Bret Williams
Forum Replies Created
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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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Started literally with the first reboot after the update to 10.10.3. I don’t think it’s the apple tb cable.
Now I’ve got another new one. If I monitor through my BMD device, mono sources in the event can’t be heard until they’re tagged stereo. But you do see the meter moving. If I switch monitoring back to the computer, it’s fine. That started a couple hours ago with the BMD driver update! Lovely.
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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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[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.
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’m with Simon. It’s a killer app worthy of some tweaks and bug fixes to take it over the top. If Apple really want to position it as a helper app, then why no send to motion, or open in motion or roundtripping? That’s not much of a helper app. In fact, you have to start in Motion from scratch no matter what you’re doing unless you’re updating something from the effects browser.
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Masks would be great, but not a deal breaker anymore since every effect now has a dedicated shape or color mask in FCP X. Now, if CF could add a trackable draw mask to any of it’s layers, wow. It’d be like a little Resolve plugin.
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Just curious if Adobe has ever fixed the exact same bug in After Effects. Actually, I’d say it’s much worse. But the result is always the same. Entire planes jump behind and in front of each other as you pan rotate the camera around. I was surprised when I switched to Motion to find it had the same issue more or less.
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That’s always worked there. But I should read it more closely because it never worked consistently correct for me.
What they’ve added now is copy and paste in the timeline. Not in the keyframe editor. So you can cmd+click or shift click a set of keyframes in the timeline (where they actually make more sense to me) and paste them to other layers.
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You still can’t lasso them. It’s the standard click, shift click, or cmd click then copy and paste. Yes it’s functional. Kind of a software 101 thing, but after 10 years they fixed it. Sometimes I wonder…
I just bumble too. But making myself do Motion now instead of AE and Motion is slowly feeling like home. I can always send adobe $20 if I have to use AE CC. But otherwise, if I have to use AE I use my trusty old CS5 which gets me by. For how long I’m not sure. I doubt it will work in the next OS. It has some issues in Yosemite.
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Embedding a true 3D engine is no small update. In reality This FCP 10.2 update was a motion update in that regard.
Seeing Motion axis in the FCP canvas to me is a sign of things to come that just aren’t finished yet. I think Apple wanted to throw us an NAB bone, but I hope there a bigger update coming to both in 6 months. Actually, there’s not a whole lot I’d change about Motion. It’d be nice to have multiple comps in a project and a render que. I’d also like to be able to open a group in its own timeline like a Pre-comp. but if I had to choose pre-comps or groups, groups win easily.
I for one have completely ditched AE after 20 years and have been pleasantly surprised at how much more powerful Motion is in almost every regard that counts (for me). Working in Motion is like working in an editor. Not like AE. I was actually thinking about doing a compete edit in Motion.
I often do the publishing thing and make a template, but usually I export video from FCP and bring it to Motion to create stuff from scratch and render it out as ProRes. They need to bring back roundtriping. My number one FCP request.
And I appreciate your tuts! Probably going to get your new keyed for sure. I do a lot of green screen in Motion.
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Quite amazing. My trial ran out and I’ll be getting it. I wish it had masks, but perhaps he knew what was coming and that 10.2 would cover that need somewhat.