Third Party Add-Ins

      You can't really call any Web design tool great unless you can extend its capabilities, and Liquid Motion is no slacker in this regard either. As I write this, there are two add-on products available for Liquid Motion and an SDK in the works.
      The first product that I want to mention is Liquid Characterz from Zappa Digital Arts (http://www.zapadigital.com). Liquid Characterz does just what it sounds like: it allows you to add some pretty intricate character animation to your Liquid Motion scenes (see Figure A). The Characterz are three-dimensional cartoon actors and are controlled by custom behaviors accessible from the Liquid Motion toolbar or from the Animate menu. You can create some very professional looking cartoons very easily using this add-in. If the stock Characterz aren't enough for you, additional Characterz are available for purchase from Zappa, or you can create your own new Characterz using the Character Builder program. You have to try this add-in out—it's really fantastic.
Figure A: Liquid Characterz
Figure A: Liquid Characterz

      The second add-in that you'll find very useful is Vertigo Liquid Tools. These tools are behaviors that you can add to any actor in your animation to create a cool animation effect. These behaviors included Vertigo Jiggle, VertigoShove, and Vertigo Ricochet… you get the idea. This is another great product that you're going to want to try out with Liquid Motion. You can find the Vertigo Liquid Tools page at http://www.vertigo3d.com/ products/liquidtools.html.