Motion 5 or After Effects?

bob_walmsley wrote:

I didn't say it was only good for animating text. I said it was great for doing simple things - text animation being one of them. The ice example is a simple text animation. The sparks are simple particle animations. This is all very basic stuff that, admittedly, Motion does quite well. It's amazing value for money and a great piece of software if taken at face value. It's shortcomings are only apparent when it's compared to proper compositing tools like Nuke or AfterEffects (which it shouldn't be).

Fair enough - though I do have a problem with the notion that After Effects is really a top end compositing tool in anything like the same league as Nuke, if we're being perfectly frank.

But in the spirit of what is actually being discussed in this thread, it has to be said that After Effects users who look down their long noses at Motion as being inferior in every possible respect are seriously missing a trick.

There's quite a bit that Motion does faster - not least the fact that it gives you realtime feedback based on getting the most out of the GPU, something that After Effects is still really poor at achieving as Adobe themselves recognise.

I'm considering downloading Motion 5 myself right now, which is how I found this thread. I wanted to say though, that thing with not being able to Undo - I have an older version of Motion (2 or 3) that I got with FCP Studio ages ago, and since it won't install on more recent versions of OSX these days, I was using it for a while by just copying the files from a back up of my Applications folder to my hard disk, and running it from there. And every time I tried to undo anything, it would crash. So maybe a re-install of Motion would fix that problem?

I've done a lot of AfterEffects work, and started using motion a few years ago. I'm trying to move everything I do into Motion - because the interface is way better. A few things that AE does better, looking at many different keyframes - like all the position and scale keyframes of 4 different layers at once. You can do it in Motion, but only in the Keyframe Editor. I like how quickly I can access it in AE. Also, AE is better at retiming - you can slow something down or speed it up to match music much easier and with really good control. Motion has some advantages, I love their particles and their replicators. Easy to use and powerful - and they work in 3D, too. Plus, Motion has some basic stuff like folders. AE has precomps which are a little more powerful, but folders would be a nice addition to help with the ease of use - aka a better interface like Motion's.

If you haven't downloaded Motion 5 yet and want to see how it works, just yesterday I came across this really greate tutorial:

Free 15-video introductory tutorial by Michael Wohl

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/motion5101-overview-and-workflow-guide

Of the "getting started tutorials I'd rate this at 5-stars (and I'm a hard grader!).

Just bought Motion 5 three days ago now to do some animated routes on maps for my vacation videos. Yesterday I imported my first video map and created a route on it as a test run. So far, so good and no crashes on my old Mac Pro 3,1 with 8 GB memory. (much slower than the OP i5)

Couple other tutorials I came across:

How to animate a line on a map using motion 5.1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9t0pUwrRU

http://www.larryjordan.biz/motion5-animate-a-track/

Found a few more but don't have the URLs handy.

Edit: Almost forgot the main reason for my post. I noticed that the original poster was running OSX 10.6.8. Could that be a problem?

Or has the OSX been upgraded?

Message was edited by: Searchin99

Thank you, as I was not aware of that. I am now on the most current version. Seems to be much more stable than versions previous. I think Motion deserves more respect.

I've been using After Effects since it was CoSA.

I've been using Motion since v1.

I cannot, I simply cannot, make my head understand Motion's paradigm. Even the most basic motion graphics project is easier for me—far easier for me—to do it in Afer Effects.

There's a guy in my shop who has never used After Effects and he doesn't seem to have any trouble figuring out how to get his (fairly mundane) stuff out of Motion 5. However, and this is a HUGE factor, he's not an animator, he has no video production background or training. He's a graphics designer. He can figure out software but he does not grasp fundamentals of animation and editing that many of us probably take for granted. Like hitting white balance on a camera and setting audio levels, I don't think much about what I know about animation: motion eases, exaggeration, stretches and squeezes, anticipation, timing to audio hits, visual acuity of the audience, appropriateness of effects and all that other stuff I learned in film school or by hard knocks.

The decision to concentrate on and become proficient with Motion or AE is either bvased on your personal economics or just what you like to do if it is not part of your job description or a decision management will make for you based on their investments in Creative Cloud or Apple's applications.

Simon Ubsdell wrote:

bob_walmsley wrote:

Have a look at this website that features After Effects tutorials for special effects. Then try and mimick any of these techniques in Motion and you'll begin to see what I'm talking about.

www_videocopilot_net

B

Here is a videocoilot tutorial:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/translucent_glass/

And here's a tutorial for the exact same thing done in Motion:

http://youtu.be/SSt6IbDyf9E

Here's another Motion tutorial that shows how to do a fairly complex welding sparks effect:

http://youtu.be/scbXhiZy8uA

And here's one from videcopilot along the same lines:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_sparks_title/

No-one would deny that there are things that Ae can do that Motion simply can't, but to suggest that Motion is only good for is animated text is really to overstate the case.

I am shocked by how much one can accomplish even in Keynote and other free Apple software. I'm glad you're pointing out stuff that Motion can do which most have assumed to be After Effects only.

At some other site one graphics person while praising the speed and easy of use of Motion 5 in comparison to AE said he didn't want people to think he's saying it's a replacement for AfterEffects. But it seems to me that many or most, perhaps not all, graphics professionals could replace AE with Motion and be very happy. Is that view correct?

They're really used for different things in the long run, so it depends on what you are going for.

First off, if you are using Premiere, use After Effects, no contest. This is because a large part of Motion's merit comes from its integration with FCPX, and conversely, AE is very well-integrated with Premiere.

Also, if you are looking to do advanced motion graphics and animation, use AE simply because it has way more features and functionality.

However, if you are an FCPX editor and you are working on a YouTube channel, or working with a lot of different clients and most of your work meets the following criteria, then go with Motion:

• Most of your graphics are titles and some snappy 2D animations
• You're dealing mostly with flat colors rather than textures
• You're not doing anything advanced with lighting or 3D

With Motion, have great integration with FCPX by making custom templates that you can apply directly within FCP, and on top of that, Motion is really quick for putting together simple stuff. Just make sure you have a good graphics card.

A great way to compare the two is to preview templates for both on a stock site like videoblocks or envato. You will instantly be able to see the quality difference between the two apps.

Not only one project open at a time, you can copy and paste Layer objects between them.

Nuke blows away AE. They are very different animals. You can't group them together. Look at Modo, why touch AE after that?

10.11.6 is the latest OS X version, with 10.12 releasing next month. And yes, that could be a HUGE issue.

Start using Behaviors rather than keyframes.

Also look at either mObject to use 3D files inside Motion fully, or convert shapes to a font and use them as true 3D in Motion.

You've never done a Motion training course, have you?

Oh you miss SO much about Motion. We can do textures as well as AE. We can do advance lighting in 3D. And instead of wasting money on a subscription (equals pay twice what the app is worth in 2 years), get FCPX, Motion, and then the free version of Fusion. AE can't stand up to free Fusion at all.

Comparing templates on a site that FAVORS AE is biases. Look at the quality of stuff on MotionVFX and tell me Motion has quality issues.

Please learn the app first.

100% subjective question, with no solid factual answer, that will be found in a forum.