Book Image

Apple Motion 5 Cookbook

By : Nicholas Harauz
Book Image

Apple Motion 5 Cookbook

By: Nicholas Harauz

Overview of this book

Let's face it, people like images that move. Whether you see images on a moving billboard, walk into a bank with an LCD screen, watch TV, or surf the Web, motion graphics are everywhere. With an even greater demand to integrate motion graphics in just about every type of video or interactive content there is, this book will help you get there with Motion 5. It's all about creating eye-catching titles, transitions, and effects!"Apple Motion 5 Cookbook" contains exercises for the beginner and seasoned motion graphics user. You will learn how to navigate Motion's interface and quickly grasp the tools available to you while creating sophisticated and sleek animations in both 2D and 3D environments. Not forgetting visual effects, we will also explore motion tracking and green screen techniques that will help you composite like a pro. Let's launch the application, grab a cup of coffee, and get started on this exciting journey!The exercises will take you right from creating your very first Motion project through to export. You will learn how to navigate quickly and efficiently through Motion's complex interface and toolsets so that you can focus oncreating your masterpiece!You will learn how to create a new project and import material into that project from the File Browser and Motion's vast and rich content library. From there, you will learn to manipulate and animate these source files using Motion's behaviors, classic keyframing techniques, adding filters, and master the built-in tools such as particle systems that will knock your socks off! Last but not least, you will export your projects to a variety of different formats including DVD, as a Final Cut Pro generator, and the Web.The "Apple Motion 5 Cookbook" contains downloadable content for each chapter and is packed with screenshots and illustrations. After reading this book, you'll be creating motion graphics and visual effects in no time!
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Apple Motion 5 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Importing Photoshop and Illustrator files


We can import Adobe Photoshop (.psd) and Illustrator (.ai) files using any method from the previous recipe, but sometimes we may want more from these files. For instance, Motion can allow us to work with individual Photoshop layers but we need to import it in a specific way.

Getting ready

Locate a Photoshop file (PSD only) and Illustrator file (AI only) to use in the upcoming recipes.

From the File Browser, navigate to the Photoshop .psd file on your system, preferably one with multiple layers.

How to do it...

Follow these steps to import Photoshop files to Motion:

  1. With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

  2. With the .psd file selected, drag it from the File Browser straight to the Canvas or the Layers tab without releasing your mouse.

  3. By default, a pop-up menu appears allowing you to choose from merging the Photoshop file, selecting one of the individual layers, or importing all layers.

  4. Choose Import All Layers, as shown in the following screenshot:

  5. If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z to fit it into the Canvas window.

  6. You may notice that the Photoshop file has all of its layers contained within a group (named after the Photoshop project) of a group (the default group for the Motion project). It's good practice to release the Photoshop layers from the Photoshop group and have them solely within the Motion group.

This is how we import Illustrator files:

  1. With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

  2. With the .ai file selected, drag it from the File Browser straight to the Canvas or the Layers tab and release your mouse. You cannot see an Illustrator file's individual layers.

  3. If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z to fit it into the Canvas window.

  4. At first, everything looks fine, but as soon as we start scaling the file we'll notice some deterioration of the graphic. Press F1 to navigate to the Properties tab of the Inspector. Locate the Scale property and scale up the image by double-clicking on it and entering a new value. Keep scaling till you notice pixelation.

  5. Vector-based images from Illustrator are supposed to allow us to scale up the image to infinity and beyond. The problem is the minute we put the file in Motion, it places the file into a pixel-based world. To have this infinite scaling opportunity, we need to tell Motion to not give this file boundaries or take away its fixed resolution. To do this, navigate to the Media tab and select the AI file from the list; use the following screenshot for reference:

  6. Press F4 to go to the Media tab of the Inspector, and deselect the checkmark next to Fixed Resolution, as shown in the following screenshot:

  7. Try scaling up the object again from the Properties tab of the Inspector and notice how crisp it looks.

See also

  • The Importing files to the Canvas, Layers tab, and Timeline recipe.