Oscillate Shape

The Oscillate Shape behavior animates a shape by cycling its control points between two values. You can customize how wide apart the high and low values are, as well as the number of oscillations per minute. This behavior is useful for creating fluid shape movements (think shape yoga) that would be time-consuming to keyframe.

When the Oscillate Shape behavior is applied to a shape, all control points of the shape are affected by default. When the behavior is selected in the Layers list, affected control points are highlighted in white on the blue shape behavior spline. To disable control points, click the control points. A disabled point appears blue.

Note: When the Oscillate behavior is applied to a simple shape (without control points), a dialog appears asking if you want to convert the shape.

You can adjust the Oscillate behavior using the following controls in the Behaviors Inspector:

Wave Shape: A pop-up menu that sets the shape of the oscillation’s wave. The options are Sine (default), Square, Sawtooth, and Triangle. For more information on wave shapes, see Oscillate.
Phase: A slider that adjusts the point of the specified oscillation where the behavior starts. Use this control to place multiple shapes with identical Oscillate behaviors out of phase with one another (so they don’t all look the same).
Amplitude: A slider that adjusts the maximum values that the control points oscillate between. The control point swings between the amplitude value, and the negative of the amplitude value. Higher values result in more extreme swings from the beginning to the ending of each oscillation.
Speed: A slider that adjusts the speed at which the oscillation occurs, in oscillations per minute. Higher values result in faster oscillations.
Alternate Phase: A checkbox that, when selected, offsets the motion of each control point by a phase of 180 degrees from its neighboring control point.
Oscillate Around: A pop-up menu that sets whether the oscillation for each vertex is generated from a point or a perpendicular line. There are two options:
- Point Origin: Each vertex’s oscillation is generated from a point. You can change the location of the point using the onscreen controls (dragging the small blue circle at the center of the shape) or using the X and Y Origin parameters in the Inspector.
- Line: Each vertex’s oscillation is generated from a line. You can change the location of the line using the onscreen controls (dragging the ends of the blue dotted line) or using the using the Start and End coordinates in the Inspector.