Is it worth switching to Motion?

I spend a fair amount of my time at work editing short monologue-type greenscreen videos with simple animations and graphics:




I build these projects in FCPX, with animation behaviours, compound clips, keyframes, and adjustment layers:
imgur.com/a/018tb

Would I have an easier time making these projects if I built them entirely in Motion or After Effects? I have some experience with Motion, and haven't found it especially useful in the past, but I feel like I'm reaching the limits of what FCPX can do with animation and wonder if it's worth spending a week or two getting up to speed in a dedicated motion graphics program and doing everything inside of one of those.

Alternatively, are there any better ways to approach animation in FCPX that I'm not aware of? My current approach (putting graphics in a compound clip with an animation behaviour, stacking those compounds on top of each other, and using keyframes and transitions to add additional animation when needed) feels clunky.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Motion is great fun and will allow you to dramatically increase the sophistication of your work. That's not necessarily a good thing. Takes time, you're always learning more and newer things, you get hung up in details, you started experimenting where none is needed. You waste mountains of time having fun.

A week or tow to learn Motion? That might get you started.

As an enthusiastic Motion user, I do see two main advantages:
• Motion allows really complex projects, intricated comps, 'anything-moves' animations, lights&shadows, 3D etc.
=> for your kind of illustrations not really useful, hm?

you probably have heard of 'keyframeless animation'?
mastermind Alex Gollner offers a 49$ bundle of that:
fxfactory.com/info/animationtransitions/

just drag'n drop, anything moves …


which leads to advantage #2
• Motion allows creation of plug-ins = create once, use many
=> only useful for frequently used, samesame 'effects', screen-design as an example, custom-made lower-thirds, 'station bug', etc.

… that Motion-in-two-weeks is a …sporty goal. :dry:
because, using it just for stacking tracks and adding a ton of manual keyframes would miss its magic. That can be done in FinalCut too …

You're familiar, how FinalCut (or Motion…) handles .psd files with layers? …

Thanks guys - I've spent the past two days immersing myself in AE with the help of a friend and I think I'm going to try to transition myself over to Premiere/AE for more complex motion graphics stuff.

oliver.mackenzie wrote: … transition myself over to Premiere/AE for more complex motion graphics stuff.

a life-long renting-fee, 700$ every year, a completely diff. NLE and a highly sophisticated motion-graphic.app instead drag'n drop animations for 50 bucks … ?
okayyyyy
… sometimes I wish to be the fly on the wall when such decisions are made :silly:

enjoy your new toys!

Nothing in those two videos is "complex" and super fast/easy with behaviors. I do a couple or few PSAs daily, similar graphics to your examples, each only takes me a few minutes do pop out. Best of luck.

This thread has kind of a trollish feel to it.
He'll be back.

I think AE is worth every cent you pay (though I stopped when only the CC abo was required).
There are real lot of reasons to prefer it over Motion in many cases.
The examples shown above in my opinion though aren't.

But if Oliver prefers to go this way cause it matches his workflow he is right .

- Andreas