This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

In this guide to Apple’s revolutionary motion graphics software, commercial artists Damian Allen, Bryce Button, and Mark Spencer teach you to create cutting-edge animations, show opens, promos, logos, and effects while you learn Motion 3. As with the other titles in the Apple Pro Training Series, each chapter represents a complete lesson with a commercial-quality project to work through as you learn. The authors begin with generators and quickly move on to Motion’s behavior-based animations, particles, filters, effects, replicator, tracking, and matchmoving. The best-selling book is fully revised to take advantage of the software’s new features: you’ll create sophisticated 3D environments, design painterly elements using customizable brushes and strokes, automatically create motion paths from moving images without tedious frame-by-frame keyframing, remove camera shake, and animate text with 3D effects. Includes companion DVD with project and media files.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 14 Ratings

an acceptable introduction, needs proof reading - 2008-09-10
Reviewer Rating:
I struggled with whether to give this a 2 or 3 star rating...

Motion is a big beast with lots of complexity and I wasn't expecting for an introductory book to give me a complete view. This book did do a good job of surveying Motion. The examples/samples are generally pretty interesting.

However, I have similar comments to the other reviewers here...

1. The binding is bad. I am very careful with my books. I went through the book once and on opening it within a few days to refer to a section, the back half detached from the cover.

2. There are many errors in the book. When this happened, I would assume I had missed something and would then go back, restart the example and carefully follow ALL of the instructions. The bulk of the time, the error was in missing steps or in reversed steps. I think I remember a good half a dozen errors like this. (To the authors' credit, they have put in some helpful tips like 'if BLAH happens, remember to do BLAH' or 'don't forget to BLAH'.)

The other PeachPit Press Apple Pro Training books that I have gone through are very good - excellent really. When I got through those, I really felt prepared and able to use the tool. This one does not live up to those standards - book physical quality and proof reading and preparation for use of the tool. Again, beyond those issues, I would have liked a more detailed book giving me a deeper understanding to Motion but I understand the difficulty of that.

The book works acceptably as a survey of the tool, just don't get too frustrated by the errors.

great book - 2009-04-26
Reviewer Rating:
Motion is a terrific program and I encourage everyone to learn how to use it. This book is a great starting point.

Needs improvement, but will suffice - 2009-01-28
Reviewer Rating:
First and foremost, I feel the lesson dealing with 3D movement should have been placed later in the book, to better acquaint the reader with Motion's interface and the various effects, instead of trying to teach its most complicated tool so early. Since I was learning from scratch, I found myself going through the steps without really understanding what was causing the effect.

Also, as others have pointed out, there are mistakes and occasional lapses in the description of steps which sometimes could produce the wrong result. After following the steps meticulously (I thought), I found myself seriously stuck at least once.

Other than those complaints, the book does provide a good overview of Motion's abilities, and having gone over the lessons multiple times, I feel it is likely the best guide to Motion available, but I do hope future editions will improve on the shortcomings.

Decent starter's guide to Motion - 2008-12-01
Reviewer Rating:
I just worked through the entire book over the long weekend. There are definitely some major typos that suggest the wrong keyboard shortcut (and therefore unintended effect), but if you were paying attention earlier in the lesson, you should be able to figure out "Oh, he meant Shift-Cmd-drag, not Opt-Cmd-drag..." or "Uh, he never talked about the Far Fade parameter, so he must mean the Far Plane parameter..." Still, the proofreading / testing needed some work.

At no point did I just flat-out get stuck because of a problem with the lessons or anything like that, though I found it a bit tedious at times when the book would (in the spirit of encouraging you to try different filters, etc) say something like, "Step 10: Try this filter. Step 11: Undo that filter. Step 12: Now try another filter. Step 13: Okay, just kidding. Undo." I could see how if you weren't super careful, you will lose track of which effect to undo, and ultimately end up with elements that make your project mismatch what's in the book. I imagine the "If you have fallen behind, open sample_mid-project23.motn" instructions were supposed to help with this kind of stuff, but I actually never needed it.

Definitely wish there were more examples/lessons. This book was a decent start, but I want more, especially to distinguish this book's lessons from the Motion projects in Apple Pro Training Series: Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Studio 2!

Excellent Manual - 2008-08-13
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great book for anyone that wants to learn how to use Motion. I don't have any complaints. There are 14 ch.'s that cover every aspect of the program. After going through the chapters it's amazing what you can create from scratch in a matter of minutes or even seconds! I don't think Motion will be taking over After Effects but it can do some things better and faster than After Effects can.

I recommend this book to anyone that wants to learn an excellent motion graphics program!

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