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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Year End Lists •

The Top Ten Things After Effects Users Love and Hate about Motion

3) The Library.

The literally thousands content elements that come bundled with Motion let you very quickly complete out a composition with backgrounds and animated elements, or even build an entire project from scratch. And just like the templates, you can modify these elements to make them completely unique to your project.

4) Realtime Playback.

Motion’s unique architecture, which allows you to play back projects while you are adjusting parameters, is addictive - and lends itself to a very interactive design process. While you can quickly lose full realtime performance (depending on your hardware and complexity of your project), it’s still the only desktop product out there that leverages the graphics card to provide this kind of design experience.

5) Particles.

Motion’s particle engine is sophisticated and easy to use. And the large number of preset emitters let you quickly add smoke, fog, sparkles, and other animated effects to a scene and tweak them. Many AE users use Motion simply to create particle effects, which they then export and comp into their After Effects project.

6) Parameter Behaviors.

Every time I introduce an AE user to parameter behaviors for the first time, I see an “aha” moment. Much like expressions in After Effects, these effects let you animate just about any parameter of any object or effect with the click of the mouse - much like the Wiggler in AE, but without the need to write any code.

7) Paint.

This is another feature that always has a great “wow” factor. Grab the Paint Stroke tool, select one of the Light presets, and scribble in the Canvas: instant animated light strokes. The ability to “paint” with your own movies and image sequences opens up extraordinary design possibilities, going beyond the large number of presets already included.

8) Replicators.

One of my favorite elements in Motion, replicators let you create sophisticated patterns for backgrounds, animated elements, or mattes in minutes.

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Great post! You’ve nailed the range of pros & cons for these apps in comparison.

I’ll add one: I just tried to retime a clip in Motion from a 5-hour clip of ProRes 1080i (rather large as you can imagine).

Motion wants to create a retime file (created when using Optical Flow) for the *entire* video file, not just the 5-second subclip. Seriously?

Posted by Allan W.  on  12/08  at  05:21 PM

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Not only would the retime file take *days* of time (3 estimated), but when it actually did so (left open over the weekend, apparently), filled my boot drive completely with about 250GB of retime data - which I then had to hunt for and destroy.

A nice feature, incompletely executed. AE is very strong in that regard.

Posted by Allan W.  on  12/08  at  05:24 PM

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It might sound like I hate Motion, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve found the FCP integration and templates has revolutionized my video workflow. It’s SO much more efficient for lower thirds, bumpers, and intros than AE. The replicators, generators, and behaviors are just fun to use. I have a Mac Pro, Radeon 3870, and 10GB of RAM, so things run pretty smoothly.

AE does look better most of the time - better 3D controls, DOF, expressions, etc. It’s still more powerful when you need to create a piece entirely in that app (say, a commercial or show bumper). If you’re using (stuck with?) Premiere you get the same kind of integration that FCP enjoys with Motion.

But Motion has let me focus on getting stuff done simply and more quickly. Knowing its limitations and advantages has let me know when to choose which program.

Posted by Allan W.  on  12/08  at  05:34 PM

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