Mulitple Images as One Particle System???

I have a wealth of images that i would like to use in a particle type way. I'm hoping there's a way to set the source of the particles to be a folder rather than a file??? and it would choose those progressively??? I'm not sure this is possible but it'd be a huge time saver.


Also, i tried to manually create the particle look but ran into other frustrations. Mainly, i can;t create the naturalness of particles through randomization. Such as i applied a grow/shrink and throw behavior but cannot apply Paramenters to the velocity functions of behaviors as i can to other property functions. Why is that?

Here is a sample of what i mean and what ive created.
[www.benscottproductions.com]
However, this is 10 images and i have several hundred pictures and do not want to have to customize all of them indiviually. After all, thats what motion is supposed to be about, right?

wow, the new forums sure have messed everything up i guess.

Anyway, to summarize...Adolfo really helped me out but suggesting using Automater to sequentialize(is that a word) all the pics and use them as a image sequence with a non-animating random start frame particle system.

Now, here's my new addition, is there any random seed number that is actually sequential? or does that defeat the purpose? Im hoping there's a secret here...

I actually kinda want the pictures to appear in a relatively sequential order, since its supposed to represent the development of a car over time. So seeing the end result 2 secs in kinda defeats the purpose. I've just tried my luck with some random seeds that focused on early pics at the beginning but hoping theres another secret out there...

thanks again, Adolfo, your my man..

Scott Erickson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> wow, the new forums sure have messed everything up
> i guess.

You don't know how frustrating it was for me to notice that the whole explanation I wrote (a small manual, wasn't it?) is gone



>
> Now, here's my new addition, is there any random
> seed number that is actually sequential? or does
> that defeat the purpose? Im hoping there's a
> secret here...

No (but yes later, keep your hopes high!).
No, because Random seed is the multiplier a computer uses to produce random results. You know there is no randomness in computers, it's just a math operation. Random seed allows you to make sure two elements are different or identical in their randomness. It's not possible to make it sequential.

BUT... here are the good news.
Maybe you don't want a particle system. Maybe, what you want is a replicator.
A replicator is similar to a particle system, with the difference that cells are not created continously but rather are nodes of a structure. The structure can have a geometric shape, the contour of a bitmap image, whatever you want.

You will see that the Replicator has a parameter called Frame Offset (or something very similar, I don't have Motion open now). With that, you can specifically set the distance in frames from one cell to the next one. Amazing, isn't it? One tip: replicators usually work from the center, which will cause the earlier frames to be in the middle and the later frames to be on the edges. Set it so that it works from the upper right corner, left to right or whatever you need. Also, there are replicator behaviors that allow you to make the cell appear progressively, go from small to large, whatever you want.

The Replicator is my favorite feature in Motion 2 and one of the truly innovative additions to the creative toolset I've seen in the last few years.


>
> I actually kinda want the pictures to appear in a
> relatively sequential order, since its supposed to
> represent the development of a car over time. So
> seeing the end result 2 secs in kinda defeats the
> purpose. I've just tried my luck with some random
> seeds that focused on early pics at the beginning
> but hoping theres another secret out there...
>
> thanks again, Adolfo, your my man..

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com