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Livemotion 2.0 has been sitting in Adobe's product portfolio for a few years now, drifting along without really making much of an impact. Originally intended as a lower-cost alternative to Macromedia's Flash, LiveMotion provided some innovative tools for creating vector graphics and animation for web pages.
Flash's strength is in its ability to add sophisticated interactivity to animated graphics, with its ActionScript scripting language effectively turning it into a full-scale authoring program. But LiveMotion 1.0 pretty much avoided interactivity altogether, limiting itself to little more than the creation of rollover buttons. LiveMotion 2.0 changes all this, beefing up the software to the point where Flash users will be taking a close look to see if Flash finally has some real competition.
At first glance the new program doesn't look all that different. There are a number of useful new features but nothing that merits the version leap from 1.0 to 2.0, let alone the virtual doubling of the program's price. An entirely new text engine has been borrowed from Photoshop, however, allowing you to type text straight onto the page, and also to simplify text animations by keeping words as a solid block of text or splitting them apart so that you can animate characters individually.
Text can be edited while you animate it, and effects such as drop-shadows can be applied quickly and easily. Once your animation is complete you can save the entire animation as a Style that can then be applied to other animations in the future.
LiveMotion 2.0 has also pilfered a few small features from its grown-up cousin, After Effects, the video-oriented special effects and animation program. The Timeline window used to create animation sequences - which was originally copied from After Effects - now includes other After Effects features such as Time-stretching. This is the ability to alter the duration of an animation sequence without having to alter all the individual keyframes within the sequence. Just use the modifier key to drag the end point marker into a new position and LiveMotion will change all the keyframes automatically.
You can also use the new Hide and Shy commands to hide objects on either the main composition screen or the timeline window, making it easier to work with complex animations that contain a lot of overlapping objects.
This version of LiveMotion supports a wider range of file import and export options, allowing After Effects users, who tend to work in the broadcast industry, to import their work into LiveMotion and then convert it into Flash files that can be re-used on their websites.
All these new features are useful, but they're unlikely to have Flash trembling in its boots. However, there is one major new addition that completely transforms LiveMotion 2.0. This version now supports Flash's ActionScript, as well. There is now a proper script editor and debugger that should allow both developers and designers the same freedom to create complex interactive controls as Flash.
However, this sort of scripting represents a massive leap from the simplicity and ease of use of LiveMotion 1.0. So, to make life a little bit easier for its existing users and also to appeal to first-timers who may be daunted by the sheer complexity of Flash, Adobe has introduced Automation Scripts, which act as a gentler introduction to the art of scripting. Several of the automation scripts supplied with the program create animation effects such as fade-ins and fade-outs, and you can apply these complex effects to a variety of text and graphics objects simply by selecting the objects with the mouse and then selecting the required script from the Automation window.
You can also examine Automation scripts using the program's scripting tools. This will allow novices to see exactly how the scripts work, and allow them to experiment by modifying the scripts to create their own effects.
More experienced scripters can use Live Tabs to customise LiveMotion itself. Live Tabs are scripts that add new features to the program, such as new drawing tools and special effects.
These scripting abilities take LiveMotion 2.0 into entirely new territory - and go some way to explaining the price hike. It won't be easy to dislodge Flash from its throne, but Adobe deserves credit for turning the lightweight LiveMotion into a genuine heavyweight at last.
Contact
Adobe: 1 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB11 1AY
Tel 020 8606 4000, Fax 020 8606 4004
www.adobe.co.uk/products/livemotion/
See also:
A very impressive upgrade heralding a new generation of web development tools. 13 May 2002
All Animation & 3D
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