special type of effect applied to a layer, causing the layer to multiply
and animate according to the parameters you set in the Inspector.
Particle cell: The image layer thats multiplied and animated by the particle emitter.
The emitter and cells have separate sets of parameters that control the particle system’s
behavior. If you imagine that a garden hose is a particle system, the nozzle acts as the
emitter, while the water represents the flow of particles. Changing the parameters of the
emitter changes the shape from which the particles are emitted as well as their direction.
Changing the cell’s parameters affects each particle.