Dave Nagel of DMN posts a couple of Quick Tips for Motion: part one and part two.
You don’t want to keyframe every single curve because this can take a considerable amount of time and effort. So, instead, you’ll just use a Motion Path behavior to guide your object over the duration of your sequence.
More are likely to come.
A timely review (for me) of the new release of Motion; I have a couple of projects I’ve started shooting for but not editing yet. I have never tested Motion and I want to make these videos look better than anything I’ve done before. This should make a difference. The author includes 4 video screen captures, demonstrating some of Motion’s capabilities (and one limitation he wants to see included in a future upgrade), and I found them worthwhile. The demos assume a familiarity with the interface I don’t have, but I can’t criticize the author for this – he has to make his point, not act as a teacher for newbies.
They’ve also posted a tutorial on using a MIDI interface – a keyboard, or a mixer control surface – to control motions, behaviors, and attributes in Motion from Chris Meyer, one of the leading motion graphics practitioners and designers in the world.
You’ll need to login to read the articles and see the video clips; use bugmenot.com if you don’t have a user account at dv.com.——-
Macosxhints posts a valuable thread on protecting your computer. The discussion centers around Macs, but read it for a better understanding of the risks all computers face.“I basically recommend that anyone who owns a comuter should get a UPS. No exceptions. Given the potential anywhere for weather or an even minor glitch with your local power provider to cause havoc on your AC line, it really makes sense to protect your investment in your computer. Even fluctuations in power that are too quick for you to even notice (i.e. the lights flicker briefly) can potentially cause directory problems, data corruption or even hardware damage.”
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If the Electronic Frontier Foundation has assessed this treaty’s impact correctly, and if you plan to ever let some other entity broadcast your video online, you read and respond to this:
“If adopted, the WIPO treaty will give broadcasters copyright-like control over the content of their broadcasts, even when they have no copyright in what they show. A TV channel broadcasting your Creative Commons-licensed movie could legally demand that no one record or redistribute it – and sue anyone who does. And TV companies could use their new rights to go after TiVo or MythTV for daring to let you skip advertisements or record programs in DRM-free formats.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the US contingent at WIPO is pushing to have the treaty expanded to cover the Net. That means that anyone who feeds your “sound and images” through a web server would have a right to meddle with what you do with the webcast simply because they serve as the middleman between you and the creator.”It sounds quite grim. Please read the entire EFF post, and write to your Congressional Reps and Senators – it looks like a true free speech issue.——-
Now we’ll take a look at the use of a new behavior in Motion 2 designed just for use with replicators: Sequence Replicator. With this tool, individual cells in a replicator object can be animated in sequence for producing patterned tile effects .
There are two principal uses for this particular replication method. First, you can use it simply to repeat images (or video) on the screen for stylistic impact; and, second, you can use sequence replication to generate unique image masks for transitions in which images break up (or shape up) according to the patterns you create. The techniques involved for both of these applications are identical. But for this tutorial, we’ll look at the creation of a patterned, animated image mask. “——-
I’m at the Apple Market Center in Atlanta watching Jim Kanter run Motion through its paces. He’s emphasizing that this is a 1.0 release; it doesn’t have nearly all the capabilities of After Effects. Yet it’s got a great education price ($149, 50% off MSRP), and offers a unique way of applying motion or effects to objects: Behaviors (clicking link will load a QuickTime movie clip).——-