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Edit Review — Apple Motion 2

Nov 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon

Updated version of motion graphics program adds new ways to work.

Apple continues to refine and advance its motion graphics and compositing program Motion with version 2.0. Motion's hook is that just about everything happens in realtime, and for many media artists, that is a powerful hook. You want to flow and create, and Motion rarely makes you wait. In fact, it's often one step ahead of you, because it offers so much in terms of effects and content that you'll have a lot to look over before you make your next move.

Motion also offers a streamlined Apple interface. It's no wonder that the timeline is initially hidden in the program when you boot up — who wants to look at that old thing? You just want to drag in content and spin it around. Motion allows that. The program became an instant hit because it was so accessible and easy to use, with lots of cool effects like particles and dissolves. So where does Apple go from here?

Rather than simply adding new tools and features, Apple chose to offer new “ideas,” starting points for digital construction. Also, the program now really exploits the current slate of powerful dual-processor G5 machines and GPU cards. And as I mentioned, Apple packs in so much ready-to-roll content that you spend more time experimenting with the new digital effects than poring through a manual to learn new commands.

New in Motion 2 is the Replicator, basically a tool with which to create multiple copies of a single item, such as a graphic, a shape, or a movie. Replicate to create grids, swirls, circles, lines — all dazzling and completely trippy. The engine behind it is probably simple, as the tool is basically a particle generator that lets you map a graphic to each particle and then animate and loop them. Replicator is so simple and drag-and-drop, it really can create amazing stuff in mere seconds.

The Motion 2 property inspector comes in handy with Replicator. It lets you easily alter any of the effects by changing dimensions, opacity, and many other parameters. You can crop, add a drop shadow, and tweak the timing of the elements. There are so many variations and so many effects — all of which can be altered in infinite ways — that you'll get tons of use out of this one tool alone. Replicator is perfect for quickly creating corporate backdrops or easily adding movement to static presentations.

There are now more than 500 effects, a spectacular variety of particle effects and light rays and glows and blurs. Motion 2 really outdoes itself in the special effects department. All of the effects — such as extrude, 3D rotate, caustics, smoke, sparkles, gradients, and shapes — have a large palette of sliding parameters to tweak. Existing Motion particle effects now have lots of dazzling new presets in Motion 2.

The program also now makes third-party plug-ins available via its FXPlug standard for developers. Plug-ins are slowly appearing now for Motion 2, and it would be great to see other developers step up and port their effects to the new version — or, ideally, create something entirely new. Other compositing programs have built robust third-party plug-in worlds around them. Apple packs much dazzle into Motion 2 already, but still it would be nice to see more plug-in collections available.

The keyframe editor has been improved, with advanced new features for various controls like acceleration. It's always been very easy to animate in Motion — you just click the record button and move stuff around. What I love now with Motion 2 is you can toggle individual items to automatically create keyframes, while other items remain off. This is especially handy for complex, multi-layered products.

MIDI support is new. You can now hook up a MIDI device such as a keyboard or pad and use the keys and controls to change parameters for filters and effects in realtime. Native HDV has been added, too — you work losslessly with no intermediate codec needed throughout the entire workflow.

And can we talk speed? Motion 2 dramatically raises the realtime bar, which takes full advantage of three things: your processor speed, your graphic card's GPU, and the amount of RAM in your system. Feel free to stuff as much RAM in as possible — Motion no longer has a 4GB limit and takes advantage of all your memory. Even though the GPU does a lot of the heavy lifting of onscreen rendering, some processing, such as working with text, is greatly accelerated by extra RAM. One of Motion's selling points is that it does not make you wait, and you won't with this new version.

Motion also dovetails nicely with Final Cut Pro; it can be opened from the FCP timeline. It now works with Adobe After Effects as well. You can open a Motion project in After Effects and have access to all your animations, particle effects, and Replicator effects without having to pre-render them.

How does Motion work in a typical production environment? As long as you keep within the realm of what the program can handle in realtime, it works smoothly. When you first boot up the program, no doubt you'll go crazy piling on particle effects and spinning, wiggling things. I tested on two systems, a dual-processor 2.7GHz G5 with 4GB of RAM and a higher-end video card with 256MB of memory, along with a more real-world system, a dual-core 2GHz G5 with 1.5GB of RAM. The dual-processor system cranked through with little to no slowdown on most projects. The dual-core system with less RAM started to lag slightly after I added the fourth or fifth effect.

Motion has several ways to keep itself flowing, not unlike After Effects. You can drop the display resolution to a half or a quarter, so when your project gets really complex you can still get 30fps. Motion did a great job of upsampling the lower resolution on the LCD so that it was still very watchable. Meanwhile, on the FireWire out, to which I had hooked up a video monitor, the animation played at quarter-screen resolution (320×240) so I could get a sense of the motion.

In addition I could do a RAM preview on either system, and both the dual-processor and dual-core systems rendered very quickly. I could see results pretty much right away. With the higher-powered system I packed more onscreen before frames were dropped than I could with the dual-core system, but this was a torture test.

When I did an actual project that involved text and motion blur with some particle effect accents and some scrolling backdrops, both systems performed pretty much the same. Let me put it this way, if you intend to jam layer upon layer of visual spectacle, a fast system with lots of RAM is needed. For most day-to-day uses, however, Motion lives up to its promise of producing realtime digital effects, where you create and play back instantly without watching a render bar.

There are two main ways to work with Motion 2. The first way is to simply create by dragging items from the library window into the main project window. These could be particle emitters, shapes, gradients, text, objects, etc. Hit the Record button and shuttle through your animation, moving stuff around as the record feature tracks all the movement. This will allow you to create animations in record time. The other way is to dig deeper and open up two additional windows: the timing window, which is a standard desktop compositing timeline, as well as the layers window, which like Photoshop contains layers of all the objects onscreen. This mode allows exacting manipulation of keyframes, layer order, transparency, audio, and other parameters.

Like most users, you'll start in the basic mode and then, either as client demand sets in or as you decide you want more control over the process, you'll toggle open the layers and timing windows and fine-tune. Motion 2 is much easier to use in its simpler mode than a similar composting program like After Effects, and if you want AE-style power, a few clicks will bring you into the more complex mode.

There is a lot to like in Motion 2, and how much you embrace it solely depends on where you are in your creative career. If you are just starting out in compositing and perhaps don't have the seasoned experience of programming complex animation tracking and effects, Motion will give a huge bang for your buck. Most of what you are paying for is effects, presets, and filters, so you can spend hours tweaking and altering already-set-up effects.

If you are seasoned compositor and simply want to add the latest Apple offering to your toolkit, you might outgrow Motion 2 at some point. However, one big advantage the software offers is its realtime power, so if your current program does not offer immediate feedback, you'll groove nicely on the Motion 2 workflow. With lots of pre-built but tweakable effects, Motion 2 does a lot of the hard work for you, and its realtime engine ensures that the program keeps up with your creative ideas.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: Apple
Cupertino, Calif.; (408) 996-1010

Website: www.apple.com

Product: Motion 2

Assets: New Replicator tool, new support for MIDI, improved realtime performance.

Caveats: Advanced effects artists might outgrow the program.

Demographic: Mac-based editors who need to create motion graphics.
Price: $299

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.