Motion Graphics Software

if your looking to learn any type of 3d animation then maxon are giving a 1 year trial on the newest release of cinema 4d at the moment. it was the first 3d program i learned and there is a ton of documentation and tutorials by some great people out there from basic to advanced.

if you are looking to get into motion graphics freelance or as a career i would advise using after effects, i know its not cheap but it is pretty wide spread in the industry.

hope that helps a little.

If yoy're on a Mac, you could try Apple's Motion.

Ae is the industry standard for motion graphics, though. You might consider a Creative Cloud subbscription: all the Adobe apps for $50/month.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

Stephen

I would suggest to use After effects only.

It is widely used in the industry and lots of Cool plugins and tutorials are available for almost everything one wants to make.


Also here is a list of software from wiki you can check:

Motion Design applications include:

Adobe After Effects
Eyeon Fusion
Nuke
Autodesk Combustion
Apple Motion/Shake
Max/MSP
Apple Quartz Composer
Various VJ Programs
Smith Micro Software Anime Studio
Adobe Flash


3D Programs used in Motion Graphics include:

Maxon Cinema 4D
Softimage XSI
Autodesk 3d studio max
Autodesk Maya
NewTek Lightwave
e-on Vue Infinite
The Blender Foundation Blender software
EI Technology Group Electric Image Animation System
Motion Graphics Plugins include:

Magic Bullet
Red Giant Software

Vishesh Arora
3D and Motion Graphics Artist
Films Rajendra

Blog:
http://digieffects.wordpress.com

Demo Reel(3D):

[Shawn Miller] "You might want to scratch Combustion, Shake and Quartz Composer off the list. :-)"

Quartz Composer's not dead yet!

But really, I think the Wikipedia list is a bit bizarre. Is anyone using Fusion or Nuke for pure motion graphics?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Stephen heppell] "I'm looking to buy some software to make animations and do motion graphics, and I know After Effects would be a good choice- but it's a little pricy- can anyone recommend something a bit cheaper?"

It depends on what you want to do. If you're just looking to work on your own projects, or finish work for other people, then it won't matter what software you use. However, if you're looking to work in a collaborative environment (film or video), then you will probably need to learn AE, Photoshop and Illustrator. Luckily (as Walter points out), Adobe's Cloud Subscription can be had for $50.00 a month, so learning AE (+ Adobe's supporting applications) is a lot less expensive than is used to be.

Where do you want to go with motion graphics, are you looking at doing this for a career, or is this more of a hobby?

Thanks,

Shawn

Thanks for all the advice guys- I'm going to go for the great monthly deal Adobe are offering, which Shawn alerted me too.

Just downloaded it- used to be in the industry a long time ago so its the first time I've used AE in about 8 years- but obviously that experience is lodged in my brain somewhere- a lot is coming back to me!

Again, thanks for all the help...

Hepsi Cola