Review Apple Motion 5 Cookbook
| With this book entitled Apple Motion 5 Cookbook by Nick Haurauz, you can quickly learn to create motion graphics in Apple Motion 5. As the title suggests, the author takes a recipe approach that concentrates on what you will need to know. Using the examples files which give you a good idea of what can be accomplished in Motion, he walks his readers step-by-step through how to use Motion’s tools and techniques while including a few useful tips and tricks. Quickly, you will be using the MotionR tools to create Motion Behaviors and Keyframing animations. Using the assets from the Content Library, you will learn how to create a range of animations from the simple to the more complex Replicator, Particles and 3D. Haurauz begins with a walk through the user interface and explains how all the panels and tabs work together. You learn how to start a new project from the Project Browser and set the basic properties. You will also learn about Motion’s nice import feature for Photoshop and Illustrator files which gives you the option to maintain the layers or flatten them. The author also discuses how to use Layers and Groups together and how to work in the isolation mode. Next, you visit other parts of the interface such as the Timeline, Mini Timeline, HUD and Inspector. In the next chapter, Haurauz concentrates on the Library Tab and its preinstalled content including filters, behaviors, generators and presets. He discusses how to work with Motion Filters, Gradients and Blend modes and how to use Filter hierarchy and Cloning to control animation effects. You will also learn about Drop Zones and how these placeholders can enhance your workflow. Things start to get interesting when Haurauz discusses Motion Behaviors, which are preinstalled but customizable animations and effects. He begins with simple examples and progresses on to Motion Paths, Snap Alignment and Link Behaviors. Using a simple example of a ball, the author discusses simulation behavior, commonly known as digital physics. Then, he adds randomization to these behaviors. Behaviors are great but when it comes to creating customized animation for your clients, you will want to use Keyframe animation, which is the digital version of tweening or Inbetweening. In this chapter, Haurauz demonstrates some of the most common keyframing tasks in Motion. He begins by covering how to use anchor points to control the animation results on still images. The next few recipes demonstrate how to delete and disable keyframes and how to use the Motion Record feature to autokeyframe animations. For fine control over your animations, the author demonstrates how to use the Keyframe Editor and interpolation to control multiple parameters. One technique that I used often in Adobe Flash was to convert preset animations to individual keyframes so that I could make fine adjustments. The author also demonstrates how to use this same technique in Motion. Motion is often used to create animated titles and logos. In the next chapter, Haurauz covers how to animated text in Motion. He begins by demonstrating how to format and style text on the canvas in preparation of animation. Next he covers Text Behaviors as well as the Glyph tool, text on a path and sequencing. Fun exercises include animating font special characters and filling text with video or textures. Reuse of text animations is easy as the author shows how to save your custom text animation and Lower Thirds for Final Cut Pro. The Paint Stroke tool and Shape Masks are two versatile tools for creating many special animated effects. As this Paint tool draws paths on the screen, Haurauz shows how to easily adjusted the paint stroke with the Selection tool and apply the many preset and pre-animated Shape Styles. He also covers other techniques such as how to turn a shape into a custom brush stroke, fill the stroke with an image or video and use Sequence Paint. Next, he introduces Shape Masks for controlling which part of an image is visible and Green Screen techniques. Next → Disclosure: I was not financially compensated for this article. Packtpub provided this ebook for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience. Join us in the Animation forum. | Join us in the Digital Art forum. | |
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