During NAB this week there were a lot of announcements in the world of motion graphics. First up, Apple introduced a new motion graphics package, at the "breakthrough" price of $299, called... (wait for it...) Motion.
Sporting the usual slick Apple interface design, Motion claims to offer real time previews, lots of procedural animation tools and tight integration with Final Cut Pro. I am curious to see what kind of effects are available with Motion right out of the box. There are no video examples on the site, yet, but it apparently will offer a lot of high-end simulation tools such as wind and gravity simulators and particle systems.
Apple really seems to be pushing ahead with the goal of creating the total package for visual artists from hardware to software. I wonder if they will ever dare to create a project to compete head-to-head with the holy grail of graphics apps: Adobe Photoshop? Hmmm...
Apple also sells a high-end compositing tool called Shake. The is a pro-level film tool that was used on the Lord of the Rings films, among others. Not being a user of Shake, I'm not really sure how Motion fits into the picture. Together, though, I'm sure those two apps will be a powerful team.
Hot on the heals of the Motion announcement comes word about the 6.5 upgrade to Adobe's After Effects. These new features add a lot of new effects and preview options including advanced particle systems and light sweeps.
While reading up on this update, I noticed that Adobe has rolled out updates to all the apps in its video collection. What's strange is that we just got this video suite at work 3 months ago. Now, suddenly, here are a new round of updates that we will need to pay for. Sometimes I wish Adobe would stagger their updates farther apart and offer free, incremental half-step updates throughout the year. But, hey, that's just me. Now that Adobe has conceded the NLE market on the Mac to Final Cut Pro, it will be interesting to see how things develop in the future between these two companies.
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