Adobe LiveMotion

Professional Web Graphics and Animation

Does it deliver on the promise? Yes, if you can stand the pain. The pain I refer to is the result of a beta version, labeled 1.0.2., being shipped as a production software package. My experience with the product has not been entirely pleasant.

The installation went well. Although I choose the "custom" installation option when prompted, I installed all components and rebooted the system. The installation showed no sign of any problems and the program starts properly.

The first sign of trouble was a little annoyance. I create a simple graphic and choose to save it. The standard file "save as" menu appeared, I selected a directory, named the file, and hit what should have been the "Save" button. Wrong! The "cancel" button sat where the "OK" button should have been. From there thing went down-hill.

The machine this program was tested on has an AMD 1100 mhz processor and 256 megabytes of memory, yet after about an hour of messing with the program it crashed with an "out of memory" message. It didn't crash Windows 98, but the work done during the period was lost. Fool, save your work often. Yes, Well - I know - I know! After that, system slamming crashes occured several more times during that evening. Not Cool.

Ignoring the above, lets look at the bright side. The interface is friendly. It is similiar to programs like Photoshop or Illustrator and that is a plus for Adobe users. It has animation capibilities with support for Flash file export. Unfortuneately, complex objects created by LM are bitmaps and export as large files with the limitations generally associated with raster images. Also, my experience with Live Motions Flash file exports is that they sometimes don't import into flash without corruption. Both Flash and Live Motion uses objects, layers and a timeline for animation. AfterEffects [Adobe animation and multimedia program] users will easily recognize the Live Motion timeline, and thus know most of the animation techniques.

Pro's of the LiveMotion Timeline:

• easy to adjust animation properties
• Works logically with objects
• AfterEffects users will learn LM quickly
• All animations have motion guides - thus, easy to work with and adjust.
• Preloading (making sure animation is loaded befor playing) is simple
  

Cons of the LiveMotion Timeline:

• Slow workflow
• Lack of precise control
• Large animations will have tons of layers
• Animation will be very simple, as Live Motion lacks scripting and other features

Conclusion:

For the beginner and the AfterEffects users, the Live Motion timeline will be easy and quick to learn. You'll be animating complex effects in no-time, but you'll lack important key-features and the timeline will limit you severely. As opposed to Flash, Live Motion is easier to learn, but Flash offers you full control of every part of the animation.

Pro's and cons of the interface [UI]:

• Adobe style UI will be easy to recognize for Illustrator and Photoshop users.
• The gradient tool of LM is more powerful and easy to use than that of Flash.
• LM has better color dropping and adjustment tools
• LM has bezier curves, and allow precise control of object shapes
• It's easy to apply neat features like textures, bevels, and pseudo3D effects.
• VERY weak vector features
• Slow workflow
• CPU intensive

* LiveMotion is BITMAP BASED! You can scale and resize tools and maintain applied effects, bevels and smooth edges. But as soon as you ZOOM in, or EXPORT, you will see the jagged edges of bitmaps.
This will not only affect workflow, but also playback speed and most importantly, file size


Conclusion:

As opposed to Flash, Adobe has provided LiveMotion with the powerful tools known from Illustrator and Photoshop, and created an easy to use, recognizable interface to work within. A pity however, that they didn't make LiveMotion completely vector based - working within LiveMotion is comparable to that of ImageReady or Fireworks. You can scale and apply effects, rotate and manipulate objects, and they will look nice. But as soon as you zoom in, or export, you will have the cons of bitmap-based images. This makes both the gradient tool and the color adjustment tools obsolete compared to those featured in Flash.

Pro's of the workflow, effects, scripting and export possibilities:

• LiveMotion has very powerful HTML features.
• LiveMotion can apply all the filters of Photoshop, along with Bevels, twirls, and other neat effects
• LiveMotion is much easier to learn than Flash, especially for Adobe users of Photoshop and After Effects.

Con's of the workflow, effects, scripting and export possibilities:

• Export features are very limited.
• Import features are slow and chunky.
• For low bandwidth connections, LiveMotion is already obsolete.
• Very, very limited scripting capabilities.

Conclusion:

LiveMotion offers a broad range of bitmap based features and effects, and allows you to easily animate the objects and create nicely looking animations. It will allow you to create imagemaps, rollovers, and export this to HTML. For this, LM will both autoslice images, batch replace HTML code, and autolayout properties of your HTML documents.

LiveMotion will even export as Flash. But - that is all LiveMotion will ever do for you.
You will not be able to re-create killer-flash sites you've seen on the web with LiveMotion. You will be severely crippled by the huge file size LiveMotion will create by being bitmap-based. The playback will be slow and chunky, and not worth the work. Basically, you will have a hard time trying to achieve the wow-factor that is an almost de-facto standard of Flash productions.

Then why bother using LiveMotion? Well, because LiveMotion is easy to use. If you buy it for it's HTML features, you will certainly be amazed by it's features. GIF banners, rollover buttons and other neat HTML features will be easier than ever to create. Buy LiveMotion if you want to create quick, easy, nicelooking GIF-banners, or as an addition to your HTML program. If you need what LiveMotion has to offer, you might consider waiting until Version 2.x arrives. Perhaps then the program will be more stable.