create a pie chart with apple motion

The basic approach is to create a bezier shape that is a sector of your pie chart and then create a circle replicator. Using the replicator controls in the inspector you can set colors, animation etc. Give it a try and experiment to get what you want. Crude example in this screen shot

Draw a line. [Hold down the shift key as you drag vertically or horizontally. I'm going to recommend setting the Outline width to 10 and set the Outline color to white - The width you choose will be related to the size of the pie chart - small chart - narrow the line -- large chart, make it thicker. Set the line endpoints to none or square.]

Set the Anchor point at one end point.

Replicate

Set Shape to Line

Set Start Point to 0,0

Set End Point to 0,0

In Cell Controls:

Check: Align Angle

Set Angle End to 360

Go back to Replicator controls and add enough points to make the circle "solid" (with line width 10, about 300)

Back down in Cell Controls:

Color Mode: Over Pattern

This is how the pie chart is created from a replicated line:

Click on the left color tab and set its Interpolation to Constant.

Click on the color bar to add more color tabs (their interpolations *should be* automatically set to Constant now as well.) Change the color tabs to the pie chart colors.

You can drag the individual "Locations" to create percentages (select a color tab and drag it left/right - the Location value is also available below the Interpolation parameter in the list below). The Location values are "absolute" values (not relative to the preceding color tab location).

I'll leave the math to you:

You can do the same with the opacity tabs on top of the gradient designer to create "knockouts" [set the Interpolation to Constant]

You can rotate the replicator or the group the replicator is in to create a presentation alignment.

Color/opacity tab Locations can be keyframed (animating the size/position changes of colored regions). Individual color tab colors can be keyframed. Opacities can be keyframed. There are many ways to create animations for your pie chart.

[PS - do not attempt to animate ADDITION or REMOVAL of color/opacity tabs -- everything you're going to use must exist before animations.]

I nice touch is to add a Filters > Stylize > Extrude filter and give the chart a little depth.

The following will require quite a bit of extra work and probably would be considered *advanced* procedures. If you're under time constraints, keep whatever project you're working on as simple as possible until you are comfortable with the techniques that follow.

You can also do some interesting things with Sequence Replicator behaviors:

[extrude filter added (don't overdo it!)]

Here's a screenshot of the Sequence Replicator settings to achieve the above:

[ignore the Rotation parameter - it was not used.]

The spread will always be 0. With the Location set at 0, the Start / End parameters are set (approximately) equal to the Locations of the bounding tabs for the color region to be separated out from the chart. The reason it is not equal to those values is due to the width of the original line replicated (so there might be some "bleed" on the bordering edges). (You can add more than one sequence replicator [hint] to isolate more than one region.)

You would animate the separation of the highlighted region by keyframing the Position Parameters in the sequence replicator (that you Added) from 0,0,0 to the final values shown (and back, if you like).

Other notes: in order for Z-position to work in the sequence replicator, the 3D option must be checked in the replicator controls.

If I missed something, let me know.

The Photoshop crowd long ago developed a super-fast and easy method for pie charts, which I just discovered. It works for Motion, at least in 2D.

1. Create vertical boxes of color (top to bottom) with your different slices.

2. Add the Polar filter to the Group.

3. Add a circle mask to the Group and voila.

You can then animate the slices to grow from 0 to 15% or whatever.

I want to go on to add that the Sequencing can also be set to From rather than To. Using From will section off the wedge from the position of the rest of the replicator, whereas using To will move the rest of the replicator away from the wedge... It's just a matter of choice how you want the animation to move. (There's a case to be made for both methods.)