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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Year End Lists •

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

6) Third-Party Plugins.

Motion’s FxPlug architecture, while is allows for its dynamic realtime compositing, precludes the use of most of the huge universe of third-party After Effects plugins. And while the number of third-party FxPlug products is growing quickly, it can’t yet touch what’s available for AE.

7) Lack of AE integration

Want to import a Motion project into After Effects? It used to work, but not as of AE CS3 and Motion 3 - and I doubt it will work with CS4, although I have yet to test it. You can rename your Motion project .motn extension to .mov as a workaround, but Motion and AE just really don’t play well together.

8) Shadows and Depth of Field in 3D.

AE users quickly get excited when first working with Motion’s intuitive 3D implementation - until they discover that lights don’t cast shadows. And that the camera has infinite focus, so they can’t blur the foreground or background. While neither of these features is needed in every project and there are workarounds, they are glaring omissions compared to what an AE user is used to.

9) Installation and Stability.

Motion 3 in particular has been plagued with installation issues resulting in quirky or unstable performance. While a reinstall usually fixes these issues, it shouldn’t be so difficult to get Motion to run correctly. And even when it seems to be installed correctly, it’s not all that unusual for Motion to lose part of the interface or to crash. Trashing preferences can fix some of these issue, but AE users who are used to a rock-solid application find Motion’s twitchiness annoying, to say the least.

10) The Tease.

Overall, Motion holds out great promise as a complement to an After Effects user’s motion graphics or visual effects workflow - and as a great standalone application in its own right. But the program can just be so frustrating when trying to do something beyond creating a quick background or particle effect - it seems to throw up roadblocks as soon as you try to do something more complex.

Well, that’s my list - what’s yours look like?

Mark Spencer is a bay area-based freelance producer, editor, teacher and writer. He can be reached at markspencer -at- mac.com

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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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