Adobe LiveMotion [Old Version]

by Adobe

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00004TC3Q
• Item model number: 23140001
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,599 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #9 in Software > Web Development > Web Effects > Animation
  • #34 in Software > Graphics > Animation
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Adobe enters the arena of Web animation tools with LiveMotion 1.0, a tool that's used to create vector-based animation for Web delivery. Many of the animation-specific features are based on Adobe's After Effects, long a dominant player in the field of motion graphics and animation. If you've used After Effects, you'll feel comfortable immediately with LiveMotion.

In many ways, LiveMotion is a better tool for creating vector-based animation than Macromedia's Flash, its very popular competitor. Using a timeline/keyframe metaphor, LiveMotion makes it easy to animate the properties of an object over time. Position, scale, opacity, and rotation all can be controlled with relative ease. It's also painless to create HTML elements, such as animated rollovers for menus and graphics.

However, if you come from a Flash background, you might be a bit disappointed with LiveMotion. For starters, there are no scripting features. Also, LiveMotion's compression isn't quite as good as that of Flash. In a test in which the same animation was exported from both Flash and LiveMotion, the .swf file that was created by LiveMotion was about 15 percent larger. Because file size and download rates are so critical to Web-based graphic design, it's important to be aware of this type of issue.

Despite these shortcomings, we found it easier to draw and animate by using LiveMotion. Superior (in both form and function) Bezier drawing tools make it a snap to set up ready-to-animate graphics. Again, Adobe has kept LiveMotion's "feel" in the family by ensuring that the drawing functions are very similar to those of Illustrator.

If you're looking to create high-quality, interactive Web content, Flash might be the way to go, especially if you're more familiar with Macromedia's look and feel. However, if animation--and not interactivity--is the goal, and you have experience with Adobe's other products, LiveMotion should be a good fit. All in all, this is a very good first release. --Mike Caputo--This text refers to the Mac version of this software.

Amazon.com Product Description

Build interactive user interface elements and animation on your Web pages with Adobe LiveMotion. It enables users to include animation, high-quality sound, complex interactivity, and other elements within an intuitive environment.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very easy to use. You'll be up and running in no time!, July 8, 2000

By 

Diana Stephens (Pensacola, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe LiveMotion [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

Create great web animations and movies quickly and easily. I'm fairly new to web animation and vector graphics. I own both both Flash 4 and LiveMotion. LiveMotion is my choice.

The benefits of LiveMotion (besides being user friendly) is that it automatically inserts key frames for you (unlike Flash), and it will auto-tween them. Additionally, LiveMotion gives you the option of saving graphics, animations and rollover "styles" in the library so you can easily use them again in future projects simply by applying them. LiveMotion exports your designs as .swf files (just like Flash) so it is compatible with the plugins already being used in browsers.

After a few months and many books, I'm still trying to figure out the more complex Flash. Not the case with LiveMotion. It is much easier to use and the learning curve isn't nearly as steep as it is for Flash. Sure, Flash's authoring program may offer a few more functions to hard-core developers, but I still choose LiveMotion.

If you're looking for an easy, user-friendly way to create great looking movies (and want to spend your time actually designing the movie instead of reading books on how to figure out the program), get LiveMotion.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I hate to burst the bubble..., August 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Adobe LiveMotion [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

...but LiveMotion is not the god send. Even as a loyal Adobe user, I cannot recommend this tool. Let me start with its benefits first, and then I'll end with its problems.

Two major/revolutionary benefits: First and foremost, Adobe's familiar and designer friendly user interface. Intuitive, easy, and fast. Second, and what makes it completely outstanding, the tools bitmap compression technology is unparalleled. Just experimenting with the extents of its abilities, I output a 54MB QuickTime to an image sequence. Import the sequence into LiveMotion, tweaked, and output a SWF at around 350KB!

The unforgiveable! Web sites are interactive. Without interactivity and content a site is simply gallery fodder, eye candy. LiveMotion's behaviors are infuriating. The program is definitely not without its bugs. Any projects that are beyond simple playground animations chokes and dies. LiveMotion begins falling apart at the seems with SWFs approaching 250-300KB in size.

From the words(/implications) of Adobe's rep, Joe Bowden, wait until the products update release (in the works) which will address all the grouping and nested grouping issues (that are inherent to the programs interactivity). If you can't wait, reign in your projects and look for a work around.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Livemotion is no FLASH, it's just a slower Imagestyler., March 2, 2001

By 

"mmalonzo" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe LiveMotion [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

Livemotion was created from the ImageStyler product of Adobe. I am Imagestyler user and was impressed by its functionality and ease of use. Imagestyler 1.0 is a great product especially for web designers who would like pixel-point accuracy and flexible layouting tool.

But it has some limitations though which I expected to have been addressed into Livemotion. Instead Adobe put animation features into Livemotion to rival that of Flash.

When I evaluated Livemotion, these are what I found out: 1. Livemotion could not rival Flash in terms of animation and it will probably take 2 or more releases before it can be at par with Flash. 2. Livemotion is no better than Imagestyler instead its even slower.

So what Adobe did is they dropped the Imagestyler which is a good product on its own and now they try to compete with Flash with Livemotion but its is no contest. So Adobe, please give us Imagestyler 2.0.