How to: Have images move around...

Ok, off the top of my head try this:-

new project, add a camera
Put the central picture into its own 3D layer
Put the four pictures into another 3D layer and then scale/move them around in XYZ space to achieve the correct look. You will probably have to rotate the layer on the x axis and each picture by the opposite ammount
Put a rotate behavior on the four pictures layer.
add 'point at' behavoir (at the main pic) on each of the four pictures if you want them to be at a tangent to the rotation, or point at camera, or just leave them.

hope that helps, would look good too with lighting.
You could do it with orbit, but this way it should be all in 3D with perspective etc

Peter

The reason it's not animating is because you just need one more step - drag the layer that is in the center into the image well in the Orbit Around behavior. That will get your image moving immediately without tweaking any settings. Or, alternatively, you could apply the Vortex behavior to the layer in the center, which will make everything else move around it automatically.

This will give you a 2D orbit animation, kind of like looking at one of those school illustrations of the solar system from the top down. If that's what you're looking for, you're done, but if you need a 3D orbit, where stuff moves in front and behind the center image, you need to do a few more steps:

1) Switch the group containing all your layers to 3D (add a camera is the fastest way)
2) Use the 3D Transform tool to drag some of your orbiting layers backwards in space, and some forward, by clicking and dragging on the blue arrow in the center. This arranges everything so that the center image is in the "middle" and the others are arranged around it in 3D.
3) Apply a Vortex behavior to the center image.
4) Look for the "Include" buttons in the inspector or HUD, and turn on the X and Z buttons and turn off the Y button.

If you've set it up correctly, you'll get everything automatically orbiting around the center image, going behind and in front of it as appropriate.

I'm going for the same look. A logo in the centre, with photos and videos all around it, facing outward. I'm trying to get a camera to rotate 360 degrees around the whole group, while pointing at the logo in the centre. (Similar to the Transformers DVD menu.) I have it working by keyframing the camera to 4 points and dragging out the beziers to make it smooth. The problem is just trying to get the last point, between 0 and 360 degrees look smooth for looping.

I tried the 'Orbit Around' with 'point at' method, but it jumps around a bit, not totally smooth.

In After Effects there's the centre point of the camera that you can orbit around, but Motion just orbits around the camera's centre I think.

Any ideas on how to make it smooth? I thought 'Motion Path' might work, but I can't get it to.

Just use the Sweep behavior, set the Start to -180 and the End to +180 - as long as you have the focal plane of the camera touching the layer you want to orbit, that's all there is to it.

Awesome thanks! That worked great. I set it to -360 and 360 so I get two rotations in my 30 second project. I hadn't even noticed the Sweep behavior before.