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The Motion 5 update – do you feel excited?
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Well what I’m describing is actually similar, and it shows itself when you’re doing things like making full on objects like boxes. Boxes are obviously common building blocks. What I’ll see quite a bit is a layer order issue. You build a complex 3D object and nest it correctly with continuous raster on, etc.. It interacts in 3D space with other nested 3D objects to a point. And then, for no reason that I can find, as the camera orbits or the objects rotate they will suddenly jump in front or behind the other in the render stack. Maybe it’s fixed in CC2014 but it wasn’t in CC. You’ll think there’s a 2D layer or an effect in there somewhere that kicks in on that frame, but then you move the camera just a little bit in z space and suddenly it’ll be right again. So to me it’s very similar and just as devastating to a comp. Sometimes, you’ll just have 2 layers sandwiched together with a pixel between them, but as the camera moves in or around, the foreground object will intersect the background object fully or only halfway, as if you just tilted it. My guess is that there is some mathematical calculation that breaks down at some level.
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[Bret Williams] “I kinda feel like: painting – better, particles -better, replicators – no contest, groups vs. pre comps – way better, rigging & publishing – no contest, true 3D (text) – better, 3D extendables (mObject) – similar if not better to the Andrew Kramer thing and certainly cheaper, performance – way better, and the list goes on. I know everyone says AE is more powerful, and perhaps I don’t doubt it is in some aspects that don’t touch 90% of everyone’s needs. I used to say it was too until I made the switch. “
I’ve often said here that Motion has a high floor, but a low ceiling. Ae has a low floor, but a higher ceiling.
I find that Motion doesn’t scale as well as Ae. It’s great for projects up to a certain level of complexity, then it completely falls over. Groups vs. precomps is a perfect example of this. A group is only the same thing as a precomp in a relatively simple project.
For context, I started using After Effects in the late 90s at version 4. I also used Motion heavily from v1 through v3, but only occasionally now in v5.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “What kinds of new functionality would you like to see to advance Motion toward that goal?”
Very hard to draw up a list, although the really obvious place to start looking for that list is the Ae feature set. And that’s not really what I think should be happening. It needs a lot of small improvements – all the basic stuff that they could have been working on for the last five or six years but haven’t been doing.
Some very elementary things, just off the top of my head:
Fix the tracker, which is really not fit for purpose in my view even within the very limited range of what it sets out to do.
Attend to the Clouds generator – this is a fundamental procedural building block but the current implementation is really amateurish and is a serious stumbling block to achieving good-looking results.
A proper displacement filter – you can do a few things with glass distortion, refraction and bump but it’s not enough. (EDIT: you can “roll your own” displacement effects quite effectively using combinations of tools, so this is not a big priority.)
A shatter filter – a really important tool. You can fudge shattering but it really doesn’t do the job.
More keyboard shortcut options – the fact that you can’t map some of the most basic tools really makes for an unnecessarily cumbersome workflow.
Maybe expressions – of some simple kind. Parameter behaviors can do simply amazing things if you really put your mind to it, but there are functions that you can’t engineer even with the utmost ingenuity.
Fix some of those outstanding bugs!
None of these are especially big things but they would make a significant difference to what you could get out of Motion. Some could easily be provided by third parties (come to think of it!) but there’s not much of a market for Motion-exclusive plug-ins that I can detect. You’re not going to want to spend a lot adding a basic filter or generator to a product that’s only cost you $49 in the first place …
Essentially some attention to the basic building blocks would go a very long way towards extending what you can achieve with Motion.
But most of all, please don’t let them break it – which there has to be a really massive chance of them doing …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Bret Williams] “[David Mathis] “After all it does not have the power of After Effects and is not a competitor.”
Can you expand on this? And I promise I’m not trying to be argumentative.
I kinda feel like: painting – better, particles -better, replicators – no contest, groups vs. pre comps – way better, rigging & publishing – no contest, true 3D (text) – better, 3D extendables (mObject) – similar if not better to the Andrew Kramer thing and certainly cheaper, performance – way better, and the list goes on.”
Expressions vs Parameters: Both are good but expressions open up a much more opportunity for more complex animations. There are no if then conditions in Motion which there are in After Effects, for example.
One way expressions could be useful would be in how particles behave. You could have the speed of another layer determine how many particles there are (if any) or determine other physical aspects of the particles such as size. This would be if one is using Trapcode Particular, which is an added cost.
Parenting, this can be done in Motion but requires linking properties together and adding another layer to the mix, on occasion.
While you can choose which properties to link, they are all there in After Effects, which requires a little less tweaking.Masking tools are a mixed bag. The feather (softness) property affects both the x and y values inside of Motion. With the tools in After Effects, these can be controlled independently. On the flip side image masks are more flexible then say a track matte.
On the flip side, Motion does have content built in that After Effects does not. There is also true 3D text which is nice. I also prefer groups, much easier to maintain and handle. Not having to render everything is also very nice.
I guess it all boils down to what the needs of the end user are. I hope I have clarified my points a bit more, if not I will be happy to answer any more questions.
No offense taken and hope none given. Always nice to see other points of view. This is why the Cow is such a great place to go for advice and debate!
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Perhaps Apple are happy where Motion sits – it’s a fine, easy to learn Motion Graphics tool for Editors who don’t know Ae and don’t need the extra power it has.
I use it all the time, if the graphics are more complex then I use an AE artist
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[David Mathis] “You could have the speed of another layer determine how many particles there are (if any) or determine other physical aspects of the particles such as size.”
Really easy to do with linking in Motion – expressions not needed for that example.
[David Mathis] “Masking tools are a mixed bag. The feather (softness) property affects both the x and y values inside of Motion. “
You can do this the way that VFX folk often do which is to use a blur filter (e.g. the Gaussian in Motion) on the mask so you can control the X and Y blur independently.
Sometimes what’s missing is not the tools but the knowledge of how to create effects – and your own “tools” – out of the simplest building blocks.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Bret Williams] “3D extendables (mObject) – similar if not better to the Andrew Kramer thing and certainly cheaper, performance – way better,”
I think you’re forgetting about Cineware and the inclusion of C4D light. Cinema 4D with AE is just in a different class than Motion with mObject, if you’re talking about 3D extensibility, especially when AE is paired with C4D Broadcast or C4D Studio. Lastly, if you’re talking 3D “stuff” in AE, you can’t leave out the 3D tracker. Those are just a few of the things that make AE a more flexible authoring tool.
Shawn
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Not a super power user, but I’ve been doing the AE thing since 1996 and version 3.0. I even used the Cosa version once. A tutorial or something. Still remember the box on the shelf. Right next to Aldus Pagemaker!
Groups, while wonderful, do clutter up the screen at some point because you have to have them all twirled open to get to them. That’s why I’d love Apple to create a project shell like AE where you can get to the groups and open them individually. But if given the choice, I’m loving groups more. The ability to simply drag a layer from a group into another group or a parent group is nuts. Every time I do it I’m amazed and how much simpler it is to rearrange.
But when I’m creating a whole graphics package, man do I miss the project and render que. Having a zillion little motion projects laying around in the finder for each animation is nuts. And if you’re versioning, then you have a bunch of different versions of each animation! Ugh. And of course consolidating the project is a problem because they’re not one project. But none of that really hampers what gets created.
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[Bret Williams] “But when I’m creating a whole graphics package, man do I miss the project and render que.”
Complete agree about that one – that’s a really big productivity enhancer and it would be great to see that implemented.
On the other hand, Motion renders so many things a lot quicker than Ae that the disadvantage of not having a render queue is lessened somewhat. It does mean you can’t take the coffee break though …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] ”
On the other hand, Motion renders so many things a lot quicker than Ae that the disadvantage of not having a render queue is lessened somewhat. It does mean you can’t take the coffee break though …”I’m curious, can Motion renders be handed off to Compressor? I’m also wondering if Motion can do multi-machine renders.
Shawn
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