Getting Started
Welcome to the official Apple Pro Training course for Motion 5, a behavior-driven motion graphics application that allows you to create stunning visual effects for a wide variety of projects.
This book is a comprehensive guide to designing with Motion. It covers the use of behaviors, keyframes, particle dynamics, text, audio, keying, painting, tracking, creating effects for Final Cut Pro X, and working in 3D.
Whether you’ve been creating motion graphics for years or are encountering these techniques for the first time, Motion’s design approach is different from anything you’ve used before. The real-time design engine and behavior system are easy to learn, yet they open the door to expansive creativity.
The Methodology
This book takes a hands-on approach to learning the software. It’s divided into projects that methodically introduce the interface elements and ways of working with them, building progressively until you can comfortably grasp the entire application and its standard workflows.
Each lesson in this book is self-contained, so you can jump to any lesson at any time. However, lessons are designed to support the concepts learned in the preceding lesson, and newcomers to motion graphics should go through the book from start to finish. In particular, the first three sections—Fundamentals, Animation, and Motion Graphics Design—comprise eight chapters, teach basic concepts, and are best completed in order.
Course Structure
The lessons are project based and designed to teach you real-world techniques for completing the types of motion graphics projects most commonly encountered in a professional setting. As you progress through the book, you will learn Motion’s features and capabilities while you build several animated title sequences; create visual effects including retiming, keying and tracking shots; and construct Smart Motion Templates for use in Final Cut Pro X as a title, a transition, and an effect.
The lessons are organized into the following sections:
• Lessons 1–2: Motion Fundamentals
In Lesson 1, you build a project while becoming familiar with Motion’s user interface. You learn how to import video files, transform them, and add filters, behaviors, and masks; apply blend modes; and create and animate text. Lesson 2 explores compositing in depth, including working with layers and groups, blend modes and filters, and masks and clones; as well as editing in the Timeline.
After mastering the basics, you are now ready to try animation. Lesson 3 focuses on using behaviors, and Lesson 4 is devoted to keyframing.
• Lessons 5–8: Motion Graphics Design
Having acquired basic skills in compositing and animation, you turn your attention to designing motion graphics using Motion’s tool set. In Lesson 5, generators, shapes, and paint strokes are used to create animated content. Lesson 6 covers text styling and animation. Lesson 7 examines particle emitters and replicators, and Lesson 8 covers multiple ways to work with audio.
• Lessons 9–10: Visual Effects Design
This section explores visual effects design. In Lesson 9, you create speed changes; in Lesson 10, you explore stabilizing, tracking, and keying while creating a visual effects shot.
Lessons 11-12: An Introduction to Publishing and Rigging
This section introduces you to creating motion graphics for use in Final Cut Pro X. In Lesson 11, you learn how to publish Smart Motion Templates to Final Cut Pro, and how to publish specific parameters of those templates. In Lesson 12, you build and publish parameter rigs that allow an editor using Final Cut Pro to change the look of an effect with a single control.
• Lessons 13–14: An Introduction to 3D
The final section provides an overview of Motion’s 3D capabilities. In Lesson 13, you build a 3D scene; and in Lesson 14, you animate a camera through the scene, adding lights, reflections, depth of field, and shadows.
Because this book is project based, earlier lessons sometimes call on you to use features and techniques that aren’t explained in detail until later lessons. When this occurs, you’ll see a note indicating that the technique is covered in more detail in a later lesson.
Some Terminology
Here are two key terms used throughout the book:
• Composite—Most often this refers to your final work: the image you see on the screen. You could also think of this as a composition. The term is occasionally used as a verb: You composite several objects together to create the final product.
• Objects—This is the word used by Motion to describe the individual elements of a composite. Objects can include QuickTime movies, image sequences, still images, and text. The objects are layered together to create the composite.
For a full list of motion graphics–related terms, a glossary is included at the end of the book.
System Requirements
All systems are not created equal, and the more power you have in your hardware, the more you can do in real time (that is, without rendering) in Motion.
Here’s a brief explanation of how Motion leverages your hardware. If you’re thinking of upgrading your system to run Motion, it might help you to decide what configuration will give you the best results.
The following sections are a little technical, so if you start to lose track, don’t panic. Just remember: Faster equals better, more RAM equals better, and a more powerful graphics card equals better.
System Memory
Motion uses system RAM to cache all the objects that make up your composite throughout your preview range (see the Glossary if these terms are new to you).
Here’s an example. Let’s say you are combining three QuickTime movies in Motion to create a final, single image: your composite. Imagine that you have a moving fractal background clip (Element 1), a rotating web (Element 2), and some random boxes (Element 3).
Each frame of 8-bit NTSC video contains 720 pixels horizontally and 486 pixels vertically (480 for DV). When you add the memory required to store every one of those pixels in the computer’s memory, it works out to about 1.3 MB (including an alpha channel). A full raster 8-bit 1920 × 1080 HD video requires about 8.3 MB for each frame.
So if you want Motion to generate a real-time preview of your three-layer composite that lasts for 120 frames (about four seconds), you need to multiply the memory requirement for a single frame by the number of objects onscreen at the same time, and then multiply that by the number of frames you want to play in real time: 1.3 × 3 × 120 = 468 MB. For HD video, the memory requirement would be about 3 GB.
To adjust the three clips in your hypothetical composite in real time, you need at least 468 MB of free RAM, or 3 GB for HD. And that’s beyond the RAM used by the operating system, Motion, and other background applications. So for this scenario to work well, you need at least 1 GB of system RAM for NTSC, or 4 GB for HD. (PAL-format video requires essentially the same amount of RAM as NTSC video: Although the images are 720 × 576, there are only 25 frames each second.)
But all you really need to know is that if you have more system RAM, you can play more objects in real time and watch a longer preview of your composite than you can with minimal RAM. However, this is only part of the story.
Video Card Memory (VRAM)
In addition to your system RAM, your Macintosh also has memory on the graphics card, known as VRAM (video RAM). It’s used by the graphics card while performing calculations to draw an image to your computer monitor. Your graphics card also has its own processor, called a GPU (graphics processing unit), that calculates how images should be drawn.
Every time Motion draws a frame of your composite on the monitor, it sends one frame of each object in your composite to the VRAM of the graphics card, along with a set of instructions telling the processor on the graphics card what it’s supposed to do with each image. The processor might be told to scale down one image, blur another, or color-correct still another before combining them into a single image. This is where the real-time aspect of Motion takes control.
Because the graphics card’s processor can render only what’s put into its VRAM, the number of layers that can be processed in real time is limited by how much VRAM the card has.
In the NTSC example, each of the three layers of video takes up 1.3 MB of memory per frame. In theory, you need only 3.9 MB of VRAM to draw a frame; but in reality, overhead is created by other processes, and certain filters and effects will use VRAM over and above that used for the video layers.
After a single frame is drawn, the VRAM is free to load the objects for the next frame. So the amount of VRAM affects how many layers and effects can be combined at one frame of the sequence, not the whole sequence. In other words, the number of frames being previewed is not affected by how much VRAM you have. The VRAM amount affects only the number of objects that can be composited in a single frame.
Finally, even when you reach your VRAM limits, Motion has a clever RAM-caching feature that allows you to render a real-time preview and still manipulate individual objects in real time using a soloing feature.
CPU Speed
You’ve always been told that a faster CPU is better. That’s also true for Motion, but not in the way you might think. Because the processor in your graphics card is doing all the heavy lifting, the CPU doesn’t have much to do with the actual construction of the composite.
The main system CPU comes into play when Motion uses it to calculate behaviors, particle trajectories, motion paths, and curves before sending them to the graphics card. So if you use a lot of complex behaviors in your projects, you’ll definitely benefit from a faster processor.
Summarizing Hardware Requirements
The good news to be gleaned from the preceding technobabble is that if your system meets the minimum system requirements, improving Motion’s performance doesn’t necessarily mean buying a faster computer. You may only need to upgrade your graphics card.
Here’s the story in a nutshell:
• System RAM determines how many frames of animation you can preview in real time; and to some degree, how many objects in a composite you can view in real time before you have to perform a RAM Preview render.
• VRAM (video RAM on the graphics card) determines how many objects in a composite can be rendered in real time before a RAM Preview render is required. If you want to place more objects on the screen with more filters and effects, you’ll need more VRAM.
• CPU speed determines how many complex behaviors and simulations can be applied to composite objects in real time. Processor speed has less impact on the number of layers that can be drawn to screen. The amount of available VRAM is more important for layers.
Visit www.apple.com/finalcutpro/motion/specs/ for a current list of system requirements and supported hardware. In addition, be sure to install any Apple updates to the Motion 5 software.
Using Motion on a Laptop
Some of the keystrokes identified in this book work differently if you use a MacBook Pro. Specifically, you need to hold down the Function key (Fn) at the bottom left of the keyboard when pressing any of the F keys (F1 through F8) along the top of the keyboard. To avoid this, open the Keyboard section of System Preferences (the Keyboard & Mouse section in Mac OS X prior to Lion), and in the Keyboard pane, select the “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” checkbox. In addition, when you are using Mac OS X Lion, click the Keyboard Shortcuts button in Keyboard Preferences to disable all the Mission Control shortcuts.
Even with this checkbox selected, however, you will still need to press the Fn key when using the Home and End keys, located at the lower right of the keyboard (marked with left and right arrows).
Gestures
Motion supports two types of gestures: gestures that you perform on the Multi-Touch trackpad of a MacBook Pro; and the native gestures language in Motion, which is a set of patterns that you draw using a Wacom Intuos tablet and pen. (Motion gestures are available exclusively for tablets in the Wacom Intuos family.)
Multi-Touch Gesture Support
You can use two-finger scrolls, three-finger swipes, pinches, and rotation movements on the Multi-Touch trackpad of a MacBook Pro to perform actions such as scrolling through a list of files, resizing icons, opening the Project or Timing pane, and moving the playhead.
Motion Gestures
Unlike gestures performed on a Multi-Touch trackpad, Motion gestures are movements that you make using a pen and graphics tablet to address a larger variety of tasks, such as playback control, Timeline navigation, editing, and general command execution.
To use gestures, you need a Wacom Intuos tablet connected to your computer, and you need to enable Handwriting Recognition in Mac OS X Ink preferences, which can be accessed through the Motion Gestures preferences pane.
For information on how to enable and use gestures, and view a table of all available gestures, see Appendix D in the Motion 5 User Manual, which you can open by choosing Help > Motion Help.
Copying the Motion Lesson Files
Apple Pro Training Series: Motion 5 comes with a DVD containing all the files you need to complete each lesson. The project and media files are contained within the Motion5_Book_Files folder.
Installing the Lesson Files
1. Insert the Apple Pro Training Series: Motion 5 DVD into your computer’s DVD drive.
2. For best results, drag the entire Motion5_Book_Files folder from the DVD to your Desktop or to an attached media drive.
The disc contains approximately 3 GB of data.
Reconnecting Broken Media Links
For any number of reasons, you may need to separate the lesson files from the media files. For instance, you may choose to keep the project files in a user home directory and the media files on a dedicated media drive. In this case, when you open a project file, a window will appear asking you to reconnect the project files to their source media files.
Reconnecting files is a simple process. Just follow these steps:
1. When you open a lesson’s project file, a dialog may appear listing one or more files as missing. Click the Reconnect button.
2. In the window that appears, navigate to Motion5_Book_Files > Media, and open the appropriate project folder.
3. Select the highlighted file and click Open.
4. Continue to connect files as necessary until the window closes.
5. Be sure to save the newly reconnected project file, or you will have to perform the reconnect operation the next time you open the project.
About the Apple Pro Training Series
Apple Pro Training Series: Motion 5 is both a self-paced learning tool and the official curriculum of the Apple Pro Training and Certification Program.
Developed by experts in the field and certified by Apple, the series is used by Apple Authorized Training Centers worldwide and offers complete training in all Apple Pro products. The lessons are designed to let you learn at your own pace. Each lesson concludes with review questions and answers summarizing what you learned, which can be used to help you prepare for the Apple Pro Certification Exam. For a complete list of Apple Pro Training Series books, see the page at the back of this book or visit www.peachpit.com/appleprotraining.
Apple Pro Certification Program
The Apple Pro Training and Certification Programs are designed to keep you at the forefront of Apple’s digital media technology while giving you a competitive edge in today’s ever-changing job market. Whether you’re an editor, graphic designer, sound designer, special effects artist, student or teacher, these training tools are meant to help you expand your skills.
Upon completing the course material in this book, you can earn Apple certification. Certification is offered in all Pro applications, including Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Logic Pro. Certification gives you official recognition of your knowledge of the Apple professional applications while allowing you to market yourself to employers and clients as a skilled user of Apple products.
Apple offers three levels of certification: Apple Certified Associate, Apple Certified Pro - Level One, and Apple Certified Pro - Level Two. Please note that not all applications include three levels of certification; Motion currently only includes Level One certification. Certification exams do not require class attendance. Students who prefer to learn on their own or who already have the necessary skill set in the chosen application, may take an exam for a fee.
Apple Certified Associate status validates entry-level skills in a specific application. Unlike an Apple Certified Pro exam, you can take Associate exams online from the comfort of your own home or office. Apple Certified Associate status is appropriate for students, for someone who is preparing for a first job out of school or a college-level program, or for anyone interested in validating entry-level credentials.
An Apple Certified Pro is a user who has reached the highest skill level in the use and operation of Apple Pro Applications as attested to by Apple. Students earn certification by passing the online certification exam administered only at Apple Authorized Training Centers (AATCs). Apple Certified Pro status is appropriate for industry professionals.
For those who prefer to learn in an instructor-led setting, training courses are taught by Apple Certified Trainers at AATCs worldwide. The courses use the Apple Pro Training Series books as their curriculum and balance concepts and lectures with hands-on labs and exercises. AATCs are carefully selected to meet Apple’s highest standards in all areas, including facilities, instructors, course delivery, and infrastructure. The goal of the program is to offer Apple customers, from beginners to the most seasoned professionals, the highest-quality training experience.
For more information, please see the page at the back of this book, or to find an Authorized Training Center near you, visit training.apple.com.
Resources
Apple Pro Training Series: Motion5 is not intended as a comprehensive reference manual, nor does it replace the documentation that comes with the application. For more information about Motion, refer to these sources:
• User Manual. Accessed through the Motion Help menu, the User Manual contains a complete description of all features. You can also access the help at help.apple.com/helplibrary/.
• For a list of other resources, please visit www.apple.com/finalcutpro/motion/resources/.
• For details on the Apple Training and Certification programs, please visit training.apple.com.
• Peachpit’s website—As Motion 5 is updated, Peachpit may choose to update lessons or post additional exercises as necessary on this book’s companion webpage. Please visit www.peachpit.com to register this book. To do this, click the Account Sign In link at the top of the page and follow the instructions to register the book. Enter the 10-digit or 13-digit ISBN that appears on the back cover of the book. Registering ensures that you receive access to download files, updates and any errata.