With the landing of NASA's Perseverance only days away, one FCP.co contributor used a 3D model in Motion to illustrate the Mars mission.
A recent update to Motion added the abilit to import 3D models directly into the app. The capability is slightly limited at the moment and we hope that Apple add more control with lighting, shadows and other Motion features such as depth-of-field.
We have been looking for a good example of this in action and we have to thank Brian Cassin for contacting us with the example below. Very well timed as well, seeing that hopefully Perseverance will land on Mars later this week. Brian explains-
I made this as a proof of concept for quick CG work using Apple's Motion and Final Cut Pro. I also wanted to make a more cinematic version of the event surrounding the Mars 2020 landing. All CG except everything past 2:15 was created in Apple Motion.
The hardest part was breaking apart the model in Blender. If it wasn’t for Ripple Training’s 'Working with 3D' tutorial pack, I would have been dead in the water!
Motion is very limited. No ambient occlusion or depth of field. But the fact that I could preview my animations in real time and adjust behaviors on the fly was incredible and let me riff on what animations I was building. I didn’t really have anything other than a rough game plan and made it up as I went along. I couldn’t imagine doing that with After Effects waiting to render to see the results.
I just used a ton of behaviors. This also was a little bit of a learning experience. Since I had only used move, dolly and the basics, I started to experiment with link and a few other parameter ones. That way I only had to animate one side of the rover and then link and negate the other side. Layer ordering was a bit weird and had to ask for help in the Apple forums.
Brian has also made a documentary on FCP about Perseverance that airs Thursday on NatGeo network. You may recall in 2017 he wrote an article for FCP.co about the amazing speed that a game show can be assembled in FCP.
Getting a 16 Episode Gameshow to Rough Assembly in 30 Minutes With Final Cut Pro X.