Criticism for using motion 4
 

Recently I have been taking alot of criticism in my college for choosing motion 4 as my title / 3d effects program of choice. Basically, I have been told " after effects or nothing". what I dont understand, is why a program that is truly only useful when paired with hundreds of dollars of plugins becomes so "powerful". Am I sorely mistaken, or are my peers only blind to the power that I seem to find in apples motion 4?

AE is a standard that every motion graphics person should be competent in. Motion is a great program too but not as widely used. Since I have both, I find a nice "division of labor" between the two.
Integration with FCP is the strongest reason to use motion. If a project is mainly video, I tend to let motion do the efx.
If it's a pure motion graphics project or really complex layer-wise, AE gets the call. I bought the Boris XML transfer utility to send FCP projects to AE and that's worked like a charm. You can't go the other way though!
There is one major advantage to AE though, it takes advantage of the 64bit os and can access as much ram as you can throw at it, therefore, it renders complex projects MUCH faster than Motion.

So yes you should continue using Motion but picking up AE would be a smart move as employers rarely ask for Motion but always ask for AE experience. And don't concern yourself with other's impressions of your tools...if you do good work, that will tend to shut them up.
Oh...AE can do amazing things without plugins...so don't kid yourself there. Plugins are icing on the cake and generally simplify tasks which can be done but require a very deep understanding of expressions.

Perhaps you're also a little blind to what AE can do?

Motion is a fine addition to FCP for MoGFX, but it isn't nearly as flexible as After Effects in what it can do in the area of compositing and effects...even without "hundreds of dollars of plugins."

You know, I have had the same response for others and well, I think Motion is great. I use this every day and the projects go out to DVD and TV. For me it's quick, easy and does the job that I need.
I will agree that AE is the industry standard and one should have a basic knowledge of doing the same thing in AE as you do in Motion.

I don't do heavy effects or massive compositions but for flying graphics around and getting a project from concept to completion, Motion is what I go for first.

Also so companies that I have freelanced for don't have AE as they have FCS, so having skills in Motion becomes invaluable in these situations.

Robert's comments are pretty much right on.

Use the tools that do the job. If Motion handles the task, then that's fine. For titles I still rely on LiveType and the Boris plug-in that comes with FCP for scrolling text.

However if you're going to collaborate with someone on a PC (I do occasionally) then that composite job might have been done on AE. In my case I can take that person's AE project and continue working on it on my Mac.

I rely upon AE for compositing and for more accurate motion graphics. The broadcast version comes with a lot of built-in capabilities which are often overlooked. I was in a conference at NAB's Vegas show and was surprised to see what the simple particle generator could do if you understood it well enough.

I have some plug-ins added to AE but that's because green screen compositing requires very subtle control over a lot of parameters to look good.

In Europe we are all victims of Adobe's gleefully sadistic pricing policy, so Motion may have a keener following.

I use both, but motion much more than AE. Adobe's seriously expensive upgrade policy in Europe means I may be stuck on CS3 for a while yet.

Hey thanks for the great replys!

To clear a little bit up, I have extensive training in both Motion and AE. I use them both for different things in all kinds of situations, and my job is primarily an Editor. So for me, Motion is the go-to because of the seamless Final Cut intergration.

My main Quip was the face I get when I tell people " oh yeah I did that effect in Motion" " That light trail was done in Motion" they almost always 100% of time give me a look and ask why I didnt do it in After Effects, Im assuming from your responces that its soley based on peoples opinions of the industry.

I do understand that AE is very powerful without plug-ins, but from what I have expierienced, the best stuff that comes out of AE uses plug-ins. Examples cited from people like Andrew Kramer etc. etc.

Funny, I thought it was "Nuke or nothing."

Honestly, they're all just tools. If one does the job quicker or better, use that. There are things that AE does easily & well that are difficult in Motion. There are things that Motion does easily & well that are difficult in AE. There are things that both do easily & well, and there are things that neither do easily or well.

IOW, it's best to know both, that way you can use whichever is better or faster for the task at hand.