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LiveMotion 1.0
by By Gary Schweinshaupt—Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. November 2000, admin@spcug.org - December 02, 2000 at 13:20:05:
If you don’t already know how to use Macromedia’s Flash, Adobe LiveMotion, according to most of the media reports I’ve seen, is easier to learn. Like all the recent Adobe product reviews I have done recently, LiveMotion uses a consistent user interface with other Adobe products, like Photoshop and Illustrator. Some commentators say LiveMotion is actually going to give Flash a run for its money.What’s Macromedia Flash, you may ask? It has become the de facto standard for streaming Web animation and interaction and, until now, has had the market to itself. To view Flash animation, you must have a Macromedia Flash Player installed/integrated in your browser. (Over 248 million Web users can now use it.) Actually the two companies share or compete for user’s desktop space in several professional graphics applications. There is even a law suit underway where Adobe is claiming Macromedia has allegedly infringed on some of their patents. As LiveMotion uses Macromedia’s .swf Flash Web animation standard format (LiveMotion can export files to both versions 3 and 4 of Flash), this could get interesting! Neither Flash ($341.95 discount), nor LiveMotion ($289.44 discount) are pocket change purchases.
Not sure if you have seen a Flash animation? Here are some Web addresses for some examples:
Adobe LiveMotion Flipbook—http://www.adobe.com/products/livemotion/main.html#
Macromedia Flash Showcase—http://www.macromedia. com/showcase/
You may have to install Flash in your browser, but you should have it installed anyway. Usually, when you go to a page that has a Flash animation and your browser can’t display it, there are instructions on how to install it.
When I picked up the manual, I thought it was another of those thin, bare minimum manuals. However, I soon learned that it was jam-packed with small print, icon sized-screen prints and small illustrations.
The install from CD-ROM went smoothly, using just 27Mb of my hard disk; somewhat short of the 100Mb suggested by specs? Having reviewed and used Adobe ImageStyler, I would have thought I had that product open; the palettes and work areas look identical. Also, anyone that uses Adobe Photoshop should feel right at home. The TimeLine Editor uses exactly the same Adobe AfterEffects styled timeline.
Help is browser based, and accesses everything you would find in the printed manual. The help system has a logical layout and navigational system that shows you where you are at all times, with electronic index and search. Personally I prefer a browser to a paper manual anyway; you can’t electronically search paper manuals.
As well as the standard drawing tools, there are also separate palettes for 3D effects, gradients, transparency, sounds and other special effects to be added to objects. In addition, LiveMotion includes tools for easily creating common vector objects, such as rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and drawing paths.
Since LiveMotion is a part of the Adobe software paradigm it natively supports layered Photoshop and Illustrator (*.EPS & *.AI) files that you can import easily and directly into any project along with other file formats including: BMP, JPEG, EMF, WMF, PSD, ES, AI, TIFF, IFF, PXR, TGA, VDA, DIB, ICB and VST. You can even modify the Photoshop or Illustrator documents (6 to 8) in their original creation software using the edit original command. Once you have changed the pictures in Illustrator or Photoshop the LiveMotion document will be automatically updated!
Creating animations is simple. Just select an object (or group of objects), set the timeline marker in the desired place in the length of the animation and change a property. For example, if an object is designed to fade in from 100 per cent (invisible) to 0 per cent (visible) over 10 seconds, at the start of the animation the object’s transparency value is set to 100 per cent and set to 0 per cent at the end. Just about any property of an object can be animated in this way, including text values changing over time.
Objects can also contain different “states,” from which actions can be triggered. A simple use of states is when an object is designated as a button. When the button is in the “up” state, a text box containing a description of the button may be hidden. When the button is in a “hover” state, that is, the mouse pointer is within the boundaries of the object on a Web page-the text box could be made visible. When the state is “clicked,” the browser may be told to load another URL, play a different animation or perform some other action. If operations that are more complex are required, LiveMotion supports the industry standard JavaScript language.
Sound support includes WAV, SND, AIFF, AU, and MP3 formats. Standard sound controls such as panning, fade in/fade out, and volume, as well as the ability to link sounds to specific objects and events, round out the audio options.
Another plus, is you can import pictures from a TWAIN 32 source in LiveMotion using your scanner or digital cameras.
I found LiveMotion very easy to pick up and intuitive in its operation, however, I’ve been an Adobe fan for a long time. The tutorials are excellent. Even a beginner should be able to come up to speed quickly. Bear in mind, this is a very feature rich environment and you will have to invest a lot of hours to get the most out of this product. I suspect only experienced builders will be able to push the product to perform the advanced functions of Macromedia’s Flash. It should work well for anyone who wants to jump straight into Flash animation without becoming an expert in or needing the benefits of advanced scripting or complex interactivity.
Overall, LiveMotion seems to represent a solid choice for Webmaster or Web designers, graphic designers and animators ready to jump into Flash animation. It utilizes existing familiarity with Adobe products to output media in a range of formats. As this is the first version of LiveMotion, media experts suggest that power users concerned about file optimization or leveraging the full power of Flash Player, may want to continue using the more mature products like Macromedia Flash, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.
I think the choices of which animation application to use is getting very confusing, certainly for the novice. I have reviewed Adobe’s GoLive; and it has an animator using an integrated QuickTime editor. I wonder if there is any relationship between the Time Editors? Adobe ImageReady can create animated GIF files, but when Adobe created Photoshop 5.5, they incorp-orated ImageReady into the Photoshop product. So, if you’re looking to create Web animations, your work is cut out for you in trying to figure out which product accomplishes your goals. You had better plan on spending considerable time comparing specs, if you’re considering one of these high-end products.
Requirements: Pentium II CPU and higher, Windows 98, 2000, NT 4.0 SP4, Me, 64MB RAM recommended (48 MB minimum), 100 MB Disk space and CD-ROM drive. Suggested list price is $299.
The Adobe LiveMotion 1.0.2 update is now available on the Adobe Website. It features faster performance, improved sound support, better import and export capabilities, more efficient SWF compression, tighter integration between Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop and updates to the object-based Timeline. You can also download the full operational program for a 30-day free trial.
Adobe Systems Inc., San Jose, CA;
800-492-3623, 408-536-6000; Web: www.adobe.com :
Copyright 2000. Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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