Apple Motion 3 - Manual (Page 285)

Chapter 3 Basic Compositing 285
Editing Opacity and Blending
The opacity and blending controls for each object appear both in the Properties tab of
the Inspector, and in the default HUD for any selected object.
Opacity
By layering together objects with varying opacities, you can merge them together in
ways not otherwise possible. For example, if you have two full-screen background
images that you want to use together, you can set the opacity of the object in front to
50%, allowing the object in back to show through.
You can overlap as many objects as you want, and by varying their opacities, selectively
reveal objects in the back.
To change an object’s opacity, do one of the following:
m Adjust the opacity slider or value slider in the Properties tab.
m Adjust the opacity slider in the HUD.
Blend Modes
While the Opacity parameter simply defines a uniform level of transparency for an
object, the blend modes allow you many more creative options to control how the
overlapping images interact, based on the colors in each object. By default, each
object’s blend mode is set to Normal, so that changes to an object’s opacity uniformly
affect every part of the image equally.
Image in front Image in back Front image at 50% opacity