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Article Focus:
Peter Wiggins takes a thorough look at the new Motion from Apple. Never before has there been such interest and anticipation over a piece of software and Peter Wiggins hopes that this article gives an insight into the creative capabilities, workflow and SPEED of Motion.
Peter Wiggins
www.peterwiggins.com
Flick Pictures Ltd,
United Kingdom
©2004 Peter Wiggins and Creativecow.net. All rights are reserved.
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It is a truly amazing application. Large complicated layered effects can be built and manipulated in real time in no time. There has been enormous thought, development and innovation in bringing this ground breaking app to the market.
There are also many excellent features such as Primatte, which is used for chromakeying that I haven't even touched upon in this article.
Yes there are some downsides, some large, some small. Lack of 10bit rendering, FPS hit on enabling the broadcast output being some of the biggies. Incorrect settings for safe title zone in 16:9 and basic LiveType support being small, but important areas for improvement. This has to be seen in the context that I tested a Beta copy of Motion version 1 after all! I'm sure a dot upgrade will fix a lot of the outstanding bugs and issues that have had to be prioritized so that Motion could be released to the ever impatient hordes of potential motion graphic artists world wide.
Will it kill After Effects? No, but it will certainly take away a sizeable percentage of sales. Motion is 2D only application at the moment; you can't even rotate a graphic on its X or Y axis. So until a future version of Motion is released that has real time 3D compositing (My head is starting to hurt at the thought!) After Effects is your weapon of choice for 3D space. Maybe Motion and Shake will venture into the 3D world together?
Will it stop people buying Shake? Yes and no! Shake started off and remains deeply seated in the film world. I cannot really imagine Lord of the Rings composited using throws and spins! What will benefit Shake is a possible upgrade to harmonize its interface and more importantly now that Motion has shown by example, seamless integration up and down the Final Cut/Motion/Shake pipeline. All different applications, all have some overlap, but all should work together. What does seem to be missing from the equation is a decent media manager across all apps. I'm fairly tidy when it comes to labelling and folders for projects, but a system of storing the media with the project as Soundtrack does would make a great deal of sense when it comes to archiving or transporting projects.
Back to Motion, what I would like to convey is the feeling of a very ‘hands on’ application. It's not click and wait, there is huge feedback. It's something that's been lacking with computer graphics in television for a long time. I'm used to working with clients to tight deadlines in digital tape suites where the use of pre-read can make complex composites with heavy ‘filters’ all in real time. Motion comes very close to this, it's very organic and in a strange way very ‘uncomputer’ like, but very natural to use.
It was said that QuickTime is the Postscript of video. If that is so then surely Motion has to be the new ‘Photoshop’ of moving images.
I've left the most amazing fact till last, its only $300 to purchase Motion. Now if you can't make this back on your first job, you're in the wrong business!
Go and buy Motion, have lots of fun and make lots of money.
Peter Wiggins
www.peterwiggins.com
www.flickpictures.com
Cow Rating:
5 Cows
P.S. A few thank yous to Dion, Greg & Erin, Kathlyn for the mammoth HTML coding and Jo my supportive girlfriend for becoming the first ever “Motion widow” for two months!
This review may not be re-published without the permission of Peter Wiggins
Copyright MMIV
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