Motion 5.0.8 Pre-Release Discussion

Not nearly as much Motion talk here as I'd like so I figured I'd fire up a discussion to talk about what we think the next release of Motion will be like.

I for one hope they either integrate auto-save into Motion or restore user save in FCP X. I've gotten a little to used to not saving in FCP X and have forgotten to do so a couple of times in Motion. Nothing tragic occurred, but it could have. Of course, that's all on the user (me), but as I spend a fair amount of times between the apps, it would be nice if I could focus either on saving or "fire and forgetting" in both apps.

Also would love to see some scopes in Motion!

Hi Grailz,

I guess you know that Motion does have an autosave option that saves a copy of your project at any interval you wish? But it would indeed be great if we would not have to save at all anymore, while keeping the existing Autosave vault as an emergency backup solution. And it would be helpful if FCPX also had this autosave option inside the app and not though third party support.

As far as a next version of Motion is concerned I think is extremely difficult to speculate how this next update will be. For me a seamless integration with FCPX would be a truly spectacular achievement that would blow any competition away. And I don't mean any flakey roundtripping like we had between Motion and FCP or the crappy "dynamic link" that you have with Ppro and AE. What I would like to see is a perfect integration of the NLE toolset and the Mograph/Compositing toolset like you have in Smoke 2013. Once you have worked that way you don't want anything else anymore.

Obviously some new form of round-tripping or integration with FCPX is pretty much at the top of everyone's list. Hopefully there some connective tissue that will be revealed that will also link FCPX with Logic.

The top of my list right now is bringing back Broadcast Monitoring. While I like the interface changes that Motion5 brought, it can be really tough to keep a decent-sized preview window if you have a lot of layers you're trying to juggle in the timeline. So having the Video out to my monitor was really handy for a nice big image to check focus, framing, etc. We need that back.

The other big hole in Motion's workflow is 3D tracking. Whether it's native to the app or a plug-in, I don't care, but 3D tracking scenes is become more and more necessary- and it's one of the few things I have to go to AE to do.

Integrating 3D object files is already coming from the very promising mExtrude plugin from MotionVFX. Their Alpha's have been steadily increasing in functionality, and it should suit MOST of my needs by the time it launches (hopefully this year). Those guys are great at capitalizing on their platforms- and I hope they launch a object store to go along with mExtrude that contains models that have been vetted for import.

Looking at what can be done with a plugin like Trapcode Particular, I'd also love to see some enhancements to the particle emitters in Motion. It's pretty old code, pretty remarkable when it first came out with Motion3, but I think it could use some enhancement.

I love Motion, and with the addition of the above features could easily see myself dropping my CC Subscription in favour of one for Photoshop only. Saving me $30/mo.

Talking about Photoshop, if the CC version had been a regular purchasable "upgrade" I doubt anyone would have bought it at all. I'm sticking with CS6 while we are gradually replacing everything Adobe.

I agree Motion could do with a solid in-app 3D tracker. Especially now that Motion is starting to integrate 3D models quite well with the help of mExtrude. Still some way to go like you say, but the road is promising. As to third-party trackers we did get some very decent results with Mocha for planar tracking inside Motion, and Syntheyes for real 3D tracking.

Broadcast monitoring is absolutely high my list as well.