Tutorial on Airbrushing in Apple Motion
Apple Motion is an animation and image compositing application used primarily by Final Cut Pro users to produce motion graphics for video productions. It includes a variety of relevant tools, including the ability to paint freely using different brushes. Airbrush brushes can be adjusted and used in several ways within Motion, in a manner comparable to raster graphics editors such as Adobe Photoshop or Pixelmator. The results can then be animated and exported to Final Cut for further processing.
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Instructions
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1
Launch Apple Motion. Its interface loads and a popup appears requesting you to select an established project or create a new one. As there are no special settings to establish or preparations that must be made before airbrushing in Motion, either selection is fine. Motion loads and displays your choice.
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2
Click the “Paint Stroke” button in the toolbar at the top of the Canvas area. The Paint Stroke tool becomes the active tool.
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3
Click the “HUD” button in the toolbar. Motion’s HUD popup appears. The HUD popup automatically displays the settings for the currently selected tool. Many, but not all, of the settings to control the size, color and width of the tool are adjusted in the HUD.
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4
Open the drop-down menu in the lower half of the HUD and select airbrush brush from the list. If you are new to painting in Motion, select the “Basic Airbrush” tool.
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5
Uncheck the box labeled “Write On” in the HUD popup. When the Write On parameter is engaged, any strokes created in the Canvas area are recorded into the timeline as animation in real time. This can be useful in some cases, but makes it impossible to airbrush normally.
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6
Set the width of the brush using the slider labeled “Width” in the HUD popup. The width is measured in pixels by default.
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7
Click on the color well at the top of the HUD to open the color picker. Motion uses the same color picker seen in many applications under OS X.
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8
Select a color for the brush using the color picker.
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9
Move the mouse cursor over the Canvas area. It changes to a circle whose size reflects the width setting selected in Step 6.
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10
Click, hold and drag the mouse to airbrush within the Canvas area. Once a stroke is created, the Inspector window to the left of the Canvas changes to display several settings relevant to the airbrush tool. For example, the stroke’s opacity, spacing and scale can be adjusted. Some of the settings, such as jitter and angle, are mainly relevant to those using a stylus and tablet to draw.
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Change the stroke’s color mode using the drop-down menu at the top of the Inspector window. The color mode refers to the way color is applied as you draw. For example, if you want the color to change subtly as you draw, select “Color Over Stroke.” Similarly, the stroke’s opacity and width can be altered as you stroke using the “Opacity Over Stroke” and “Width Over Stroke” settings.
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Resources
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