We're here in the studio with Mark Spencer
and we're looking at the latest release
of Apple's Motion version 5.3.
We looked at
Final Cut Pro 10.3 extensively on our
free blog page and you're probably
watching this on our YouTube channel.
Mark's going to walk us through the new features.
Exactly, Steve. So,
not nearly as dramatic as the changes in Final Cut Pro 10.3
which are really impressive,
but there's several interesting and
important changes in Motion
that I thought we should talk about.
And why don't we dive right in.
When you first launch it,
you'll notice it looks
quite a bit different than the last version
and looks very similar to Final Cut Pro 10.3.
It's got the same flat, darker look,
and where all of the different UI elements
are kind of devoid of color and pushed to the background
so that you can focus on your content.
Several items have also
been moved around.
We now have
several tool strips. We have this tool strip
along the top
that includes panes, like
the Library, the Inspector, the Project pane,
as well as the heads-up display,
where you can choose each of those elements.
It includes the ability to select objects
like we have a pop-up menu for adding
things like cameras and lights and drop zones,
pop-up menus for Behaviors and Filters,
and Particles and Replicators
are all in this top bar now.
Under the canvas we have a set of cursor based tools,
each of these allow you to choose a different
cursor tool. For instance,
the tools here or the 3D tools or the hand tool,
shapes, the pen tools, paint stroke,
text tools. Each change the arrow icon
into a different tool to use,
and then finally under that are a set of transport controls.
So all the same tools that we're used to but just
logically organized into these tool strips.
The biggest difference to me besides the look of it,
is if you look at the top left
there is no file browser.
Now for some people, they would be
who cares I never used it,
for some people like me
this was a shock,
because I used it extensively
in everything I do
and it took some getting used to, but
I have come to the conclusion
that's ok, you don't really need it.
So, the question is now, how do you get material into
Motion and how do you check it out
before you bring it in?
So if I click on the Import button here,
or command-I still works,
we're brought to the Finder,
but the Finder has gotten very powerful
in terms of your ability to decide how
objects look,
which has worked for a long time
in column view, or list view, or icon view.
You can also sort them by these different sort options,
and you can apply tags, or search
items by tags, so
in a way the Finder has more power than the
built-in file browser had,
and you can still preview anything just by selecting and hitting the space bar.
So you can see
exactly what you want to use
and you can import image sequences, so
the essential answer is you just import through the
Finder and you can get all your material into
Motion just fine and work with it.
You also have the option under the File menu
to Import As Unused Media
so if you want to collect a bunch of assets
without using them in your project
you can use this menu
to bring them into the Media tab
and then choose when you want
to add them to your composition.
So in addition to the user interface changes,
there are a couple of new features that
I want to show
that are related to specific behaviors.
So in this project I have two simple rectangles,
and I'm going to select this one down here
and I'm just going to rotate it a little bit, too, and move it over
and in the Behaviors popup menu under Basic Motion
we have a new Align To behavior.
It's of course also available in the library under Behaviors
under Basic Motion,
right here.
And we get a little preview of what it does.
So, what I'm going to do is add it to this rectangle,
and in the heads-up display I'll
say I want it to aline it to this rectangle,
and it immediately centers
itself on that other object.
Now this Align To behavior works on any kind of objects,
particle emitters, replicators, video, pictures, anything.
This is just a simple example.
If I select it in the heads up display,
I have some options, so rather than
having these aligned by their centers,
I can choose to have
my original blue one
have its left
Upper Left corner
align to the Upper Right corner
of the red object
and now they're both aligned
and no matter what I do with the red one
the cyan one or light blue one
will now follow it no matter where I go.
So, very useful for
quickly aligning different objects to each other.
Another neat feature is that
you can make it change over time,
so if I select it again,
rather than the transition set to none I could do
something like Ease Both.
I'll set an out point.
O and Command-Option-O for an out point for the play range,
and now that object will move into place over time,
so a lot of neat options to play with the Align To behavior.
What's even better about it,
is this other feature
that you can use in combination with text.
So, what I'm going to do is turn on this text layer that I've added,
and then with this red rectangle selected,
I'll choose to add the Align To behavior
and tell it to aline to the text.
So now no matter where the text goes,
it will match, but it doesn't match the width of the text.
This is where things get interesting.
I'll select the rectangle, go to the Inspector,
in the Shape tab under Basic Geometry,
this rectangle has a Width and a Height under the Size,
so for the width
I'm going to choose to
Add Parameter Behavior called Link.
Now this parameter behavior is not new,
but what is new,
let's drag in the text to the well,
is under Compatible Parameters
we have some Object Attributes
and right now we can choose the width of the text
to match it to,
so it automatically matches the width of the text.
If I choose the text, and type something else,
it will always match the width of the text, which is great.
And it even gets better than that if I select the Align To,
we have some additional options to align to the Baseline of the text,
the Ascenders or Descenders,
the Cap-Height, or the Text X-Height,
so we can be very precise in how we align it.
So, for instance,
I will choose to align this box
to the Baseline of the text to the Center,
and then the box itself, I'll choose
to align the Top of the box
to the Baseline of the text,
and now no matter how wide
or narrow this box is, it will always
align itself correctly.
So now I can make it more like an underline to some text
that will automatically
and dynamically change to the duration of the text.
So change to the user interface,
no more file browser, but two very new cool
additions in terms of the Align To behavior
and some additional powerful
features in the Link behavior.
Right, and Motion is all about behaviors,
the fact that you can do this so quickly is
just, is just fantastic.
Yes.
So, Motion 5.3,
we have brand new training on our site
for the new Motion if you want to learn Motion,
if you're a beginner and you want to learn all this stuff,
this is kind of
more advanced stuff but
we're going to be adding a lot more Motion content to 5.3
in the forthcoming weeks, so
check back at RippleTraining.com,
Thanks for watching all of our content