Alternate

The Alternate Effect applies alternating proportions and directions of animation to components of a Complex Object.

The Alternate setting tab of the 'Effect Settings' dialog box is represented below. This dialog box is displayed when you first create the Alternate Effect. It can also be displayed by double-clicking the Alternate Effect in the Timeline, or right-clicking the Alternate Effect and choosing 'Properties' from the context Menu.


To see how this Effect works, imagine a zig-zag line that goes between +100% and -100%, for example, with a cycle that repeats every four components starting at component position 0. You would get a figure like that shown below.
The red line represents the amount and direction of Transform applied for each component position. You can see that component position 0 gets a full 100% of the Transform, component position 1 getss zero, component position 2 gets -100%, and so on. If the Transform for the Alternate Effect is one that adds 50 pixels to the Y value, then the first Frame of the effect would look like this:


You can see that the first component was moved up by the full 50 pixels, the second component was unchanged, the third moved down by 50 pixels, and so on.

Repeat every 'n' components
The Alternate Effect goes through a complete cycle every 'n' components. The default is a four-component cycle. In that case every fourth component will have the same amount of Alternate Effect as shown in the example above, that is:

·	maximum positive direction (100%)

·	zero (no transform)

·	maximum negative direction (-100%)

·	zero (no transform).

Setting the repeat every 'n' components figure to two, for example, would specify a repeating cycle like this:

·	maximum (100%) positive direction

·	maximum (100%) negative direction.

Start at component
The maximum proportion in the positive direction occurs at this component position in the sequence. The default is the 0 position (first component), so the first component always get the full amount of the Transform.

Position/Spacing/Scale/Angle/Alpha/Color
These Transforms can be set in the Transforms tab.

X=Y checkboxes
This option forces the Y value to equal the X value.

For each Transform setting (position, spacing, scale, angle, alpha and color), there are three options:

·	All: applies the full amount of the Transform to all components. There is no alternation for this setting

·	Opposite: applies the proportion and direction of the Transform depending on the component position

·	Same: applies the proportion of the Transform depending on the component position, but always in the positive direction.

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