[Mark Spencer]

You can change how Motion handles images in Preferences, in the Project pane. The 4870 will handles up to 4K no problem. IIRC that is the limit although it could be 8K. Anyone else?

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

[Mark Spencer]

Your best solution is to upgrade to Motion 4 which has shadows (and depth of field for that matter). Cost is $299 – how much is your time worth to try to fake it in Motion 3?

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

[Mark Spencer]

You probably don’t even need “Best” quality in Motion unless you have text or other vector objects in your scene – I would do a test between Best and Normal because the render times are so much longer with Best. ProRes 422 is a good choice, you could do HQ to be on the safe side but I would bet you couldn’t tell the difference…

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

[Mark Spencer]

You are correct in your assumption, the card in your Mac Pro is limited to 2K textures. Anything over 2048×2048 will be down-rez’d. If your final output is under 2K this shouldn’t be an issue unless you are scaling up large images over 100%. In that case, I would do as you suggest and export QT’s from your laptop.

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

[Mark Spencer]

Exactly, you create a mask on the TV with one of the masking tools, and you track the mask to the TV just like the video.

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

[Mark Spencer]

All the Ripple training DVDs and downloads will play quite happily on an Apple TV hooked up to your TV…

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

[Mark Spencer]

I have DVDs and books (depends on how you like to learn) available at https://www.applemotion.net.

Stephen Smith, who is another moderator on this forum, has Motion training available through the Cow on this site as well.

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

[Mark Spencer]

Afraid not.

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

[Mark Spencer]

Brilliant, Andy – as usual.

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

[Mark Spencer]

Andy, that was exactly what I was going to suggest but I tried it first and it doesn’t work. I even tried setting a couple of keyframes at 90% but the layer reverts to its original rotation between the the two same keyframe values – very frustrating.

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