Apple Motion 5: Crystal Spheres Tutorial

Create this interesting sci-fi scene with fake 3D crystal spheres, including refraction, reflection, specular highlights, caustics, shadows and a lot more. Download the project texture files: tokyo-uk.com/Motion/3D.SPHERE....

[@HoldFastFilms]

Aboslutely worth watching! The best thing about your tutorials is that, not only do I learn whatever is that you are making in the video but in the process learn all kids of techniques and methods on how to solve problems. What you are doing is invaluable! Thank you.

[@SimonUbsdell]

+Hold Fast Films Thanks you very much - it's great to know you're finding them useful.

[@EnergeticWaves]

HOLD FAST simon is the best

[@grzegorzpaszkowski8555]

@@SimonUbsdell 3.12 minute is cutting and lost in action

[@Drawthemoral]

Ugh. Such inventive problem solving on display here. Absolutely brilliant. Your expertise is humbling.

[@rolandrickphotography]

You are for sure the Mastermind of Motion 5. Thanks for all your tutorials and the project files here also.

[@911Thugstyle]

In comparison to any other tutorials, SIMPLY THE BEST. Respect!

[@SimonUbsdell]

+Robert Familiant Many thanks indeed!!!

[@Lotus2885]

Wow! I enjoy watching your tutorials because they're far more than just Motion techniques. You're an artist using Motion as your palette. Most of the information is completely over my head at this point, but watching has certainly given me ideas to use is my compositions, even if the idea is scaled down in a way that I can understand it. You're a master!

[@cotillion567]

Brilliant. A work of art.

[@JohnBabyface]

Thank you soooo much for your fantastic explanations, best regards from Germany

[@undifferent1]

in a word - stunning! i am just getting to know Motion 5, and have been working with spheres and moving images. i'm very sure that i will return to your tutorial often, as a source of technical knowledge and visual inspiration. thank you Simon.

[@SimonUbsdell]

+Stan Bonnar That's great to hear, thanks.

[@roontunes]

got about 20 mins in and my head hurt, smashing ideas and loads of examples for using the various options in motion. Have to have a lie down before watching the rest of it. Thanks for taking the time to do these and upload them

[@SimonUbsdell]

Oh dear, apologies your making your head hurt, but thanks for your kind comments.

[@roontunes]

I'm an old fart by todays standards so I need my multimedia in little chunks at a time, you do seem to enjoy complexity.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Yes, I do get carried away a bit with the complexity - having worked in the VFX world a bit, I do think that it's the details that make a scene interesting to look at, so hopefully there is some point to it! But when I get the chance to produce some new tutorials, I plan on making them a lot shorter and simpler.

[@BrianTsang1983]

Unbelievable such a great work ,thank you for your sharing

[@queekao3540]

This one is really difficult to make!!! I saw the unlimited possibility for motion 5

[@genetvideo4009]

Merci beaucoup pour ce fabuleux tutoriel ainsi que pour les éléments du projet, quelle patience

[@SimonUbsdell]

Merci. Je suis bien content que ça vous plait.

[@rajaram1canvas]

Mesmerising. I don’t think I will ever come any close to it!

[@ingridasteiner]

Simon, you are the Best !!!!! Greatings from Switzerland 💝

[@SimonUbsdell]

Greetings, Switzerland! And thank you.

[@maacdesmond]

such a nice tutorial. worth to watch it .

[@creativemotion5]

I am French of the Parisian Suburd good work thank you very much Mr Ubsdell.

[@BigWaterCi]

Great tutorial! Well done. On my goto list.!!!

[@dieternaumann4898]

WOW, outstanding! Thank you!

[@azula.1110]

AMAZING WORK

[@Dennesen]

Simon Ubsdell, Thank you very much for your tutorials with clear instructions.I would like to subscribe your channel.

[@automatisatorpeace5453]

very nice Simon! More Tutorials Please! :) Thank You!

[@NunzioSaggio]

Bravissimo Complimenti

[@cliffordlfrelixjr1201]

Love it

[@mcsemeister]

Just great!

[@AlexandraLopezDesign]

I like it.

[@grzegorzpaszkowski8555]

In 3 minutes and 12 seconds there is a jump in which it is not explained why we remove the sand copy that we have modified and how we place a gradient that I do not know how it works in this case. It's just that the break is incomprehensible to me. I am asking for clarification.

[@wolfgangtemme308]

Great! Bur You should make your tutorial projects available for download.

[@farlandercd]

Finally!!!

[@karlamichelle4946]

Hello this is a very nice tutorial i would like to know how to create custom particles in apple motion

[@heronformiga3587]

I'm always amazed by the new uses you find for the same few tools. I bet not even Apple developers knew you could do these things with Motion. A couple of thing I didn't get. What's the difference between placing a layer under or over the Camera Layer on the list? And how can you "crop" a 3D Group that contains objects that expands outside the canvas? You rule!

[@SimonUbsdell]

Thank you. a) The order of the camera in the list doesn't make any difference to anything (except ease of parsing the composition), and the same thing applies to lights. b) There is no way of cropping a 3D group without making it not 3D. You can 'flatten' a 3D group to which you can then apply a mask or a crop (not possible otherwise) but then the camera doesn't see it as 3D.

[@heronformiga3587]

@@SimonUbsdell Thank you! You're the best!

[@SchergeFX]

Amazing!

[@SimonUbsdell]

+Scherge FX Thank you :)

[@NunzioSaggio]

GRANDEEE

[@markl5919]

hi , i like ur tutorial very much , may i ask how to create the 「shadow」gradient image mask in 03:14

[@itsreallycharly]

Great tutorial! I was wondering if you might have any suggestions on how to anchor the sphere when using a video as a background instead of a still image? I noticed that it will not allow me to add any motion tracking behaviors to anything but the original background video, but it is the sphere I need to anchor to the video. Much appreciated!

[@SimonUbsdell]

+Charly Hill I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do here but if you'd like to email me (address in the About tab above) with some more details (and maybe your Motion project file) I'd be happy to try and advise. Obviously there's a lot of cheating going on with this effect, so it might be necessary to come up with a slightly different way of doing it ...

[@kennysavoie712]

I HAVE A QUESTION. At 3.10 in the layers pane , there no image mask at 3.13 there is one please explain, whats the mask for.its under the sand.

[@Themindofreyrey]

Love the tutorial. Question, are these all photos? No video?

[@SimonUbsdell]

Yes, they are all stills, but there is no reason at all you can't use this technique with live action video if you prefer.

[@mihimarugt5204]

UP UP!!

[@demo9732]

Hey Simon, thanks for the great tutorial... just a question. At 3.12 after the cut you suddenly have a gradient on the Background, just one Sand layer and an image mask on it but you did´t explain when and how to make them... could you please give some advice? thanks!

[@SimonUbsdell]

+demo Hi, there. What you are seeing there is the remains of my original mistake in building the floor - which I talk about at the beginning. So as I mention, the floor that you see during the main body of the tutorial and the layers that go to make it up are all basically just the leftovers from that false start. Sorry about that - but I couldn't face rebuilding the entire tutorial with the correct floor ... it would have been a huge job.

[@demo9732]

+Simon Ubsdell Thanks, that explains it ;) ... thanks again for the tutorial

[@rolandrickphotography]

Simon, at 3:14, do you mean gradient and mask displayed in the tutorial but not mentioned in it? Thanks 🙏 for reply in advance.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Yes, that's right.

[@AzovPort]

💥 Супер! 👏🏻👍🏻

[@SimonUbsdell]

+AzovPort Thanks :)

[@7tcsails]

Beautiful design. I'm having trouble adjusting the 2-D sphere lighting. Under properties, I don't see a lighting control options.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Thanks. You will only have access to the lighting options if you have switched the Group to 3D. I can't remember if this is something that's possible with this project.

[@7tcsails]

@@SimonUbsdell That solves it; thanks Simon.

[@thomnom]

Great tutorial.....! However, correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't the content in a sphere like this be inverted vertically and horizontally?! ;))

[@SimonUbsdell]

It depends on the refractive index of the material in actual fact so this is a kind of plausible version of reality. I did look at doing it inverted but it looked unconvincing and I think most people would agree. You can easily flip it if you prefer - it's a matter of aesthetics more than science ;-)

[@thomnom]

Ahhhh, cheers for that fact.... :) I'm a crystal ball performer so I'm very used to a particular optical distortion, didn't think about the refractive index of various materials.... Either way, your tutorial was so good so I just had the urge of saying something constructive, I failed :D Keep up the good work mister!

[@SimonUbsdell]

No, your point is a very good one and would be correct in the majority of cases. But hey, these are magic crystal spheres on an imaginary planet so I thought I could get a bit creative ;-) Thanks for your kind comments.

[@Flowerpot2905]

Brilliant! Regarding the weird link offset error that cropped up around 39:30. I think it's cos you "grouped" the groups? I've found it's more predictable to make a new group, then drag the other groups into that. (I think I picked that up from you! :-)) Strange things happen to the transform values when you "group" items. The group seems to inherit the original transform values of the original object, which are then reset. I expect this could make the offset values go awry?

[@SimonUbsdell]

Yes, you're absolutely right. You should never ever use the Group option otherwise you will inevitably run into problems. I'm surprised I made that mistake here because of course as you mention I specifically made a tutorial explaining why it's such a bad idea: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qYu5k4COma59edU

[@itsMeJustin]

Well, now I know what i'm doing tonight!!!

[@SimonUbsdell]

+it's Me Justin :)

[@EnergeticWaves]

Why not use a higher fps ?

[@SimonUbsdell]

I like 24fps - it's film speed and looks nicer to my eye than anything else. Of course, Peter Jackson disagrees - but he's wrong ;-)

[@EnergeticWaves]

Simon Ubsdell but then video has to do that 48 to 60 conversion.

[@SimonUbsdell]

... and of course, 24 fps is a lot fewer frames to render every second, which makes it more efficient than higher frame rates.

[@kennysavoie712]

sorry about the question just read your answer .

[@SimonUbsdell]

+Kenny Savoie No problem. Sorry about the confusion.

[@bendavis1135]

Hello Simon. I followed this years ago but have just revisited it to try to emulate some similar effects on this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/bonRYoCQgdxsbK8 Its proving to be an interesting project with mixed results, but a lot of the spherical distortion you have taught here is working nicely