Bret Williams
Forum Replies Created
-
My motion has decided to no longer display a splash screen. It’s running fine, but something has obviously gone awry. I deleted prefs and reinstalled the app and it still has no splash screen. It’s been 6 months, time to rebuild the computer from scratch again I guess! Or just a new user as Mark points out.
-
[Robin S. Kurz] “But then you could of come simply cut and paste the keyframes from the object to the group. 😉
“If it worked. Every time I tried that, it pasted the keyframes to the top layer in the group. Not the group.
[Robin S. Kurz] “Yes and no. I makes much more sense in the context of how AE is structured than in Motion imho. Since no object/layer can exist OUTSIDE of a group in Motion to begin with.”
It lets you work how you want to work. Motions little gotchas get you when you try to work backwards. You’ve created something very intricate and then you realize you need to group it. Causes the problems I’ve described. As well, you can’t see a group full screen. The benefit of groups over pre comps is easily working in context with the other elements. You’d have to open up multiple windows to do that in AE and it’s just easier to step in, adjust, step out, repeat. But at least if you’ve shrunk down a pre comp to a tiny size, you can open the pre comp and work on the elements full size. In Motion, once they’re all shrunk down, you can’t work on the elements full size any longer. You can zoom in on the canvas, but that’s just pixelating everything. However if you’re working in 3D with a camera you have isolate mode where you can do exactly what I’d like to do in regular 2D mode. It brings the group up full and lets you work on the elements full size. AND, oddly enough, if you zoom in on the canvas it will continuously rasterize the elements! Much like Illustrator does. AE certainly doesn’t do that. It’s actually working more like a full 3D app in this mode. The canvas boundaries fall away too. Really well implemented. Just wish we could do something similar in 2D comps. Am I missing a button? I just discovered the X button and that’s really cool.
-
I dunno. I’ve seen demos of that. Right now, as I make changes to all the motion elements in the scene, I simply open them in Motion and press save and they’re instantly updated in Motion. You can do the same for illustrator files in AE, but I don’t do it for that very reason. Only if I need to extrude something.
-
Also now hold option + cmd upon app launch instead like FCP X.
-
Wow. Chock another one up for the iMac. I’m not sure how long Tangier’s origins timeline is, but I haven’t seen a 20 min export in years. I export using a custom compressor setting from FCP X to h264 and my 3-10 min show exports are measured in minutes or even seconds. And if Inunderstand right that tech is also working on the decompression, which is likely why it seems unnecessary to optimize DSLR and other h264 codecs.
But the guys at Ripple were hyping up the newest release of compressor, saying that send to compressor is now optimized in the same way as exporting directly from X with a compressor setting is or the same as exporting in compressor is. And that previously using send to compressor was slower than a direct compressor setting export from x. But Tangier’s tests don’t seem to confirm this.
-
Parenting and grouping aren’t really the same thing. But groups and pre comps aren’t really exactly the same thing either. I’d be happy to group in this instance, but one of the items is already animated. So when you group a static item with an already animated item, you get a static group containing an animated item and a static item. But you can move them around together!
What I’m realizing Motion lacks here is a dialog when you group a single object asking whether you’d like to keep the keyframes and properties attributed to the group or to the object. VERY important concept for grouping after the fact. AE does this.
The workaround I always forget is to never apply animation to an object you might possibly group later. Then, in lieu of parenting, you can simply drop another object into the group.
Match Move or Linking sometimes works in that you’re piggybacking on the animation of the other. But unlike AE, applying the match move or link behavior results in a shift of your design. I’ve even found that undoing the match move or link sometimes leaves the shift in place and doesn’t return you to the point at which you added it.
Both apps have their gotchas.
In this particular instance I was trying to attach some text to an already moving illustrator object. Finally I slapped myself and just went into illustrator and added the text to the illustrator file. Duh. 🙂
-
I suppose. But the curves just give you ease in, ease out, or ease in/out or linear. A standard dissolve (which you could copy and paste with an option drag) has the same easing controls and an additional ease amount slider. I think you get what you get with the curves. I never use anything but linear. Maybe I’m missing something.
-
I don’t think anyone would notice because I don’t think there is anything to notice. It’s the same thing. And of course you can combine the two. For example If you have a graphic that is only going to be 80% opacity I’d set that in the inspector, and if you need to fade up on it I would dissolve into it. Anytime you can avoid key framing it’s a good thing.
-
I’ll look into match move. I thought I’d used it in conjunction with tracking. And yes I have the quality to full and best, and always double check quality at 100% scale of the canvas. The only reason the Ai files work is because they’re saved with PDF compatibility set to on I think. Motion sees them as PDF files. But you may be on to something. I’ll try replacing them with true PDFs. What I’m seeing could easily go unnoticed for years, until you have to zoom in 3000% one day. It’s like Motion has to sample the gradients at some number, but it’s not high enough. They band. And the edges are not sharp. Not pixelated like a bitmap would be, but overly anti-aliased perhaps. It’s like the aliasing meets its maximum (or minimum?)and gets scaled up as well. Anyway, going back to fixed resolution fixes both if you crank it up high enough.
-
And why wouldn’t you use a dissolve that has both a hot key and the ability to numerically change duration or drag out the duration all without ever opening the inspector?