Edit Integrate Review — Apple Motion

Simply describing Apple's new Motion software as a motion graphics application is not wrong, but it conveys to readers who have never seen a demo of Motion the idea that the application is much like Adobe's After Effects. Moreover, if you were to look at the output from Motion, this inference would again seem to be accurate. The key to understanding this terrific program, however, is to not focus so much on what it can do, but the ways in which you can get it to do what you want.

Apple''s Motion software lets users rely on drag-and-drop Behaviors, rather than keyframes, to make things happen to objects.

Puzzling over this, I had a vision of a balloon man in Central Park. Suddenly, something disrupts his concentration and he looses his grip on the balloon strings and the balloons begin to float away. In a panic, he leaps to catch them. This causes a bunch of coins to jump from his pockets, fall to the sidewalk, and bounce repeatedly until they come to rest.

Anyone who taken even a high-school class in animation has an idea of how to animate this situation. Ignoring the man himself, in each frame you will move the balloons and coins a bit. In a college-level course, you would learn that in each frame the balloons and the coins must move a bit farther to simulate acceleration.

If we were creating this animation in a professional software application, after importing or drawing the balloons and coins, we would apply keyframes to the beginning and end of each object's path. Tweening would accomplish the actual creation of frames. Of course, if the paths had no acceleration, the motion would look all wrong. Therefore, we would likely apply a gravity function to the coins. (And we might apply a negative gravity function to the balloons.)

Clearly, the ability to animate using keyframes, tweening, and motion functions saves an animator a lot of time. If you wish, you can work in this way with Motion. Anyone who has used After Effects will be able to understand Motion's Canvas and Timeline windows.

What sets Motion apart is that one can impart motion to objects and control motion in ways that are far simpler and more intuitive. Imagine if we could somehow tell the balloons to “float away” and then say to the coins “you have been dropped from three feet above a sidewalk.” The smart balloons would know exactly how the air currents would carry them, and the smart coins would know they had to fall under the influence of gravity and would know how they had to bounce.

How does Apple make my little vision possible? Here's how the company describes one of Motion's key — no pun intended — capabilities. Motion offers “self-propelled animation, a new procedural animation technology — called Behaviors — that creates movement and simulations without keyframes. Simply drag and drop one of over 40 customizable behaviors onto text or graphics.”

Motion provides four types of these Behaviors: Basic, Text, Parameter, and Simulation. Basic behaviors enable you to create movement by altering parameters such as position, rotation, and opacity. For example, you can add “spin” to any object. Text behaviors are utilized for titling. They affect lines, words, or individual letters. For example, you can use the “drop-bounce” or “type-on” behavior to create a letter-by-letter title effect. To move larger blocks of text in unison, you can choose the “crawl” or “scroll-up” behavior.

Parameter behaviors provide fine control of an object parameter without altering other parameters. For example, if you apply the “oscillate” behavior to an object's rotation parameter, the object will rock back and forth. The same behavior applied to the “opacity” parameter creates an object that rhythmically fades in and out.

Simulation behaviors, according to Apple, “are advanced behaviors designed to simulate real-world phenomena such as gravity and vortex — behaviors that can create eco-systems of movement among multiple objects.” I take this to mean I can apply specific behaviors to my balloons and coins. Let's see how.

Opening a new project, I imported a photo, sized it, and placed it in the Canvas window. Now opening the Library, I went to the Behaviors folder and drilled down until I found some simple behaviors. I dragged the “spin” behavior to the photo and hit the spacebar. The photo now dutifully performed the requested action. I could adjust the spin by using the Inspector feature, which is discussed in further detail later in this review.

Of course, Motion provides more than motion effects. It comes with more than 90 accelerated filters, including familiar types such as Gaussian blurs, distortion effects, and glows, as well as more exotic filters such as “kaleidoscope” and “tunnel.” As with the motion effects, you simply drag and drop a filter onto an object to see its result instantly. Motion includes a particle generator that offers simulation effects such as smoke, sparkles, and fire. (The networks just love fire effects for their sports programs.)

Motion also offers drawing tools that simplify drawing simple or complex shapes by offering efficient, easy-to-use Bezier and B-Spline tools. You can fill shapes with a color or gradient and add an independent outline and feathering. The ability to create animated drawings enables you to use Motion for tasks that go far beyond broadcast promos. One could, for example, create animations for scientific reports.

Once you have applied specific behaviors to objects, you'll want to define object behaviors more accurately. You can do this using an Apple innovation called Dashboards.

According to Apple, “Dashboards are adapting, semi-transparent palettes that provide the most common tools associated with any selected object.” What this means is that a Dashboard is relevant, and specific, to the aspect of behavior you are trying to control. Since they pop up near the behavior/object and are semi-transparent, you do not lose focus on your work. Here's how I began to use Dashboards.

Pressing D will bring up a Dashboard. (If multiple behaviors have been applied you'll need to select the specific effect on the Timeline.) Naturally, you can adjust parameters as the animation plays. For example, the Fade-in/Fade-out Dashboard offers the ability to adjust all aspects of the effect. Simply drag the behavior's curve to adjust it. If the Dashboard has a slider, as the animation plays, you'll notice that the slider expresses the dynamic operation.

Now I was ready to try adding Motion Behaviors to the balloon man example that I offered at the opening of this review. I created two small roundish objects (balloons) and two tiny round objects (coins) using Motion's drawing tool. Finally, I created a tall, narrow, pink “balloon man.”

I lassoed the balloon man's coins, clicked the Add Behavior button, and selected Gravity simulation. They now fell to the center of the Earth. So I applied the Edge Collision simulation and the coins then bounced, and bounced, until they came to rest. By differentially adjusting the Bounce Strength parameter, I refined them to be a dime and a quarter.

Then I drew a very thin rectangle at the bottom of the Canvas to create a sidewalk. Next, I lassoed my balloons, clicked the Add Behavior button, and selected the Repel From simulation. Apple admits the next part is tricky. You've got to drag the repelled-from object (sidewalk) from the Layers list into each balloon's Repel From Effect's “From Well.” I differentially adjusted the Strength parameter so the balloons took slightly different paths. Next, I applied the Wind simulation to the balloons and, after setting direction and strength, my balloons simply floated away. No keyframes were harmed.

When Motion was presented at NAB, I heard criticism that it might be fine for tossing together something quickly, but one could not expect to use it for precise work. As a matter of fact, you can achieve high levels of precision by using three other Motion tools.

When you need to fine-tune an object's parameters and settings, you can use the Inspector. The Inspector provides convenient access to all controls associated with the selected object. Specific controls vary depending on the object. The Inspector tab lets you work with type, shapes, movies, audio, or any media. I used the Inspector on my objects to set their colors.

Motion's multi-track Timeline enables you to insert, overwrite, and replace clips. Basic editing capabilities are built into Motion. You can use the Timeline to trim tracks for precise matching with animation and effects, or to view and trim audio tracks.

Motion's Keyframe Editor provides a toolset for creating precision animations. You can create linear, Bezier, as well as “ease-in” and “ease-out” interpolations between keyframes.

Of course, Motion provides more conventional tools. To support compositing, Motion includes chromakey capabilities from Photron's PrimatteRT technology. PrimatteRT is useful for pulling mattes from complex images.

Motion also supports a range of masking functions from simple boxes and circles, to complex splines and movie files. You can apply masks to an entire layer, or to an individual object within a layer. In order to ensure that masks do not create visible edge lines, multiple blend modes (Stencil Alpha and Stencil Luma) are available. You can also manually build a mask of any shape or complexity using Motion's Bezier and B-spline tools.

Naturally, Motion provides a powerful set of CG tools. You can use the preset type styles that come with Motion, or use a Dashboard to quickly set font, opacity, color, and blend modes. The Inspector can be used to add advanced effects such as outline, glow, and shadow. Of course, Motion incorporates Apple's LiveFonts. They offer animated effects such as fire and shiny metal. Motion comes with 10 ready-to-use LiveFonts.

While you can create objects within Motion, in most cases you'll import assets from other applications. Motion imports any QuickTime file format, whether movies or still images (TIFF files, layered Adobe Photoshop files, PDF files, and Adobe Illustrator files saved with PDF compatibility).

Motion can, of course, work well with Final Cut Pro HD. You do not need to render FCP files before they are used in Motion. Likewise, Motion titles, animations, and effects automatically update in the Final Cut Pro HD timeline.

When you are ready to author a DVD, simply drag and drop a Motion project into DVD Studio Pro 3, where it is encoded to MPEG-2.

While many editors drive their system via the keyboard, Apple introduces an alternate system with Motion. Motion supports 40 unique gestures. For example, a “rightward swipe” gesture causes Motion to jump forward 10 frames, while a “greater-than arrow” plays the timeline.

I have not yet covered performance. As you might expect, an enormous number of calculations must occur to generate each animated frame. Moreover, the larger a frame — HD rather than SD — the more calculations must occur. After Effects provides 30fps playback by rendering each frame into a RAM buffer. All calculations are made by using the computer's processors. When the RAM buffer has been loaded, the frames are played out using the graphics board.

Motion uses the G5 processors and lots of RAM — a dual G5 and 2GB of RAM are recommended. Motion, however, also makes use of both the graphics processor and the VRAM on the graphics processor. If you want Motion to perform, you should be sure your Mac at least meets Apple's minimum specifications. (You can download an application that checks whether your Mac can support Motion. My iMac G4 failed the test because of its graphics option.)

To maximize realtime performance, you will want an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro or better. The dual 2.5GHz G5 (with 4GB of RAM) that Apple loaned me had an ATI Radeon 9800 XT with 256MB of VRAM.

When you first start Motion, you are given the option of working with any of the supplied templates, so that is what I did next. Some might call this cheating, but I call it quick. Remember that if you have the time, you can easily alter aspects of the result so it more closely matches your needs.

My experience with Motion convinced me it is a jewel of an application. It's perfect for those who, either for lack of time or lack of patience for fiddling with itty-bitty dials and sliders, want to create a visual that looks fancy — especially if it looks like it took lots of effort. However, for those who live to create visual perfection, you can dig into the precision tools and define each element of the visual. Oh, and did I mention that Motion sells for only $299?

For a shooter's perspective on using Motion for previz, see Barry Braverman's column. For a feature film animator's perspective on Motion, read S.D. Katz's review at millimeter.com.

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

Product: Motion

Assets: Behaviors allow intuitive procedural animation; Simulations emulate real-world phenomena; many presets for fast work; Photron's PrimatteRT technology for chromakey functions.

Caveats: Use a G5, a lot of RAM, and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro or better to maximize realtime performance.

Demographic: Video pros looking for a simple motion graphics and animation solution.

Price: $299

To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.