Text is an important design element in a Motion project. Common uses of text are lower thirds and titles. Once added to the Canvas, you will want to add special effects to the text such as Motion behaviors, masks, filters and blend modes. Let’s walk through the process for adding text to a Motion^R project. As with most software programs, you will add text to your project with the Text tool.

1. Select the Text tool from the Toolbar below the Project pane.
   
   
2. Click on the Canvas where you wish to add the text and type the text.
   
   
3. Click off of the Canvas to deselect. You will notice that Motion automatically switches back to the Select/Transform tool and deselects the Type tool.
   
   
4. Click Window - Show HUD to open the HUD.
   
   

As you can see in the HUD, we can control many aspects of the text including the opacity, blend mode, style, font, alignment, color, size, tracking and line spacing. Let’s take a look at the HUD starting at the top and working downward.

To change the Opacity of the text, move the Opacity slider. As you do, the change to the text will update on the Canvas.

By default, the Blend mode is set to Normal, which is a null mode. To change the Blend mode, use the pop up menu.

Next is the Style menu that has a visual display of all the preset text styles and also any user created styles.

One nice feature of Motion is the live display of the text on the Canvas as you browse through the Font menu. As you go through the list of fonts on your computer, the text will change in real time for each font in the list.

Next we have the familiar controls for the text alignment.

To change the color of the text, you will use the familiar Color well or picker.

At the bottom of the HUD are more sliders for controlling the Size, Tracking and Line Spacing. The point size will display to the right of the Size slider. You don’t have the ability to enter the text size in the text display box next to the slider. However, you can manually set the point size in the Inspector.

Note: Besides the HUD, you can also control the text properties in the Inspector. Just click the Inspector tab at the left of the workspace to switch from the File Browser to the Inspector.

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