From the course: Motion: Principles of Motion Graphics

Get started in Motion - Motion Tutorial

From the course: Motion: Principles of Motion Graphics

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Get started in Motion

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- [Instructor] As we get started with our different Motion projects, it's important that we all have similar baseline to start from. So on your Mac, I want you to make sure in your system preferences in your keyboard options, that you have options so you can utilize the function keys on your computer. So I'm going to go to my system preferences here in the keyboard section. And the option that I have, since I'm on a laptop, is press the FN key or the function key to show me my function keys across the top of my keyboard. You may have slightly different options, but again, the most important thing is that you actually can access the function keys. The reason I'm telling you this, when you're in Motion, there are function keys like F5 that will hide or reveal the layers panel. Or F6, which will hide or reveal the timeline. So as we're going throughout this course, if you see the timeline open or you don't see it open, just remember you can use F5 or F6 to hide or reveal those elements. You can also navigate the interface by utilizing these buttons. So here, if I click on the library, we can hide the library. We could also look at the inspector, which is also divided up into four sections here. You can also pull up each one of these panels by using the various command keys. So Command + Two, Command + Three, Command + Four, Command + Five, Command + Six, Command + Seven. You get the general idea. Okay? Now, just to make sure we're all functioning in the same manner, there are some preferences that I'd highly recommend you change. So I'm going to click on Motion and I'll go to my preferences. And in the project area here, I highly recommend you change Create Layers At, to the start of a project. That way, whenever you create a new project, the layers will start at the start of the project, not where your playhead is at that point in time. Now, finally, I'll close my preferences and I just want to talk to you about the project settings I'll be using for the majority of the projects in our course. So here in the layers panel, there is a Project layer. And if I click on that and go to the inspector, here are my project settings. I want you to note it's 1920 by 1080, and I'm using a frame rate of 24 frames per second. So, I also got to that by going up under File and New, and here's my Motion project. I chose broadcast 1080 and then here for my frame rate, I set it to 24 frames a second. The majority of projects will be 10 seconds in duration. Some may be a little shorter, but I hope you can understand, now that we've got some basics set up within our preferences, our system preferences, and how the projects are set up, we're ready to get started.

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