Apple and the little things

I don't know how many of you out there use Apple Motion, but with my feet firmly in the After Effects camp, I've only followed Motion from afar in the three years since version 1 was announced. Sure, I've played around with an eval copy for a bit, and it's a nice program and all, but I always went right back to AE. Now Motion 3 is out (shipping only as part of Final Cut Studio 2), and like many other After Effects users, I found myself snickering at the flowery language used by Apple to describe Motion's 3D capabilities (variations of which have been available for many years across a variety of motion graphics apps). Since then, I haven't given Motion 3 much thought.

That is, until I saw Motion's 3D features in action, courtesy of Mark Spencer's demo in Episode 74 of MacBreak Video (a.k.a. Episode 1 of MacBreak Studio). On the whole, it's not terribly different than what you get in a program like AE. But there's one little interface nicety that is so simple, so obvious, that I have no idea why it hasn't been implemented in every program that has anything to do with 3D long before now. If you take the time do download the episode, what I'm talking about occurs right at the 3:00 mark. When you change views in 3D space in Motion, the entire workspace animates, visually moving the view into the desired position. Had I been paying any attention at all to what I was doing at the time, I'm sure I could tell you with authority that I literally slapped my own forehead when seeing this, with an audible "duh" escaping my lips at the same time. Sure, most programs have some sort of interactive mode where you can pan, zoom, or orbit around objects in the 3D workspace, but an animated transition between presets when switching views in non-interactive mode should have been standard fare long before now. 3D space is often confusing enough, and anything that helps the user orient themselves is aces in my book. I know that my 2.5D and 3D programs of choice (AE and LightWave, respectively) don't have this, though I'm not sure how other such programs handle view switching, so I'm fully prepared to hear any and all "you have been misinformed" comments from users of other packages.

The bottom line is that while I may not find myself using Motion over After Effects anytime soon, Apple's attention to detail is always a differentiator in just about everything they do, and gives them a credibility no matter how late they may be in implementing a particular feature.

Posted at 10:00AM May 21, 2007 by Kevin Schmitt in Mac and Apple  |  Comments[1]