Creating animation in Apple^R Motion^R is a little different from other software such as After Effects^R or Flash^R. Motion excels in creating motion graphics because of the many presets that come package with the software. When used out-of-the-box, these presets can save you valuable time or when used as a starting point, they can make creating your custom project much easier.

Behaviors

Behaviors are the best known feature of Apple Motion because of the many customizable preset animations, including real-life physics. But Motion takes it a step further as you can watch each behavior in real time and observe the effects on the behavior as you make fine adjustments. For example, once you apply the preset Fade In/Fade Out audio behavior, you can make fine adjustments in real time to the duration of the fade while watching the playback.

Motion has several basic presets for moving objects over the Canvas, such as a simple move along a straight line or a spin. But there are also less basic behaviors such as the animator’s favorite move along a path animation. Another example is the Point At behavior that allows the animator to set one object to move in sequence with a second object, even in 3D. There are also physics simulation presets for creating real-life effects for gravity, wind and collisions.

When working with cameras and lighting, Motion has several presets for the most used camera movements such as Dolly, Framing and Sweep. You also have camera behaviors such as motion tracking and retiming.

Titles and Lower Thirds are something you will be adding to most of your projects and Motion has many presets for text animation such as Sequence Text which expands each letter in the text sequentially and Type On which makes each letter appear on the screen one at a time.

When you watch your favorite show on television, you can’t miss the many text effects used in commercials. Motion has numerous presets for this type of text sequencing divided into subcategories such as Energetic, Glow and Highlighter.

Rigging and Final Cut Pro^R Templates

One feature specific to Motion that you will use often is Rigging. Motion and Final Cut Pro are two Apple software applications that work so well together that you can create a template in Motion and use it again in Final Cut Pro. You can even set up specific parameters for the template that can be customized in Final Cut Pro and create the controls, or rigs, for making these adjustments such as a simple slider or checkbox.

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