Jason Watson
Forum Replies Created
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I’m not a Motion user any more, but I’m in conversations all the time with people who use FCPX and are very vocal about their preference for FCPX, but I almost never hear about any of them using Motion. As others have echoed, I’ve worked with many different of clients and agencies, and the unspoken assumption is that the project will be done in Ae. All the files I get that involve any sort of animation or mograph are Ae. At the beginning of the project any deliverables that involve source files presume those will be Ae files. It would be very difficult to actually use Motion in my workflow even if I wanted to. So at least in my circles, Motion is practically non-existent. I’ve heard more about Cavalry than I have about Motion.
It’s a shame, because it is a really great tool for lots of workflows. I sometimes recommend it to people who are really only wanting to do some basic animations and such, but they almost always end up going with Ae anyway, possibly because they’re usually already using Photoshop and Illustrator.
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“It is time Apple showed how Motion 5 is more of an ‘and’ choice than an ‘or’ choice when it comes to animation”
Back when I was using Motion almost exclusively (which was 8 years ago- wow), I remember having the same hopes and making the same argument. I’m guessing not much is going to change on that front, as Apple doesn’t really seem to have any desire to make it into that kind of product, at least from what I can tell.
As far as the “and” part; for my part I’ve tried to find that “and” but don’t really think there’s a compelling reason to use After Effects “and” Motion, at least not if one is really deep in After Effects on a regular basis. There are some things I really liked about Motion back when I was using it (which was admittedly a long time ago), but the ceiling of its functionality is real, and by the time one deals with figuring out how to integrate it into one’s workflow that includes Ae, any speed increases are IMO negligible, especially the larger and more complex the projects become. If I was using FCPX on a regular basis I’m guessing that might change, at least for some things.
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[Morten Ranmar] “But what happened to the result of the survey for After Effects, where most users asked for performance enhancements instead of new features, which was at that time promised?
“According to the “what’s coming” info, there seem to be a number of performance enhancements:
New expression engine
Mocha plugin is now native and GPU-accelerated
More effects GPU-optimized
Hardware-accelerated decoding of H264 and other formats on MacOS
Across the board performance enhancementsWhether it brings far-ranging improvements in performance in the real world remains to be seen, but from the marketing side of things at least they seem to place a lot of emphasis on the performance enhancements.
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I’m excited to see some of the new AE updates in action. I do a fair amount of character animation, so the Mesh Sculpting tools look like they could be really useful. The enhancements to the Motion Graphics templates are also welcome as they have become a larger part of my workflow for certain projects.
And if the new Expressions engine can really speed things up by up to 5X, that’ll be pretty great. What won’t be so great is if it breaks a lot of the scripts I use.
I’ll also be interested to see how well DeReverb and DeNoise work in Audition.
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I think the debate is largely dead. It’s been almost five years since Adobe went CC only, and judging by how well it’s worked out for Adobe, they aren’t going back.
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[Eric Santiago] “Does this mean I don’t have to make layers within AI?”
You can basically set it up in Illustrator however you want. One layer, lots of layers; it’s really flexible. It even retains whatever naming you have within a layer, with options for centering, etc.
I also like the little “switch to Illustrator” or “switch to After Effects” button as well. 🙂
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Haven’t had a chance to update yet, but I am excited about Kyle Webster of kylebrush.com coming on board with Adobe and having his collection of brushes (and those he will make in the future) available to subscribers. Granted, I would still have purchased them anyway, but it’s a nice little bonus.
And while this isn’t related to the 2018 update, battleaxe.co just released an amazing tool called Overlord which creates a two-way connection between After Effects and Illustrator. Extremely useful for working with Illustrator layers (rather than files) inside of Ae. I bought it immediately, and although I’ve only scratched the surface, it’s wonderful.
I’m also excited for the 1.0 release of Character Animator. I’ve had a chance to play around with some of the betas, and it’s a fairly deep and powerful tool. I was able to live broadcast with it a couple times which was a lot of fun; even built in some keyboard triggers to have the character do different poses while I was talking. I think (at least right now) it is probably best suited for live, interactive character-ization, but I’ll be interested to see where it goes.
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[andy patterson] “Is every state the same way?”
It’s an FAA regulation, so it’s the same in all states in respect to commercial use. There are also federal regulations about flying in specific airspaces, notifying/getting control tower ok within 5 mi. of an airport, as well as a ban on flying (technically “taking off”) within any National Parks (whether commercially or not), among other things.
What can vary from state to state are regulations about drone use in specific places, like for state parks. Some are no, some are yes, some are yes with permit/permission, etc.
It also varies from county to county and city to city. For example, in my county, all county maintained parks require a permit and a (IMO totally unreasonable) $60/hr use fee, with a min. of 2 hrs. per use. The town I reside in (a suburb of KC) allows drones notwithstanding the other county and federal regulations, whereas another suburb 10 minutes up the road in the same county pretty much bans them everywhere. It can be kind of a mess trying to find a place to even fly sometimes.
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In my experience with friends and colleagues who have tried their hand at stock footage, it’s not been a very pleasant nor profitable experience, both in terms of jumping through the hoops of any particular site’s guidelines and then the rather paltry returns on their time.
My thought is that stock video is probably getting ready to (or desperately needs to) have some sort of model turnover that’s going to more heavily favor a curated subscription based model. It just seems that there’s a huge middle market who could use lots of great stock footage, but are unwilling to drop $75-$200+ a piece for a 15 sec. clip. Notwithstanding the amount of work, expertise and such that goes into great stock footage, I think the reality is that it’s largely overpriced for what a significant portion of the market is willing to pay right now (and that’s not likely to change in the future), and will probably have to adjust.
I see entities like Soundstripe and Artlist providing a potential model for this, in which they have a more limited, well curated and high quality selection but are able to bundle it into one price and really flexible licensing. Most of the clients I work with who were using places like Firstcom or even MusicBed have pretty much all switched over to places like these.
I know some people who are embarking on something like this for stock footage, in which it’s heavily curated (I think there’s about 5-6 people involved). Not sure if it will be successful or sustainable (nor yet what the licensing will be, which for me would be make or break), but I think it’s an interesting (and probably inevitable) approach. Like most of these types of things, it definitely tends toward certain moods and looks. Check it out if you want: https://www.storytape.com/
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[Oliver Peters] “Well, maybe. I doubt it will move the needle on Photoshop, however, this is more of a shot across the bow at Affinity.”
I agree, I think this is more of a competitor to Affinity, although without (AFAIK) some sort of RAW editor for Pixelmator it seems limited competition even in that regard. I’ve used Pixelmator and liked it, but for me that would be a non-starter.
In respect to Photoshop, most of the photographers I know who do the Photoshop/Lightroom subscription are in it at least as much for the DAM of Lightroom as for Photoshop. Until someone can come up with a compelling alternative to that, in my view at least neither Affinity nor Pixelmator are likely to do much in that segment. As always, YMMV.
[Oliver Peters] Hmm… I just noticed that their new logo mimics Apple Photos. Coincidence or foreshadowing?
According to their website, it’s intentional as “An app icon designed to fit beautifully in your macOS Dock.”