Text as an object – Apple Motion 2 User Manual
Page 459
Chapter 7
Using Text
459
Important:
Once you have finished typing your text, be sure to press Esc or select
another tool on the Toolbar—do not use a keyboard shortcut. When the Text tool is
selected, you are in text-entry mode, so if you press S to select the Select/Transform
tool, an “S” is added to your text rather than the tool being changed.
Text as an Object
Once created, text becomes an object. Since text objects share most of the
characteristics of other objects in Motion, you can use the object onscreen controls—
Transform, Anchor Point, Shear, Drop Shadow, Four Corner, and Crop—to transform a
selected text object. The onscreen tools are shortcuts to the object controls in the
Properties tab of the Inspector. To set specific values, or fine-tune any of the transforms,
use the Properties tab in the Inspector.
You can also change the blend mode and opacity of a text object in the Properties tab.
Setting the Opacity value in the Properties tab and setting the Opacity value in the
Style pane are separate controls that have multiplicative effects. In other words, if
Opacity is set to 50 percent in the Properties tab, and then set to 50 percent in the Text
Style pane, the resulting opacity for the text object is 25 percent.
For more information on the Properties tab, see “
Parameters in the Properties Tab
Note: When you make changes to a text object using the onscreen controls or the
parameters in the Properties tab of the Inspector, they are applied to the text as an
object (such as a clip or image), not as editable text. The controls for editing the text
itself are located in the Text tab of the Inspector. Although some object properties are
similar to some text Style and Format controls, such as Shear (in the Properties tab) and
Slant (in the Format pane of the Text tab), the object properties are independent of the
text format controls, and vice versa. For example, if you apply a Slant value of 20 in the
Format pane of the Text Inspector, a slant value of 20 is applied to each character in the
word, simulating italics. If you apply a Shear value of 20 in the Properties tab of the
Inspector (or using the onscreen controls), a shear value of 20 is applied to the object,
not the individual text characters.
The next section briefly describes how to transform a text object using the onscreen
controls. For detailed information on using the onscreen controls, see “
In addition to moving text objects with the transform tools, you can move text objects
up and down in the composite in the Layers tab and Timeline. Just like all other objects
in Motion, text objects can also be copied, pasted, duplicated, and deleted. For more
information, see “
Managing Objects in Your Project
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