Apple Pro Training Series : Motion (Apple Pro Training Series)

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Apple Pro Training Series books so far...
Review: As both an instuctor and user of Motion, I can honestly say that this is one of the best Pro Training Series books out there. It is obvious that Damian took the time and cared about creating a book that would work well in both a self paced and classroom environment.

The book is well laid out and actually follows a real world type motion graphics project as it takes you through the app. It is well paced, easy to follow and flows very well. It also has a fair amount of humour that helps things move along.

An excellent book to learn the app and well worth the price of admission.

My hat goes off to Damian for doing a great job on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Well done Damian... a great foundation book for Motion
Review: Well-done Damian. A great foundation course to the introduction to Motion. Thank you.

I just completed this. The author has managed to convey a comprehensive working knowledge of Motion in a (fairly) straightforward manner that has given me a clear insight into the benefits in using this new motion graphics application. The rest will be up to the user to pursue by themselves

Key topics covered: keying, particle creation, the modifying and expanding and randomization of, gestures, audio editing, covering unusual new filters (Slit scan), using Generators, Text animation and behaviors, graphics and behaviors, particles and behaviors, matte tracking, mask animation, color adjustment and a few more.

Highlights for me were using some of the new unusual filters (slit scan) and generators and of course the use of particle generators. A super highlight was use of behavior additions for text animation (similar to A.E text behavior scripts.)

Overall, I think you would be silly not have this book and motion sitting side by side. A great purchase that has opened up for me new creative possibilities that I was previously unaware of and giving me a good working knowledge of the software. Thank you.

FOOTNOTE:

Well, Apple too must be congratulated for the conception of this software. It has filled a big whole that has been lacking in after effects for sometime now (a flexible and simple to use particle system). Also, this new method of animation using "behaviors" is really interesting and forward thinking. (Creating animation key frames that would be almost impossible to key by hand.) Great work.

Interesting to note the similarities between Apples motion and Combustion. They seem to work almost in the same way.

Negative points;
Difficult for students to purchase both the software and the necessary graphics card as well to use motion.
At present, Illustrator layers are not supported and importing vector graphics is not as well. No paint options and no 3d layers as well. Rasterized images only.
Real time playback will depend on your system setup. I could not get this to full frame rate even with RAM preview for certain animations. (Text animation projects).
.