This tutorial demonstrates Moho's particle layers feature. Particle layers are used to create effects made up of many small objects flying around. This includes effects like water, smoke, and swarms of insects.
For this tutorial, we'll start with a project file that's already started. It's named "Tutorial 6.1" and it's located in the "Tutorials/6 - Effects" subfolder within the main Moho folder. Open this file in Moho, and you should see something like this:
Starting point for this tutorial.
There are four layers in this file, each containing a small gray blob-shaped object. You can zoom in to look more closely at these objects.
A smoke particle.
These blobs will be used to create a smoke effect, using a particle layer. If you examine these blobs, you'll see that they are all semi-transparent, and have the soft edges fill effect applied to them. In addition, the blobs all have a simple animation applied to them - over the course of 48 frames, they spread out horizontally. You can play back the animation to see this happen.
In the Layers window, create a new layer. Select "Particle" from the new layer popup menu. Particle layers are kind of like Group layers - they can contain sub-layers. Drag all four of the original layers into the particle layer, and your project should look like this:
New particle layer.
Play back the animation and see what we've got so far. The particles should be flowing, although they don't look much like smoke at this point. Next, double-click the particle layer to bring up the Layer Settings dialog. Click the tab marked "Particles". In this area, set the following values and click OK:
Particle settings.
These settings tell the particle system that each particle should last for 48 frames after being created, and that the particles should not rotate to follow the direction they are moving in. Their initial velocity is moderately slow, and there is a gentle acceleration to the right (a soft breeze).
When you play back the animation now, the motion of the particles should look more like the flow of smoke from a smokestack. You should export the animation as a QuickTime or AVI file to see how the blur and semi-transparent effects combine to create a smokey appearance. The reason four different particle types were used is that each has a different gray level, and combining them leads to a mottled, dirty effect.