Alight Motion 2.0

Welcome to our biggest-ever update. While we couldn't fit in every request (we're still working on 3D support!) we've crammed a lot of new features and bug fixes into this update—there should be something here for everyone!

Element Sharing and Download

It's easier than ever to make your own elements and share them with others, and we've added a new download button to the Add > Elements panel.

Learn more in Elements: The Complete Guide. 

Shapes

We've completely overhauled the way Alight Motion handles shapes. Now, when you add a shape to a project, it is no longer immediately converted to a vector outline. Rather, you can continue to adjust things like the number of points on a star or the size and direction of an arrow dynamically after the shape has been created.

Best of all, the new Edit Shape tool not only allows for fine adjustment of these properties, it also allows you set keyframes on then, making it possible to animate properties like the angle of a pie segment, or the number of points in a star.

Still want to edit the individual points and curves that make up a shape? Just use the Convert to Outline option in the overflow menu to flatten a shape, then use the Edit Points tools—just like old times!

You'll notice that we've removed shapes like the pentagon and the various different stars. But worry not! You can now adjust the number of sides on a polygon after you add it to your project, so all of those same shapes and more are still available.

In addition, we've added quite a few new shapes — and more will be coming in future releases!

40+ New Effects

Alight Motion 2.0 comes with more than 40 new effects, for a total of more than 100 effects (101, to be precise—but who's counting?)

The new Text Transform effect allows you to animate individual letters in a text layer.

And if you've used Box Blur a lot, you know it can hurt performance and cause lag when editing a project. Well, we've introduced the new Fast Box Blur effect. As long as you're not using keyframe animation to animate subtle changes to low values of blur radius, the quality is just as good as a regular box blur, and many many times faster! Say goodbye to blur lag! (The old Box Blur effect has been renamed to Precise Box Blur—for the rare times when you need to animate blur radii near zero).

We've also introduced Repeat a whole new category of effects that make it possible to automatically repeat a layer. There are many repeat options available, including Linear (repeat in a line), Radial (repeat in a circle), and Scatter (random). You can even repeat one layer and have the copies flow along a path defined by another layer.

Here's a full list of all the new effects added in Alight Motion 2.0:

• Contour Gradient
• Contour Lines
• Count Up/Down
• Curl
• Dissolve
• Fast Box Blur
• Feather
• Find Edges
• Fractal Ridges
• Gradient Map
• Gradient Overlay
• Grid
• Grid Repeat
• Inner Blur
• Inner Glow
• Inner Pinch/Bulge
• Lens Flare
• Linear Repeat
• Mask Blur
• Matte Choker
• Mirror
• Radial Rays
• Radial Repeat
• Radial Shadow
• Repeat
• Repeat Along Path
• Replace Color
• Ribbon
• Roughen Edges
• Scatter Repeat
• Sharpen
• Solid Color
• Solid Matte
• Squeeze
• Star
• Stroke Color
• Text Transform
• Threshold
• Time Quantization
• Tunnel
• Turbulence
• Turbulent Displace

Border & Shadow

We've made big changes to how Border & Shadow work.

On the right side, where Center, Inner and Outer border used to be, there are now three tabs.

The top-most tab is Stroke. Stroke works even for shapes with no fill—including text! You can control the shape of the line ends and joins, and even choose end caps like arrows, circles, and boxes. Best of all, the Drawing Progress effect can be used to animate any shape with a stroke.

The middle tab, Borders lets you add multiple borders to a single shape. You can animate the border size and color. At least three borders are supported, but more may be available depending on your device.

Blending Modes

Alight Motion now comes with 27 blending modes all available through the Blending & Opacity tool.

Audio Peak Meter & Waveform

We've added a audio peak meter when playing, and you can now see the audio waveform in the timeline.

Improved Timeline

We've done a lot of work to improve small details about the timeline to make it more usable. Besides showing the audio waveform for audio tracks, there are several other small but important improvements:

• Layers are now color-coded based on the layer type, and there are small variations in the color used for layers of the same type to make it easier to distinguish different layers in complex projects.
  
  
  
• We've added stripes to make it easier to keep your place when using gestures to zoom the timeline, and to avoid confusion between moving and trimming when dragging a layer.
  
  
• The background color options in the element overflow menu have been replaced with tag colors. Setting a tag color now places a small colored triangle at the left end of the layer, and a small line a the left end of the timeline. Use this to more easily keep track of your layers.
  
  
  
• Image layers now show the image thumbnail in the main part of the timeline, not just the header tab at the left.

Copy & Paste Effects

You can now copy and paste effects! The option to copy is in the overflow menu when editing an effect. 

The paste option (as well as an option to copy all effects at once) can be found in the overflow menu of the effects list.

Copy & Paste Elements

Copying and pasting isn't just for effects! Alight Motion 2.0 also lets you copy and paste individual elements. The Copy option is in the overflow menu when a single element is selected:

The Paste option is in the overflow menu when no element is selected.

Layer Alignment

When multiple layers are selected at once, tap the overflow menu to access a full set of align and distribute options.

The first two rows align or distribute elements within the screen.

The bottom row aligns or distributes elements on the timeline.

Minor Tweaks

In addition to all of the above changes, we've also made a number of minor tweaks and improvements throughout Alight Motion.

For example, when you drag a spinner to adjust settings for an effect, the selection box is temporarily hidden so it isn't in your way—you can now see what you're doing when adjust blur radius, for example.

We've also improved several existing effects, including Luma Key (it's more accurate) and Random Displace (it has an Evolution property that you can animate, replacing the Speed property—making it easier to control when animating; you can have it run backwards, for example).

Bug Fixes

As with any release, Alight Motion 2.0 include quite a few bug fixes and performance improvements. Some of the more important improvements are listed here (this is by no means a complete list—we've been fixing a lot of bugs!)

• Fix display glitches in preview and when exporting — This is the big one! Some projects has broken visual (stray pixels, funny patterns, or glitches) especially when exporting, but even occasionally during preview play. Turns out some parts of the Android graphics subsystem ("OpenGL" for the techies out there) don't behave exactly according to the specification, and don't return an error code when they fail. We THINK we've fixed all of these, but if you run into any more export glitches, please let us know at support@alightmotion.com (be sure to tell us what kind of phone you are using).
• Improve performance in projects with audio
• Fix incorrect "unsupported video format" popup on some devices when using vertical video
• Fix bug where some resources might be missing when importing a project
• Fix several crash-on-launch bugs (we're really sorry about these! We're working hard to make sure this kind of issue doesn't happen any more... hopefully we've got all of them now)
• Fix incorrect track names in Audio Browser (Did you have that situation where all the tracks in an album showed up with the same name? Yeah, we did too—but it's fixed now.)

What's next?

As usual, we can't announce what is coming in the next release (or when), but we want you to know we have heard your requests and are working on them. Our "to do" list for future updates includes sharable presets, 3D shapes and effects, color grading scopes, and more. Just because you're favorite feature wasn't in 2.0 doesn't mean we're not working on it. We're a small team, so it takes time, but we are also very passionate about making Alight Motion perfect—just bear with us while we do so. And thanks, as always, for your support!