Apple ships Motion 




Apple today announced it has begun shipping Motion, the company's new application that delivers high-performance, real-time motion graphics design. Motion offers the creative freedom and power for artists to deliver professional quality results, quickly and intuitively, with real-time previews, procedural behavior animation and integration with both Final Cut Pro HD and DVD Studio Pro 3, all at a breakthrough price of $299.

"Motion grabbed the spotlight, along with the best of show awards, at the National Association of Broadcasters convention," said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing in the press release. "With its revolutionary technology, breakthrough ease-of-use and low $299 price tag, Motion will do for motion graphics what Final Cut Pro did for non-linear editing—bring the ability to create pro-quality results to the broader market."

"With its real-time functionality and Behaviors, Motion allows designers to work at the speed they think," said Mike Goedecke, founder and creative director of Belief, a Santa Monica-based broadcast design and production studio in the press release. "Motion has changed the way we work, enabling us to try new ideas, be more creative and wow clients faster."

Motion introduces Behaviors that use procedural animation techniques to create natural simulations, such as gravity and wind, or multi-faceted interaction between multiple objects, such as attraction and repulsion. Behaviors provide users with the ability to automatically generate simple or sophisticated fluid motion effects with minimal effort and make modifications spontaneously, all without the complexity or overhead of dealing with keyframes. Users familiar with keyframes can use Motion's Keyframe Editor to plot precise parameter values at specific frames.

Motion also features an advanced particle engine that enables artists to quickly and easily apply realistic particle presets, such as smoke, sparkles and fire to any animation, with instant previewing of multiple filters and particle effects. Using Motion, virtually any graphic element on the screen can be turned into a particle and then modified to create unlimited, customized special effects.

With its breakthrough user interface, Motion gives artists the freedom to spend less time managing windows and palettes and more time creating. Motion's "Dashboards" give users contextual, semi-transparent floating palettes that provide the tools and slider parameters for objects being animated on screen. Behaviors are applied quickly and easily with a graphical control that appears on the Dashboard, making it easy and interactive to experiment with different animations. Motion also includes 25 "Gestures" that enable users to focus on the creative process, rather than searching for keyboard commands or menu items. With Motion’s Project Pane, users have an easy way to quickly view and manage all layers, filters, Behaviors, masks and objects within a project at once.

Motion also offers unprecedented integration with Apple’s professional applications, including Final Cut Pro HD, the latest version of Apple's Emmy award-winning editing software; DVD Studio Pro 3, a professional DVD authoring application; Shake 3.5, the latest version of Apple’s industry-leading compositing and visual effects software; Soundtrack, the innovative music composition tool; and Logic Pro 6, the standard in computer-based music production.

Motion is available now through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $299 (US). Full system requirements and more information on Motion can be found here.
 

Posted: Tue - August 10, 2004 at 05:15 PM        

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