Advanced Interactive Media/After Effects vs. Motion

After Effects is a variable, mathematic-based animation program that has the ability to make use of click and drag animation. After Effects also has built in scripting abilities through its expressions language to allow for animation without key frames. After Effects can also make use of many third party plug-ins to extend its abilities to include 3D animation, advanced particle systems and much more. Although After Effects uses a similar interface to other Adobe Creative Suite products it does have a significant learning curve; however there are many free training resources available online to help a new user get started. Both PC and Mac platforms are supported by AE, and at the moment it's the industry standard for motion graphics editing..

Motion is a loop-based animation program (can also be linear if desired) that primarily utilizes click and drag animation. The platform is Mac only and it uses various particle systems and basic movement animation to bring projects to life. Motion also allows keyframing in its simple key frame editor which lets you draw out your animation curves. Like After Effects, Motion keyframing allows you to edit many different aspects of your animation such as opacity, position, rotation, and many others. Motion has many time-saving features. Unlike After Effects, Motion allows you to click and drag your animation into Final Cut without having to render, export, and import. Motion is also able to send animations to After Effects 7 as a nested composition..