Motion lets you create sophisticated moving images and other visual effects on the fly and in real time. Simply drag one of Motion’s built-in behaviors (such as Spin or Throw) or filters (such as Glow or Strobe) onto an object in the Canvas and watch your composition spring to life—twirling, zipping across the screen, pulsing with luminescence, or any of hundreds of other effects.
You can also animate the traditional way, using keyframes, but Motion behaviors give you instant feedback, so you can sit with your clients, art directors, or friends and interactively design a motion graphics project on your desktop. You want a title to fade in, do a little shimmy, and then slide out of view? Click Play, then drag the Fade, Random Motion, and Gravity behaviors onto the title in the Canvas—no preview rendering time is necessary.
Whether you need simple text effects like lower-thirds and credit rolls, a complex 3D motion graphics project for a show intro or television commercial, or more advanced image manipulation techniques to stabilize footage or composite green screen effects, Motion has a flexible tool set to meet your motion graphics needs.
If you use Final Cut Pro X, you can modify the Final Cut Pro preset titles, effects, and transitions in Motion. Additionally, you can use Motion to create original presets for use in Final Cut Pro, specifying which, if any, controls are exposed when the preset is applied in Final Cut Pro. When saved, these presets appear in the Final Cut Pro media browsers.
A powerful tool in Motion called rigging lets you map multiple parameters to a single control—for example, a slider that simultaneously manipulates size, color, and rotation of text. Rigs are useful in Motion-designed Final Cut Pro templates: In addition to simplifying the workflow in template modification, rigging can be used to limit changes, ensuring that junior compositors and others in the production pipeline adhere to established specs.