Making a 3D timeline journey path… please take pity!

[Mark Spencer]

Not sure why you would accept a task for which you do not have the skills? It takes some time to learn how to what you want – nobody can just tell you how to do it. Personally, it took me a few years to develop these skills.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Suszko]

This is a kind of difficult task to start out on without any training at all. One way to approach it would be to find a pre-made template that already exists, then just modify that, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Like many problems in production, you can make it go away if you can throw enough money at it… so, you could browse a provider like MotionVFX, pick out a 50-dollar template that is “in the ballpark”, then reverse-engineer it to meet your own needs. I found a free template at MotionMaster Templates.com called “reflective flooring HD”, that I was able to modify into a “road map with mile markers” kind of thing, similar to what you describe. Saved a lot of time, versus starting from scratch.

https://motion-master-templates.com/reflective-flooring-template/

You can change the snaky lines to stay persistent instead of going away, you can add a glow effect to them and make them really pop. Adding and moving the drop zones is drag-and-drop/ cut and paste easy. You can alter the virtual camera position as well.

There are couple of templates in Motion 4 ( I don’t have 5 yet) that come with it, that you might also play with. One is an actual timeline, where the dates and other features are drag-and-drop. But that one’s not sinuous and not like a cartoony road thru a green valley or anything. If you had more detail on the visual look you want to get, we could make better suggestions.

For someone brand new to Motion, I highly recommend Stephen Smith’s tutorial DVD, even though it’s for Motion 4, it’s mostly still relevant, and very easy to follow.

Something else I would suggest to a beginner is to use scrap paper, tape, and cardboard, and actually rough-in a physical model of what you are wanting to create, to give yourself an idea of how to move the camera and set 2-d pieces in the 3-d virtual space. Then, build things like the terrain and some 2-d elements in Photoshop, you can import these into Motion and spend more time arranging the “props” in the space than in creating them. If you think of Motion as an animated variant of Photoshop with layers, it may help.

Good luck!

[Jennie Smith]

Thanks for your reply.

The task I accepted was making a video in FCPX, which is fine – but the remit subsequently changed, and I was told that Motion 5 is ‘pretty much the same as FCPX’…d’oh!

[Jennie Smith]

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply.

I’m glad it’s not just me being stupid, and that it is actually quite a big ask.

Thanks very much for your valuable suggestions; I’ll definitely check out the templates, and the physical mock-up idea is super too.

Thanks for your input!

[Mark Suszko]

Motion is not really the same thing as FCPX. It has the same charcoal-grey graphic design cues for the look of the interface, and it has a timeline, but that’s more like the old FCP7 timeline than FCPX’s magnetic one. It’s not even really meant to use as an editor. Calling Motion the same as FCPX is like calling photoshop the same as FCPX. 😛

If these are your bosses telling you this stuff, or your clients, you should start an emergency job search, because they’re really unaware of what the tools are, much less how relatively hard or simple it is to do something with them. Like asking plumbers to do electrical work; “Well, wires and pipse are both metal, and run thru the walls, don’t they?”

Let’s see if we can help you get thru this, but understand, they have no idea what they are asking you to do. You need better clients or better management.

[Mark Spencer]

Mark is right on – it’s like saying hey I have to build a house in a week, I’ve never built houses before, but I just got this great new circular saw – what do I do?

His suggestion to start with a template is a good one, but honestly without having some grounding in the application and how it works, it’s going to be hard to modify the template to suit your needs.

I’d modestly suggest some of my own training as well 🙂

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Robin S. kurz]

To be frank, the first and ONLY thing you should do, if you actually plan on going through with this (which, IMHO, will never work) is: GET RAINING AND LEARN AT LEAST THE BASICS. Otherwise there in NO WAY you are even getting past the first hour of trying without going completely nuts and will be burning through FAR more time than you could ever need for working through some decent training. Guaranteed.

And yes, I very much second the idea of getting Mark’s training to do just that. It’s the best and actually only comprehensive Motion training I know of.

https://www.rippletraining.com/categories/apple-pro-apps-tutorials/motion-5-tutorials.html

After that, from what position you describe you are in, you may at least have a little more than a snowball’s chance.

Good luck!

[Mark Suszko]

How is it going, Jenny?