Motion, or another app for compositing and animating images to make a video?

[atari1356]

I want to make a video by taking a bunch of images and animating them.

You can see the start of my very simple storyboard in the attached image... basically the image of the woman will be there from the start, and I want the icons to pop in and I'll animate some text as well. (that isn't the full storyboard... the video will probably be around a minute long.)

I've seen various websites like Animatron that might work... but they're expensive and usually force you to host the finished product on their site. I'd rather have a Mac app.

Would Apple's Motion be a good choice for this? and would I also need to buy Final Cut Pro? ... basically, I don't know if Motion is just for short individual animations that you then export to FCP, or if I could make an entire 1 minute long (or longer) video in Motion.

Or is there another Mac app that could do what I want?

 

[mBox]

Yes Motion is best for that for low budget.

I live and die in After Effects for all Motion/3D Compositing creative work.

If you have time maybe look into that.

Its basically the Pro version of Motion IMHO.

 

[organicCPU]

Or is there another Mac app that could do what I want?

What you describe, you can do with lots of tools – it's a matter of budget and favor! If interested in free Open Source solutions, then Blender will do what you want or you could give Synfig Studio a try!

 

[atari1356]

Yes Motion is best for that for low budget.

I live and die in After Effects for all Motion/3D Compositing creative work.

If you have time maybe look into that.

Its basically the Pro version of Motion IMHO.

I thought about After Effects, but it's probably not something I'll use more than once or twice a year... so Adobe's subscription model isn't a good fit for me. (and budget is definitely an issue)

What you describe, you can do with lots of tools – it's a matter of budget and favor! If interested in free Open Source solutions, then Blender will do what you want or you could give Synfig Studio a try!

I thought Blender was more of a 3D rendering tool, but I'll check it out. Synfig Studio looks interesting... will check that out too!

 

[organicCPU]

I thought Blender was more of a 3D rendering tool

It is a 3D tool with lots of features. For 2D, compositing and animating Blender works, too and also has a full Video Editor to offer. Search for "2D animation with blender" and "VSE blender".

 

[laurim]

I want to make a video by taking a bunch of images and animating them.

You can see the start of my very simple storyboard in the attached image... basically the image of the woman will be there from the start, and I want the icons to pop in and I'll animate some text as well. (that isn't the full storyboard... the video will probably be around a minute long.)

I've seen various websites like Animatron that might work... but they're expensive and usually force you to host the finished product on their site. I'd rather have a Mac app.

Would Apple's Motion be a good choice for this? and would I also need to buy Final Cut Pro? ... basically, I don't know if Motion is just for short individual animations that you then export to FCP, or if I could make an entire 1 minute long (or longer) video in Motion.

Or is there another Mac app that could do what I want?

View attachment 645143

I'm a motiongraphics designer and primarily use Motion for my work, occasionally After Effects when I want to use certain plugins. Motion can certainly handle what you want to do. I even use it to make basic edits to other people's videos rather than Final Cut because for something simple I don't enjoy the whole process of starting a library/project, etc. It's really all in the program one is most comfortable using. The length of your movie is immaterial; I've made 10 sec videos and 20 minute videos in Motion.

For your project, I would bring all the icons into Photoshop and make them all the same size, clear backgrounds. Export them out as pngs all with the name in the format icon_0001.png, icon_0002.png, etc. You have to have the numbers 3 or more digits long. Then create a particle emitter from that image sequence and check the box that says "random frames" so that random icons emit from the sequence. Then play with the parameters for the direction, speed, number, lifetime, etc. that they emit. Be sure to adjust the lifetime opacity so they fade in when created and fade out when they die. Pretty easy once you know.

P.S. I tried to work with Blender for the 3D but found it pretty impossible to jump in and understand so I gave up on it. Thankfully, a 3D plugin was developed for Motion so I have basic 3D capabilities now.

 

[atari1356]

I'm a motiongraphics designer and primarily use Motion for my work, occasionally After Effects when I want to use certain plugins. Motion can certainly handle what you want to do. I even use it to make basic edits to other people's videos rather than Final Cut because for something simple I don't enjoy the whole process of starting a library/project, etc. It's really all in the program one is most comfortable using. The length of your movie is immaterial; I've made 10 sec videos and 20 minute videos in Motion.

For your project, I would bring all the icons into Photoshop and make them all the same size, clear backgrounds. Export them out as pngs all with the name in the format icon_0001.png, icon_0002.png, etc. You have to have the numbers 3 or more digits long. Then create a particle emitter from that image sequence and check the box that says "random frames" so that random icons emit from the sequence. Then play with the parameters for the direction, speed, number, lifetime, etc. that they emit. Be sure to adjust the lifetime opacity so they fade in when created and fade out when they die. Pretty easy once you know.

P.S. I tried to work with Blender for the 3D but found it pretty impossible to jump in and understand so I gave up on it. Thankfully, a 3D plugin was developed for Motion so I have basic 3D capabilities now.

Thanks, that really helps. I'm going to go ahead and buy Motion and give it a try.