… for Apple Motion

Tip #1533: Point At: A Little-Used Behavior

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Point At has one element point at another, no matter where each of them moves.

Point At is a Basic Motion behavior that you may not have used. Mostly, because Fade In/Out, Spin, Throw and Motion Path are more obvious and clearly useful.

But Point At does one thing none of these others do: it takes an element and points it at another element, no matter what each of them does in terms of movement.

For example, in the screen shot, the blue bean is moving across the frame from left to right. The red arrow is rising from bottom to top.

Using the settings in the Point At Inspector (top of screen shot) the red arrow will point at (track) the blue bean as both elements move around the frame.

Very cool!

EXTRA CREDIT

Imagine you have a product shot moving around the frame, with a cloud of arrows, or clapping hands, or exclamation points all moving around it randomly while at the same time pointing to the moving product shot. The Point At effect would be applied to all the objects that “point at” the product shot.