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"Motion To Forces" - Behaviors/Filters Misbehaving?

Hello folks,

I'm experiencing an odd kind of error in Apple Motion 4.0.3.
Recently when I have been adding or duplicating behaviors or filters to layers, say for example - I add the filter "Invert" to a layer - the filter will appear titled as "Motion To Forces" in the Layers tab.
When I select the "Motion To Forces" filter/behavior in the Layers tab, and refer to the Inspector's "Properties" tab - the filter/behavior appears to be associated with a totally different layer in the Motion project. By deleting the "Motion To Forces", I am left with a non-titled filter/behavior, yet the effect the "Motion To Forces" filter/behavior is still present with the selected layer. The layer with "Motion To Forces" applied also becomes unresponsive to changes of the layers parameters.

The only way I can temporarily resolve this issue, is to save my Motion project, close, and reopen again. Only then will the "Motion To Forces" 'filter' have been reverted to the filter which I had originally selected/duplicated to a particular layer.
My current Motion project has multiple layers in 3D space -it seems now that I have many dozens of layers, that the issue is cropping up. I don't experience this issue with projects that have fewer layers.

I have reset Motion's preferences "p-list' file, and also reinstalled Motion back to Motion 4.0.0.
Still no love.

Nowhere on the internet have I found references to the "Motion To Forces" issue as experienced above.


Any suggestions and help are hugely appreciated.
Thanks,
Andrew

Macbook Pro 17" 2.8GHz 4GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 22, 2010 4:13 AM

Reply
12 replies

Sep 22, 2010 7:45 AM in response to Andrew Strugnell

Umm, I have no clue what's going on, Andrew. Reinstalling will only work on problems associated directly with flaws or corruption in the application's code and only if you properly uninstall Motion first. That's almost impossible to do without assistance from utilities like Jon Chappell's tools.

The last obscure Motion user interface issue we saw around here was only visible on a iMac and was resolved with a recent ProApps update. I think it was directly related to a graphics card issue.

I'm getting a message from the cosmos that this is a Finder language issue. No idea how it could have creeped into your system but try changing your keyboard language, restart your Mac, go back and change it back to USA, and restart again.

bogiesan

Sep 22, 2010 1:36 PM in response to buddha001

Hi,

No this issue doesn't occur in new, blank projects.

I noticed that the "Motion To Forces" behavior/filter was always associating itself with one group of layers. I deleted that one group of layers, and the problem seised... for a short while. It cropped up again when I continued to add different groups of layers. It is almost as if the number of layers within a project affects whether "Motion To Forces" begins appearing or not.

I'm going to try the keyboard language suggestion above.

Cheers,
Andrew

Sep 22, 2010 1:56 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

It's only a wild guess, Andrew.
I'm afraid you're on your own trying to figure it out. But keep letting us know what your tests indicate.


Hey - thanks for your rapid responses. I appreciate any suggestions.

Your comment about the ProApp update made me think about something. The day that the most recent ProApp 2010-02 update was installed, was the same day the issue started occurring. To test that theory - would you recommend I go about uninstalling updates/Motion to see whether the update was the problem?

I'll borrow a friend's Mac, install Motion on their machine, and transfer the source and project files to their machine to try and produce the same result.

My current method of getting around the issue is to simply continue deleting layers, as deemed necessary, until the project is finished.
Keep coming with your suggestions.

Cheers,
Andrew

Sep 23, 2010 8:08 AM in response to Andrew Strugnell

It sounds to me as if you have a corrupted project. I've never seen behavior like this before, but if you had started this project before the Pro Apps update, and then continued afterwards and began to notice the weirdness, then my guess is that the update created some instability in this particular project and it became corrupt.

My main reason for thinking this has to do with your statement that this does not occur with new projects.

My recommendation is to create a new project with the same settings as this bad one. Then with both of them open, drag your groups, one at a time into the new project so that it copies with the same hierarchy to the new project. Close the corrupt project and test to see whether the corruption followed you into this new project. If not, save as your new project and work from there.

Andy

"Motion To Forces" - Behaviors/Filters Misbehaving?

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