In Apple Motion^R, you control animations by setting the values for a group of parameters. There are two places in the workspace that display these setting controls; the HUD and the Inspector.

What are parameter settings. Well, that depends on what object, clip or effect you have selected. Each has its own characteristics which you can control via numeric parameters. For example, if you select the Project layer in the Layers panel, you will see the controls for setting the parameters for the entire project. If you remember from our previous tutorial about the project properties, some of these parameters include the width, height, aspect ratio and frame rate. On the other hand for a particle system, if the Emitter layer is selected, we will see all the many controls for the particle system in the Inspector.

But sometimes, we need to see only a few of the most frequently used controls. In that case, using the subset of controls in the HUD (Heads-up Display) is a time saver. Here is the HUD display for a particle system. As you can see, we have just the Birth Rate, Life, Scale and Emission Range controls. One nice feature in the HUD is the slider control arrows in the circular area that allows you to adjust the Emission Range setting in real time during playback.

Where did the HUD come from. Just click Window - Show HUD and the HUD will appear as an overlay window and display the subset of controls for the currently selected object. You can also click the Show/Hide HUD icon on the Toolbar, which is the first icon to the right of the time display.

But what happens to the HUD if you have more than one effect applied to an object? Each effect will have its own HUD controls. If there is more than one HUD control for a selected object, you will see a small triangle in the Title bar of the HUD. Here is an example of a graphic that has both a blur and colorize effect applied. Each effect is in its own HUD and you will need to toggle through the two HUDs. To move between HUDs, click the triangle to open the menu list of HUDs.

But when the HUD becomes too limited for your needs, you can jump directly to the Inspector by clicking the small i icon at the upper right of the HUD. So, depending on the complexity of your project, you have the option to set an object's characteristic parameters via the HUD or the Inspector.

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