Introduction

If you've ever used FCP 7 or FCP X to animate the scale, position, or parameter of an effect on a video clip, you're probably familiar with the concept of keyframing. The idea of keyframing comes from the classical days of animation. A head animator would come in and draw two pictures, let's say a lizard at the beginning and end of a race. A junior animator would then be responsible for drawing every picture during the race. In Motion 5, consider yourself the head animator while Motion acts as the junior animator. Yet, on top of using keyframing as an option to animate, we also have behaviors.

Behaviors automate the keyframing process. In some cases, where we might have had to use hundreds of keyframes to mimic a reel-life simulation, we can use one behavior and change a few controls to perform that task immediately. In other cases, it aids us better than having to use keyframes, because certain behaviors have graphical user interfaces which help us visualize what they do. Behaviors are a very powerful motion graphics tool that will assist us throughout the animation process. They're also a ton of fun to use! Let's see some behaviors in action.