Apple Motion or Adobe After Effects
 

What will Adobe After Effects do that the latest version of Apple Motion will not? I like working with Motion quite a bit, so I'm trying to figure out if I should look into spending the time and money on After Effects to widen my post-production special effects knowledge?


(feel free to move this to the most appropriate place if this is not it)

Derek, Motion is not 3-D so you can't do things like simulate camera moves, and other 3-D stuff.

Nate,

Granted, Motion is not a 3D app by design, Motion 2 does include the ability to do "3D rotaion" as a new effect. A review of it in the latest Mac Addict says that "Basic 3D rotates an object in 3D space".

I've not tried it but I'm thinking of getting the $99 upgrade from Motion 1 to give it a try.

Thanks for the tip Dave, I didn't realize that was added in version 2. Maybe I should... read the manual :)

Any good suggestions from you Motion users on books to check out on how to use motion, ive used After Effects and i know the basics of Keyframing but i just dont know how to apply to Motion. thanks

Learning Motion
 

Dave & Nate - thanks for your help above.

- - - - - - - - -

Kevin,

I've used Apple's Motion quite a bit. I'm not an expert by any means, but know my way around it fairly well. To date there are only three books. If you go to Amazon.com and type "apple motion" all three come up. I have the one written by Allen, and it was good.

I would advise going to Lynda.com and signing up for her $25 per month on-line video training. She has one for Motion, and it was the best source I came across. There's no minium time frame for the monthly fee, so if you did not want to have access to her library, you could cancel after you finish the course. Personally, I've had my membership for over a year and will keep it running because she's always adding new content and it's a nice place to go for a reference sometimes when you forget something.

The other plus about this option is that you can begin right now. If I remember right, I think the whole course was two to three hours.

I also just got the Motion DVD put out by DVcreators.net. I think it would be a very good DVD for someone who's new to Motion.

Hope this helps.

If you are going to pay for the month anyway, I highly suggest you take all of the Photoshop lessons as well, if you use Photoshop.

We use both in our offfice and really both have a very different place.

I wouldn't drop one over the other, Motion is better at some things and AE is better at others.

If I had to pick just one it would be AE just because it's a more powerful program. But there are somethings in Motion that are one and two clicks that would take HOURS to build (of not days) in AE.

But they are very different beasts.

thanks Bryan
 

Bryan,

I've been looking into After Effects since Friday and think you are 100% correct. It seems like you can do things much easier in Motion, but you can do much more in After Effects. Apple really tries to sell the fact that Motion does not have to involve key-framing, which I think can be great in some cases, but not for all.

I've downloaded the 30-day trial of After Effects and will probably decide to purchase it when the trial is near expiration. I think After Effects will be around for a long time, and with the Macromedia/Adobe merger we could be seeing some interesting features in future versions (pure speculation here).

I'm glad Motion was created. It's a great program and I've done some cool things with it without much of a learning curve. But what I think is even better is that Motion will drive Adobe to make After Effects even cooler (and easier to use) and After Effects will drive Motion in the same way. Kind of like the effect Lowe's had on Home Depot (and still does).

Side note - Macromedia is releasing Studio 8 (with Flash 8) within the next month and it looks like they really studied Motion and After Effects to add to it's feature set. I'm pretty excited about this because I've been using Flash since version 4 and since getting more to the video side and using proucts like FCP and Motion, I found myself saying "why can't flash have this sort of stuff?" Looks like it will in version 8.

Has anyone in this thread used the Total Training After Effects DVD's? They look good on-line (with video samples), but I just wanted to see if anyone had any opinions on them. 47 hours of teaching - WOW.

Thanks again Bryan.

The Total Training videos are the best there is. They are just great. The problem I have is that there is so much to learn. But Brian Maffitt is the best teacher around. If anyone can teach me, it is Brian. You can spend less, but you can not do better than Total Training.

I had a feeling
 

Steven,

Thanks. They looked good on their web site and have been around for a long time. Your comments confirmed what I was thinking. I don't think I've ever spent that much on DVD's but really like learning from them for several reasons:

1) quicker
2) they cover more in less time
3) more intuitive
4) you can follow right along on your computer
5) the info just seems to be easier to absorb
6) you get to see how the program responds and reacts to each keystroke

I'm sure there are several more benefits I'm not mentioning here. So, looks like I'll be ordering the Total Training on Monday! :) Better stock up on Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets. Wait... I'm older now - Better stock up on Green Tea and chicken breast.

New Forum Under Sub-Forums: DV Post Production -- And Beyond!
 

To those who've participated in this thread.

I emailed Chris Hurd this morning about starting a new forum under "Sub-Forums: DV Post Production -- And Beyond!" that would be specifically for Motion, After Effects and any other program of this nature. Something like:

Motion, After Effects, & Other Special Effects Programs

With so much video production being tied to adding graphics, text and other effects from programs like these, I think it would be an organized way to post comments and questions on all this stuff. I know there are other forums for this info, but I think DVinfo.net is the most organized and best forum I've ever used. So I'd like to use it as much as possible.

If you like this idea you may want to post something here or email Chris as well.

Derek -
thanks for the advice i will look into Lynda.com that was actually something i came across during my search for information on Motion,

and also for those who were talking about knowing photoshop aswell i think that is true too programs like Motion, After Effects, and even Shake are basically photoshop with movement, so the more you know about photoshop the easier it is to relate the information between the programs.